Hacker News Reader

Comment by distances | Hacker News Reader

Another upside of LIDAR is that it isn't a camera. The robot sees a one-pixel 360 scan, which is quite enough for navigation, but doesn't have the privacy implications that come with an IoT camera device. I would not take a camera equipped vacuum even for free, and I think I'm not the only one.

View on HN

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.

Yes, I've had an early random pattern robovac and a newer LIDAR equipped one. Both worked well enough, the LIDAR device obviously much better though.

And yes, I keep the floors free of cables and clutter when it's vacuuming time. That isn't a hassle

I have one, and specifically got one without a camera because I don't want that driving around my house. The first time it went through I made sure to stow cables and such, and I do a quick walk-through to make sure that none of the cats have barfed and that there's no obvious obstacles before I release the hypnodrone.

It still saves me time, which was the reason that I bought it in the first place.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com