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Comment by denysvitali | Hacker News Reader

If only my Roomba was that smart, I wouldn't probably worry about eavesdropping: right now it can barely clean my floor and lock himself in the bathroom forever.

Jokes aside, which Robot Vacuum Cleaner is equiped with a LIDAR? So far the only ones that I've seen barely have a proximity sensor, fall sensor and IR sensors . It could be that I've only bought and seen the cheapest versions though.

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Roborock are really nice and not that expensive. I've actually been really impressed with just how well it maps the floors. The other day I had to clean some cat fur out of it mid cycle, placed it in a totally different part of the room that wasn't in sight of the dock and it was able to fairly quickly figure out where it was.

I bought an S50 from China and it constantly errors out on carpet. It seems to be a common thing, I guess China doesn't do full carpet like we have in the US so it's something they didn't test for on my version.

The lidar is impressive though. Cleans way faster since it's taking efficient paths.

They don't like some patterns, I suspect that straight dark lines are detected as possible drops

Have one of those and it is really impressive. Automatically detected all rooms, so that i can just tell it to clean a specific one. No matter where i put it, it knows where it is even if i have rearranged some chairs etc.

Ate 2 charging cables tho

To find out its position relative to the map it uses Simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm.

Roborock being xiamoi, I'd be cautious about data collection.

Reason why I got a Roomba was because I trust iRobot more

It is probably better for China to have your data then USA, because they probably don't share (unless you live in China)

The roborock S5 and older models can easily be rooted, and you can install alternative open source firmware [0], newer models still require hardware disassembly in order to flash the firmware, so it's not quite user friendly yet [1]

For newer versions you can however extract the API token from the app, and use it to control the vacuum without internet access and block its external internet access, since the vacuum uses a known protocol. [2]

[0] https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo

[1] https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud/issues/213#issuecomment-...

[2] https://github.com/marcelrv/XiaomiRobotVacuumProtocol

I did this with my S5. It's not the easiest operation, but the nice thing about the device is that a factory reset is an actual factory reset, so you can always start over with factory firmware if you mess up.

I use a Wireguard VPN to access the Vacuum's web UI to control it; it has no internet access at all.

It’s on its own WiFi network for this reason.

Roomba isn’t even a close competitor in terms of cleaning performance, especially for the price.

> which Robot Vacuum Cleaner is equiped with a LIDAR

Neato, all versions.

Love my D7. Really helps with a dog being able to easily clean the house to pickup bits of paw dirt, grass, debris, etc.

Far from perfect, but it makes cleaning the house once a week far easier, as the robot does a 90% or even 95% job every single day.

D5 and cat here. I totally agree.

Some like the deebot even have common household object detection in addition to the lidar and can move around them. Not sure how well it works in practice.

https://www.ecovacs.com/us/deebot-robotic-vacuum-cleaner/DEE...

Here is some overview: https://dontvacuum.me/robotinfo/

This is indeed a very useful page. Thanks!

Wyze just started to promote one.

https://www.geekwire.com/2020/wyze-releasing-199-robot-vacuu...

Looks cool! Do you know by any chance who are they selling the floor map data to?

Xiaomi has been making Lidar vacuums for 4-5 year now.

Shark IQ has a camera. It requires you to have some level of lighting in the house while it runs. Otherwise it can’t do it’s smart navigation

LG Hom-Bots have a camera which looks to the ceiling in order to do SLAM. It's not a lidar, but a good enough spying device.

> which Robot Vacuum Cleaner is equipped with a LIDAR?

I think Tesla made one

Neato had lidar from day one and launched a couple years after the first roomba. then irobot bought them and kinda killed it.

I don't think this is true, Neato is not owned by iRobot

my bad. they were acquired by a german company not irobot. at the same time irobot bought another company that used indoor GPS, Mint. And neato launched a bunch of meaningless model numbers to jack up the price, just like irobot. Mixed it up because of all that (not sure it makes it any better :)

Neato was never acquired by irobot. The current Neato line is actually really good.

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