Dear Roomba, the smartphone app "iRobot HOME" is getting more and more convenient
Nowadays, it's not uncommon for robot vacuum cleaners to be compatible with smartphones. It is a function that allows you to connect a robot vacuum cleaner and a smartphone via a wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) and link it with an application to remotely control it. Here, I would like to introduce what I found useful about the iRobot robot vacuum cleaner "Rumba" and the smartphone app "iRobot HOME".
First, let's look back at the history of robot vacuum cleaners and smartphone cooperation.
The first robot vacuum cleaner compatible with smartphones is Dyson's "360Eye" released in October 2015. By connecting with the "Dyson Link" app, it was possible to perform remote control, schedule setting, and check the map of the cleaned area.
This is my honest impression at the time, but I personally didn't find the cooperation between the robot vacuum cleaner and the smartphone that appealing. This is because remote control can be done using a physical remote control, and I didn't really feel the need to replace that function with a smartphone.
It is certainly convenient to be able to instruct the operation/stop via Wi-Fi from outside, but setting a schedule is enough. At that time, I felt that functions that must be a smartphone and functions that cannot be realized have not yet been proposed. The function to display the cleaning history on a map was also a vague map, so it was not very clear to amateurs.
After that, iRobot's top model "Rumba 980", which was released at about the same time as Dyson's 360Eye (October 2015), also has a wireless LAN and supports smartphone linkage. Equipped with "SLAM (*)" technology, which the CEO of iRobot was not enthusiastic about until a while ago, it has achieved the biggest evolution in the history of the Roomba. I remember people in the industry, myself included, being surprised by this.
SLAM : Short for "Simultaneous Localization and Mapping". A function that uses various sensors installed in the robot vacuum cleaner to determine its own position in a moving room and automatically creates a map that includes obstacles in the room. It is a term used in various fields, not limited to robot vacuum cleaners.
By the way, Dyson's 360Eye was announced in September 2014. At that time, it was clear that the new product would be equipped with SLAM and linked with a smartphone app via wireless LAN. Apparently, this is the point where the robot vacuum trend changed. Even iRobot, which prides itself on being the originator of robot vacuum cleaners, must have reconsidered the direction of its evolution.