very interesting
As someone who now has 11 robot vacuums, I definitely have some thoughts on this. As far as companies spying on you, this is probably similar to a smart phone, for certain conveniences, you give up some privacy, and of course that is each person's choice.
It will be interesting to see what products Irobot introduces if this sale happens. Irobot may have been the first company to introduce an affordable robot vacuum, but they have really fallen behind compared to companies such as Roborock and Ecovacs. Roomba's navigation is not as good as some other brands because they use a technology called VSLAM that uses a camera to create a map of your house. This has several disadvantages, the robot must go through a few cleaning cycles to create the map and it doesn't work in the dark. The other technology that robot vacuums use to create a map is called LIDAR which uses lasers to create the map, this is what Roborock, Ecovacs and several other companies use, and it's better for several reasons. First, it only takes one cleaning run to create the map and some robots have a quick map feature where the robot will just drive around without cleaning to create the map. It also works whether it's light or dark. Another area where Roomba is falling behind is battery life. Their top of the line robot only uses a 2300 MAH battery where as other brands such as Roborock and Ecovacs are using 5200 MAH batteries in their flag ship robots. The Roomba S9 is a very powerful robot but the other robots in Roomba's line up have a very small vacuum motor compared to other brands. If the Roomba is going to remain competitive Irobot will have to change some or all of these things, companies such as Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreametech and Eufy have gotten far ahead of them.
Mike
