Amazon bought iRobot to see inside your home
theverge.com
theverge.com
My guess is this acquisition speeds up the development of Amazon’s internal Consumer Robotics line targeting the elderly. Their “Astro” robot has a lot of trouble navigating the home.
CNET: "This speaks to how impressive Astro's navigation really is. It moves around the house quickly and efficiently, adjusting to changes in the environment, like shoes left by the front door or doors along one route left closed. And the longer it stays in your house, the better it becomes at navigating."
https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/amazon-astro-review/
The Verge: "In the four weeks I tested the Astro in my home, it never backed into a table, tripped on a rug, or mowed down a chair. Contrary to early reports, it never threw itself down the stairs. It did roll right over pet poop (fake) but as most of the bot doesn’t touch the floor this wasn’t the same issue it is with a robot vacuum. Basically, its array of navigation and obstacle sensors seem to disregard anything under a couple of inches high. The Astro is also really fast, able to zip around the house at a top speed of a little over 2mph (1 meter per second), much faster than any robot vac can manage."
https://www.theverge.com/23141966/amazon-astro-robot-review
The notion that Astro has poor navigation came from a VICE article with "leaked" information that turned out to be false.
What’s the concern? We are going to see more and more things like this in the coming years. A lot of this can be helpful to us, a lot helpful for the companies sometimes more than us, but does it really hurt us that much?
It’s not like there is someone at amazon monitoring everything you do like they are watching big brother staring you, is just some data sent to the cloud with an algorithm that does something about that. I think people are just a little jumpy about it.
What we do need is some transparency about what data is being sent, it would be good if there were laws and we were able to see exactly what it had collected and what they had done with it, then i am okay with it.
Until the government takes an interest in you. Or until your ex-spouse with a grudge gets a job at Amazon. Or until…
I always thought any data collected went through the phone, not the device itself.
The definition of a robot, for me, is a combination of hardware and software that allows the software to interact with the 3d world we inhabit, even if in some small way.
Keeping with the analogy, I say Amazon bought irobot to touch inside our homes.