Privacy and Robots in the Home

 Implications of Amazon's acquisition of iRobot and more:

iRobot CEO Colin Angle on Data Privacy and Robots in the Home In light of Amazon’s recent acquisition, we revisit our 7 September 2017 Q&A with iRobot’s CEO    BY EVAN ACKERMAN

Editor’s note: Last week, Amazon announced that it was acquiring iRobot for $1.7 billion, prompting questions about how iRobot’s camera-equipped robot vacuums will protect the data that they collect about your home. In September of 2017, we spoke with iRobot CEO Colin Angle about iRobot’s approach to data privacy, directly addressing many similar concerns. “The views expressed in the Q&A from 2017 remain true,” iRobot told us. “Over the past several years, iRobot has continued to do more to strengthen, and clearly define, its stance on privacy and security. It’s important to note that iRobot takes product security and customer privacy very seriously. We know our customers invite us into their most personal spaces—their homes—because they trust that our products will help them do more. We take that trust seriously."

The article from 7 September 2017 follows:

About a month ago, iRobot CEO Colin Angle mentioned something about sharing Roomba mapping data in an interview with Reuters. It got turned into a data privacy kerfuffle in a way that iRobot did not intend and (probably) did not deserve, as evidenced by their immediate clarification that iRobot will not sell your data or share it without your consent.

Data privacy is important, of course, especially for devices that live in your home with you. But as robots get more capable, the amount of data that they collect will increase, and sharing that data in a useful, thoughtful, and considerate way could make smart homes way smarter. To understand how iRobot is going to make this happen, we spoke with Angle about keeping your data safe, integrating robots with the future smart home, and robots that can get you a beer.  .... ' 

Amazon Goes for iRobot

Quite the expected thing...

Amazon to Acquire iRobot F​or $1.7 Billion The deal will give the e-retail behemoth even more access to our homes EVAN ACKERMAN

This morning, Amazon and iRobot announced “a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire iRobot” for US $1.7 billion. The announcement was a surprise, to put it mildly, and we’ve barely had a chance to digest the news. But taking a look at what’s already known can still yield initial (if incomplete) answers as to why Amazon and iRobot want to team up—and whether the merger seems like a good idea.

The press release, like most press releases about acquisitions of this nature, doesn’t include much in the way of detail. But here are some quotes:

“We know that saving time matters, and chores take precious time that can be better spent doing something that customers love,” said Dave Limp, SVP of Amazon Devices. “Over many years, the iRobot team has proven its ability to reinvent how people clean with products that are incredibly practical and inventive—from cleaning when and where customers want while avoiding common obstacles in the home, to automatically emptying the collection bin. Customers love iRobot products—and I'm excited to work with the iRobot team to invent in ways that make customers' lives easier and more enjoyable.”

“Since we started iRobot, our team has been on a mission to create innovative, practical products that make customers' lives easier, leading to inventions like the Roomba and iRobot OS,” said Colin Angle, chairman and CEO of iRobot. “Amazon shares our passion for building thoughtful innovations that empower people to do more at home, and I cannot think of a better place for our team to continue our mission. I’m hugely excited to be a part of Amazon and to see what we can build together for customers in the years ahead.”  .... ' 

IFTTT and Brands in the Smart Home

Recording of yesterdays Webinar

 ... How smart home companies decide which integrations to prioritize and why successful smart home companies optimize their integration strategies for scalability,  The different integration strategies of 3 innovative smart home companies

IFTTT needs the contact information you provide to us to contact you about our products and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For information on how to unsubscribe, as well as our privacy practices and commitment to protecting your privacy, please review our Privacy Policy.

Successful smart home companies like iRobot, LIFX, and Ring understand the importance of third-party integrations for driving product adoption and engagement. But in order to do so, smart home companies must navigate the overwhelming number of apps and devices to determine which integrations matter most to their customers and their business.

Join IFTTT Founder and CEO, Linden Tibbets, as he reviews the integration strategies of 3 smart home companies to understand how integrations help them scale their products in the smart home and beyond.

Linden_Tibbets,  IFTTT Founder and CEO
Linden Tibbets is Founder and CEO of IFTTT, the essential integration and discovery platform for businesses to continuously connect, grow and maximize the value of their customers. ... '

Brands Winning in The Smart Home: Webinar

Of interest, will be attending, register at the link.

Webinar:May 21, 1PM ET    How top brands win the smart home
Integration strategies from iRobot, LIFX, and Ring 

In this webinar you will learn:

How smart home companies decide which integrations to prioritize and why

Why successful smart home companies optimize their integration strategies for scalability

The different integration strategies of 3 innovative smart home companies

Successful smart home companies like iRobot, LIFX, and Ring understand the importance of third-party integrations for driving product adoption and engagement.  But in order to do so, smart home companies must navigate the overwhelming number of apps and devices to determine which integrations matter most to their customers and their business.

Join IFTTT Founder and CEO, Linden Tibbets, as he reviews the integration strategies of 3 smart home companies to understand how integrations help them scale their products in the smart home and beyond.

Linden Tibbets
IFTTT Founder and CEO
Linden Tibbets is Founder and CEO of IFTTT, the essential integration and discovery platform for businesses to continuously connect, grow and maximize the value of their customers.

Webinar from iRobot, IFTTT on the Smart Home

Recently signed up for this and missed it, of interest: 

Checking in to see if you watched the replay of our smart home webinar featuring iRobot.

It features iRobot's CTO, Chris Jones, talking in-depth about the future of the smart home, and how they were able to solve the dual challenges of customer experience and integrations by working with IFTTT.

Smart Home hardware companies are placing increased strategic importance on software services to address future opportunities.
Join IFTTT Founder and CEO, Linden Tibbets and iRobot Chief Technology Officer, Chris Jones, as they discuss the integration choices Smart Home companies face and the future of the Smart Home.

In this webinar we discuss:

The ongoing transition of hardware companies to software services companies
Connecting Smart Home products to other products in the Smart Home and beyond
Direct integrations, Developer platforms and iPaaS
IFTTT Data Insights – Integration trends in the Smart Home
Why customer experience will ultimately decide .... 

Best, Skyler
Skyler Saulovich, Sales at IFTTT ... "

Smart Home Gets Cleaner

Quite a step forward, if it delivers.   Its like they have done the easy stuff, now work on harder problems for the smart home. And cooperates with other devices to get it done.

iRobot’s new cleaning robots can team up to vacuum and mop your house
A job shared is a job halved

By Jon Porter@JonPorty in TheVerge

iRobot has a pair of new cleaning robots, the Roomba s9+ and Braava Jet m6, that can work in tandem to vacuum, mop, and dust your house. You coordinate the process from the iRobot app, which will automatically tell the mopping and dusting $499 (€699) Braava Jet m6 to clean your wood or stone floors after the $1,299 (€1,499) Roomba s9+ has vacuumed.  .... " 

iRobot and Google Assistant Partner

Home robotics has not been very successful, except in rather narrow domains.    In particular in linking with the concept of a 'Smart Home', and requirements of spatial awareness.    Now iRobot and Google are going in that direction.

iRobot and Google partner to make your smart home cleaner

When it comes to smart home products that keep your house clean, it’s hard to beat iRobot’s line of Roomba vacuums. They are basically synonymous with robot vacuums, and they’re about to get even smarter than they already are thanks to a little A.I. infusion from Google.

The two firms are teaming up to improve the functionality of Roomba vacuums to better fit into the overall smart home experience. The companies announced that they are working together to create new integrations between their platforms, though so far details are sparse. What we do know is iRobot and Google want to use the information gathered by their respective devices to better understand a user’s home. As an example, the companies suggest that spatial awareness from a Roomba could help simplify smart home setups and enable new automated processes. ... 

Telepresence Robotics with Autonomy

Been a while since I  have seen novel telepresence robotics.   Here is an Ava Robotic telepresence system with autonomous navigation.  We experimented with meeting attentendance telepresence.

Ava Robotics Introduces Autonomous Telepresence Robot
Founded by ex-iRobot engineers, this startup is building a remote presence robot powered by sophisticated sensors and autonomous navigation   By Evan Ackerman in IEEE Robotics

Seven years ago, iRobot introduced us to Ava, a sort of tech demonstrator designed to show how robots were capable of doing things like—well, the company wasn’t entirely sure, but telepresence was one of the ideas. The robot’s autonomous navigation was certainly impressive, and Ava could avoid moving obstacles at the speed of a brisk walk, which wasn’t something we’d seen a lot of back in 2011.

In 2012, iRobot announced RP-VITA, a medical telepresence robot based on the Ava platform. And in 2013, iRobot and Cisco collaborated on the Ava 500, a commercial telepresence system with integrated autonomous navigation. We haven’t heard too much about it since then, but today a startup called Ava Robotics is coming out of stealth mode to announce its plans to bring the technology behind Ava to market.

Ava Robotics, based in Cambridge, Mass., was founded by former employees of iRobot, which holds a minority position in the startup. Ava has licensed some key remote presence technology from iRobot and wants to (re?)launch the Ava platform as a “new video collaboration solution that offers users ‘practical teleportation’ with the ability to transform remote work and site visits.” A telepresence robot, in other words.   ... " 

Roomba Beta Advances

iRobot Launches Beta Program to Test Smarter Home Features for Roombas  By Evan Ackerman  in IEEE Spectrum

Robots like the 900 series Roomba, which have the ability to make detailed maps of your home while they do chores, are poised to become much more useful than they've ever been. These maps are in the process of enabling all kinds of new features, most of which we can only guess at, but iRobot will be giving us a peek at what they're working on with a late Christmas present: a new beta program for Roombas.

In a next step to make the smart home smarter, iRobot today announced a new Beta feature that allows customers to view a Wi-Fi Coverage Map created by Roomba. The Wi-Fi Coverage Map feature is the first to be available as part of iRobot Beta, a program that enables a limited number of iRobot customers to trial unreleased product features for the company’s consumer robots. iRobot Beta is accessed through the iRobot HOME App and will be available in mid-January (US only).

WiFi Map
Wi-Fi Coverage Mapping is a Beta feature that enables Roomba 900 Series vacuums to detect WiFi signal strength throughout a user’s home to highlight areas that may have poor connectivity. Users can then work to determine ways to fix Wi-Fi issues, resulting in an improved customer experience when using connected devices within the home. Users simply start a Roomba cleaning job, and the robot will collect Wi-Fi signal information as it cleans. Upon completion, users will receive a notification to view the Wi-Fi Coverage Map that was generated. The user will be able to toggle between the familiar Clean Map™ Report, which shows where Roomba cleaned, and the Wi-Fi Coverage Map. ... "

Reviews.com Examines Roomba Vacuums

If you have read this blog for any time you know I am a long time follower of Smart Homes.  I also managed the technical aspects of Procter & Gamble's Home and Store innovation centers.    We looked at many home technology applications that could influence the business of Retail and CPG companies. In particular we looked at the earliest iRobot Roomba home robotics, to see how they would influence the future of home care.  See the Roomba or Smart Home Tags for more.

Have not followed new systems from Roomba for some time, but Kayla Allen of Reviews.com sent me a link to the reviews they have for the Roomba Vacuums.  See below for an abstract and link.  Great in dept coverage, discussion and images.   I did not know there were so many options.   Good update for me.  Will be following their reporting on home robotics from now on.

The Best Roomba Vacuums
The best of the best in robot vacuums
The 30-Second Review

The best Roomba can clean your floors without getting stuck on your furniture. We tested seven of iRobot's most promising models for cleaning power, navigation, and the ability to tackle common obstacles. In the end, we found that more money didn’t always buy better results.  .... " 

Sins of AI Prediction

Nicely thought out, with great cartoon images.  Its right about distraction.  There is lots of advancement here, but expecting the wrong things can confuse direction and investments.   Seen it all.

The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions  In Technology Review
Mistaken extrapolations, limited imagination, and other common mistakes that distract us from thinking more productively about the future.

by Rodney Brooks  October 6, 2017 ...

Rodney Brooks is a former director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT and a founder of Rethink Robotics and iRobot. This essay is adapted with permission from a post that originally appeared at rodneybrooks.com. ... " 

Privacy of Home Robotic Data

Thoughful piece that follows up on the use of home robots building models of homes, and potential  sharing of that data.     More broadly we will see this kind of data also being gathered by AR systems as well, for example Google's Project Tango.   In that case not robotic, but human 'scanning'.

Interview: iRobot CEO Colin Angle on Data Privacy and Robots in the Home    By Evan Ackerman   in IEEE Spectrum

About a month ago, iRobot CEO Colin Angle mentioned something about sharing Roomba mapping data in an interview with Reuters. It got turned into a data privacy kerfuffle in a way that iRobot did not intend and (probably) did not deserve, as evidenced by their immediate clarification that iRobot will not sell your data or share it without your consent .... 

Data privacy is important, of course, especially for devices that live in your home with you. But as robots get more capable, the amount of data that they collect will increase, and sharing that data in a useful, thoughtful, and considerate way could make smart homes way smarter. To understand how iRobot is going to make this happen, we spoke with Angle about keeping your data safe, integrating robots with the future smart home, and robots that can get you a beer.  ... " 

Clearpath Moderizes TurtleBot

Clearpath Modernizes TurtleBot With Intel Euclid and iRobot Create  By Evan Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum 

Clearpath Robotics, in partnership with Intel and iRobot, recently announced the newest member of the TurtleBot family: the TurtleBot Euclid. The new ROS-powered robot features an iRobot Create 2 mobile base along with a new Intel Euclid sensing and computing module. It's designed to be more powerful and less expensive than the original Turtlebot 2, and promises to be easier to use than ever.  ... " 

For prototype, experimental and teaching purposes.  Connection with iRobot and Intel are interesting.  Note that Intel is doing sensing capabilities,  continuing previous work.

Roomba Maps for Smart Homes

This reminds me of work we did with test Roombas.  We were interested in how they compared with human cleaning process and also usage of possible cleansing liquids, in lab settings.  But I can see how the resulting maps might be used for Smart Home navigation and understanding.  I recently read that the still unreleased Kuri robot automatically builds maps of its home space.  As expected, has this has privacy implications, mentioned at the link.

Your Roomba’s digital map of your house could be for sale     by Eric David in Siliconangle

 Robotic vacuums like the Roomba have made it easy for even the laziest people to keep their floors clean, and now Roomba maker iRobot Corp. has found another use for the little robots: building maps for your smart home devices.

Some of the smarter Roomba models build maps of your home to make their cleaning paths more efficient. Over time, they learn the locations of walls, doorways, lamps, furniture and so on, which eventually allows them to clean your home without bumping into things over and over. The idea behind this mapping system is to reduce the time it take for your Roomba to finish its job, but iRobot Chief Executive Colin Angle says the mapping data is useful for more than just speeding up your vacuum. .... " 

Alexa and Roomba in the Smart Home

We worked with the Roomba concept.  Though I liked the idea, never found it useful enough to add to our smart home .... Will it be more useful enough when voice controlled?

With Alexa integration and mapping, iRobot aims to make Roomba the center of the smart home by Brian Heater

" ... iRobot CEO Colin Angle has been repeating for some time now that the next step in the evolution of the company’s hit Roomba vacuum is becoming a connective tissue for the smart home. This morning’s announcement from the company takes it a couple of steps closer to that dream, introducing Alexa voice integration and advances to the robotic vacuum’s mapping system that lay the groundwork for future smart home upgrades.

“Roombas are already becoming one of the commonly found connected devices in the home,” Angle tells TechCrunch. “The popularity of the Roomba has made it a very powerful ambassador for connected devices, but its ability to organize physical information in the home is making it a central player in allowing homes to be more intelligent. You need to be aware of where things are in order to have a home do the right thing without programming it.” .... " 

Rodney Brooks on AI

Famed robotics innovator,  we linked with for home applications with IRobot,  talks AI and related robotics.

" .... On how far along artificial intelligence actually is:

"I think there's a bunch of scientists and engineers who are not in AI who have misinterpreted AI and I think people in general misinterpret AI...When a person does some performance of some sort, we've got a pretty good model of how that performance generalizes to other things. When a computer does the performance, it may not generalize in the same way. Go back to the '90s, we had Deep Blue beat the world chess champion, [Garry] Kasparov. And now, you can get any number of different programs for a laptop or even your phone which have a higher chess rating than any person in the world in history. But a Chess Grandmaster is pretty good at teaching someone how to play chess better and coaching them. All these programs can do is say, 'best move,' 'not best move;' They don't understand in the same way a person understands. If someone's a Grandmaster, you'd expect them to be able to play tic-tac-toe. Well those chess playing programs can't play tic-tac-toe. They can't play any other game. They don't even know they're playing a game." ... '

Smarter Roomba for the Home

We followed iRobot's work for years, since we were fundamentally interested in how consumers did housework, and if we could participate in that journey.   Could we provide consumables?  Say for the Roomba's Scooba brother?   They were featured in our smart homes and innovation efforts.  That led me to look more closely at 'consumer robotics' worldwide.  Still no major breakthrough in home friendly robot butlers or house cleaners, but at least the Roomba is getting smarter.  But what does that mean?  Will they be able to climb up and do windows or ceilings or dishes anytime soon? Roomba has an App now.  How will it integrate with the Smart Home IOT?

" ... Sure, it's very expensive, but that's par for the course for most new Roombas. What's most intriguing about the Roomba 980 is how it fundamentally changes the way robotic vacuums work. Ideally, all of its sensors means you won't have to run around the house clearing your floors of obstacles, or sweep up any stray dirt that Roomba may have missed. And if it's too rich for your blood, take solace in the fact that it may drive down the price of the brushless Roomba 880, as well as older models ... " 

Future of the Home Robot

In Wired: Colin Angle of iRobot on the future of the Roomba.  Recognizing things and making maps of our world.  Continue to be interested in how robotics will work with us in our day to day lives.    And how an internet of things will connect with them.

Cheap Hack-able Roomba

In Mashable: " ... iRobot builds a vacuum-free Roomba for students to hack ... "     This is a successor to the iRobot Create, which we used to experiment with simple robotic demonstration ideas. This version has no vacuum, so its simpler, cheaper.  Can be hacked for experimentation with algorithms in Python, for which there is a experimenters community.

Scooba Improves its Power for Mopping

Have been long interested in how to create autonomous robotics to do the mundane household tasks.   At least while we wait patiently for humanoid avatar butlers.  Here news that iRobot has improved the floor washing  power of its lesser known floor cleaning robot. The autonomous robotic floor mop now has 3X the power.  In Mashable.