What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...

Did you ever own a any robot vacuum?

Robots without cameras have an extremely difficult time distinguishing obstacles like cables etc on the ground.

Sadly most new models have both camera and lidar. I can see the use of a camera for avoiding things like cables and pet poo, but I don't think it's worth is especially since all the robots are controlled via the cloud

I would reframe this as unable to rather than refused to.

It’s incredibly difficult in a successful business to change direction or even innovate.

There’s a bunch of guys in the engine room throwing coal into the furnace.

There might be one or two lookouts shouting - but they are drowned out by the noise of the engines.

If you’re lucky there’s a guy in the wheelhouse desperately spinning the wheel - but the connection between the wheel and the rudder is broken.

I too have a Roomba with a camera (the 980) and I am mostly satisfied with it (after ten years I guess I got used to its quirks).

I have also recently set-up the LIDAR-equipped 705 for my parents and let me tell you, there is no comparison.

The navigation speed is greatly improved which means cleaning tasks take a lot less time. Furthermore, it works in complete darkness with no problems! The camera-equipped model just bumps into stuff randomly and then gives up when it's too dark.

It’s not exactly easy but it is do-able if you have a compliant vacuum, order a pcb adapter and can boot a laptop into a recent Debian os to flash the firmware. Be careful what you say on the telegram group (I was banned for trying to buy a pcb instead of solder one).

I wish my Xiaomi X20+ was supported. I knew it wasn’t when I bought it, but the price/capability alignment made me go with a dumb "smart" vacuum. There hasn’t been an update in supported robots in almost 2 years, so I’m still holding out hope it will eventually be added when Dennis Giese gets bored and starts looking into stuff again ;)

I wasn’t aware that it was possible on iRobot machines

It's a little too late now, no?

I wonder if they fell into a sunk cost fallacy with their camera-based approach.

> No highres 3d scan of your home being phoned back

You should look at a teardown of one of those sensors. It's a 1D lidar (if you can even call it that, until recently all of those were not ToF but more triangulation/reflection angle) being spun, no high res scans of anything can be achieved using that tech :)