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Comment by fhub | Hacker News Reader

Roborock seems to be eating iRobot's lunch. Which I find fascinating as the now ex-CEO of iRobot is was so cocky about avoiding using lasers (LIDAR) for navigation and sticking to cameras only (which had a real privacy issue). See this interview with Lex Fridman https://youtu.be/1d9Dj9dT_pw?si=j8CbM7GgRMm6Mu0m&t=1362. Lex pushes him on LIDAR and he doubles down on camera only. "Vision is the future, I can say that without reservation"

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What kind of safety concerns are there around the use of lasers around pets/children? I don't think members of either of those groups understand the "Don't look into laser with remaining eye" stickers.

The LIDAR units used by these robot vacuums aren't powerful enough to damage cat/children's eyes. I trust that they wouldn't be on the market if they were.

I don't trust any corporation in any matter: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/3m-says-earplug-litigation...

Do you eat any food made by corporations? Or grown by any corporations?

Both lasers and food are regulated in the USA by the FDA AFAIK.

Your blind faith in "just because a product is available means it is safe" makes me wonder if you're familiar with the concept of a recall. Across all industries, companies have done something to the point that it is in the public's interest to remove that item from the market. There are so so many e.coli cases, listeria cases haunting the ice cream maker of my childhood to the point i never buy their brand now, and so many other food products that have been recalled for various reasons. I kind of wished I lived in your world that exists in your mind.

I'm replying to the comment "I don't trust any corporation in any matter". But that is hard to do in practice. It would just take too much time for an individual to test every food they ever eat. Likewise I'm not going to take apart every product that is CE or CL certified to make sure it meets standards that I'm not even educated on.

I don't have blind faith, I have some faith that trusting the certification processes in most matters is more cost effective for me than to verify everything myself. Especially for lasers that have strictly defined classes based on power output. That sort of trust does take on some risk. But I'm content with that level of risk. Things seem much safer now than they did when I was a kid.

Yes, because no decision made by any gov't body has ever "missed" something. In fact, recalls happen only because of the existence of these bodies. The FAA allowed Boeing to make the MAX series of planes. The CE and CL have certified products that have later been recalled. These agencies aren't perfect. The FDA has allowed things like Olestra. There are plenty of other examples.

What's the difference between trusting any corp and trusting any agency? I'd say anyone trusting any corp/agency without any doubt would be somewhat delusional.

I think I understand what you are trying to say. You are saying that me saying

"The LIDAR units used by these robot vacuums aren't powerful enough to damage cat/children's eyes. I trust that they wouldn't be on the market if they were."

Equates to me trusting every corporation on every safety issue AND that I trust the certifications to be perfect AND I trust nothing ever gets missed. But all three of these is clearly (to me the author) not what I'm saying there.

"The LIDAR units used by these robot vacuums aren't powerful enough to damage cat/children's eyes. I trust that they wouldn't be on the market if they were."

My elaboration on this is that I trust that those lasers are of low enough power to not damage cat/children's eyes because consumer grade lasers are one of those things that I believe to be well regulated and certified before going on the market. I also happen to think that competitors would be tearing these things down at launch and if they found they were out of compliance they'd be very vocal about it.

Then I go onto say "Do you eat any food made by corporations? Or grown by any corporations? Both lasers and food are regulated in the USA by the FDA AFAIK." specifically to someone saying "I don't trust any corporation on any matter". I just find that to be a hard position to take in any practical sense. Society only functions with some level of trust between supplier or consumer.

your trust that things would not be on the market just seems very rose tinted glasses to me, but maybe my hesitancy in agreeing is slightly misplaced. rather than the blind trust, maybe it would be the "shocked to find out" something slipped past the regulations. we see this happen all the time. for me, the trust isn't there. i'm honestly shocked at this point that i don't get sick from mass produced food, or hurt by any other product. i just let the other animals in the herd go first more than trusting the regulators

EDIT: here's a headline from just within the past hour recalling 50,000 cars with a "DO NOT DRIVE" warning[0]. that's from a very heavily regulated industry. these types of things are precisely why "trust" is not really warranted on my part. it's more of just blind acceptance, not trust.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota...

I hope you realize you are born, fed, sheltered, and survive because of corporations. Corporations's goals can easily align with the well being of yourself. Trust is one part of many stats a company has to maintain like an RPG character, and it doesn't come for free.

Like in any RPG, you can take hits to that trust and lower its score. It takes several rounds to slowly let that score build up. So, what's your point exactly?

The point is if the company RPG character is to survive itself the trust stat must be at a certain level which means statistically there's a level trust you can have in most companies otherwise they would all be dead because everyone would be DIYing everything and "efficiency of scale" or "efficiency of markets" wouldn't be a thing :)

I think we all agree it's not that simple. But ycombinator comments isn't the greatest place to debate this kind of thing either, so I apologize. I get your side too, and unfortunately I dont think either of us has the time to unravel everything lol x)

Have a great day!

Current roborocks are mostly vision plus some lidar for some precision

They have a mix of models. Some with cameras and some without. The naming scheme is a bit inconsistent but generally the models with V have camera(s)

> so cocky about avoiding using lasers (LIDAR) for navigation and sticking to cameras only

That reminds me of a certain businessman that also owns an EV company...

bro heard about Tesla and said we are the Tesla of robovacuums lol

In the clip linked, just after the time-point linked to, Lex asks him about autonomous vehicles and LIDAR vs Cameras only. He goes on to say his robots have a harder environment to navigate than cars. Take that as you will.

Taking this with a lot of salt, at least cars are expected in decently defined pathways. Interpreting the activity around the roadways is definitely complicated, but the number of possible paths to take is fairly well defined. It doesn't have to find the walls that restrict it's path. I can see a bit of validity to his thought process. The obvious bit of overlooking the fact the robot doesn't have the ability to kill people does make it look silly

His argument is that a t-shirt can be on the floor and there are stairs etc. But a truck could drop anything on the road, any sort of animal could cross the roads, sink holes could form in roads etc. I feel he is conflating what is often a problem for his robots with what is often a problem for autonomous vehicles. Rather than what each of them must be able to handle irrespecive of how often they happen. Then there is weather etc etc.

If the environment is difficult to navigate, then it sounds like your robots should have lidar on them.

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