iRobot is giving its vacuum cleaners a new AI-powered brain

iRobot is announcing what it is calling the biggest software upgrade to its robot vacuum cleaners since the company’s inception 30 years ago, a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform known as iRobot Genius Home Intelligence. It is a lobotomy and replacement of the intelligence systems in all of the company’s robots. The new system is part a big shift in how the company develops its wares.

As robovacs become commodity goods, available for less than $200 from many vendors, iRobot wants to move up the value chain, differentiating itself from lower-tier rivals with sophisticated software. That means it is a robot you can really control. The early robot vacuum cleaners were like, you pressed a button and they did the job, for better or worse.

With AI, users can be more specific about what they want. Autonomy does not equal intelligence, we need collaboration. iRobot has been traveling down this path for a while now, adding capabilities to its robots like a mapping feature in 2018. This allows compatible Roombas to create a map of your home, which users can label with specific rooms and direct the robot to clean on demand.

The Home Intelligence upgrade, which includes a redesign of the iRobot app, will enable even more specific spot-cleaning.

iRobot claims this is exactly what people want at a time when they are stuck indoors and more likely to notice small messes throughout the home. Not only will compatible Roombas map your home, they will now use machine vision and built-in cameras to identify specific pieces of furniture in your house, like couches, tables, and kitchen counters. As the robot logs these objects, it will make suggestions to the user to add them to its internal map as “clean zones” as specific areas of your house you can direct your Roomba to clean, either via the app or a connected digital assistant like Alexa.

In order to create these machine vision algorithms, iRobot collected tens of thousands of images from inside employees’ homes, to learn what furniture looks like when you are scooting around the floor. The company boasts that its fleet of data collecting vehicles is “probably second only to Tesla’s”. This functionality will be supported by a range of new features.

In addition to “clean zones”, Roombas will also identify “keep out zones”. If the robot keeps on getting stuck on a tangle of cables under your TV stand for example, it will suggest to users to mark this as a keep out zone to avoid in future. As with clean zones, these areas can be customized in the app. Event-based automation will also be an option.

If you want your Roomba to do a quick vacuum when you leave the house, you can connect the app to an August smart lock or a location service like Life360.

When you walk out the front door, it will know to start cleaning. Other new features include customizable pre-set cleaning routines, recommended cleaning schedules based on users’ usage, and seasonal cleaning schedules such as more frequent vacuuming when a pet is shedding or during allergy season. These features will not be available equally to every Roomba, though.

Only those which support mapping features will be able to set up specific zones and suggest new cleaning schedules. Other features like event-based automation and favorite cleaning routines will be available to all other Wi-Fi connected Roombas. A key motivation for creating these functions is a metric iRobot calls “mission completion”, referring to the frequency with which a customer’s robot leaves its dock, cleans, and return successfully.

Sometimes a “mission” is aborted because of a technical failure, but the number one reason it is interrupted is because a human stops it. That means the robot came out like it was supposed to and annoyed somebody and they killed it. iRobot wants to keep the robot alive, for that the company needed smarter ways to activate when it is less likely to annoy the occupants of the home, and that was the mission.

One challenge for iRobot when delivering more control and customization is how to avoid spooking customers about privacy and data collection.

When Roombas first began mapping homes, there was a brief scare that iRobot might sell this data. The scare was caused by a misquotation, but the coverage illustrated the anxieties surrounding smart gadgets. Roombas’ new object recognition capabilities may trigger similar worries. The company is keen to reassure customers that their data is private. Any images captured by the company’s vacuums never leave the device and are not even stored for more than a few seconds.

Instead, they are converted into abstract maps. iRobot encrypts the robot’s software, making it harder to hack. Even if an attacker did break in to a customer’s device they would find nothing of interest. If someone stole the data all they would know is that you have a room called “kitchen” and something in it called a “kitchen table”. The company’s goal is that anyone ever hacks the company they will be profoundly disappointed.

For the users themselves, this is just the start of iRobot building out its Roombas’ AI features. If you think this is cool and you like the direction, it is just the beginning of the journey.