A few years ago, there was a story involving a Roomba that went viral. Basically the robot vacuum cleaner was left to its own devices while the owner was out, but unfortunately during the cleaning process, it accidentally went over some dog poop and proceeded to smear the entire house in it.If that was kind of made you wary of robot vacuum cleaners, don’t, because iRobot has since announced its latest robot vacuum cleaner, the Roomba j7+. This new Roomba utilizes AI and machine learning where it is now smart enough to recognize animal waste so that instead of running over it, it can simply avoid it (cleaning it up for us would be even better, but hey).
Speaking to The Verge, iRobot founder and CEO Colin Angle said, “Robotics is supposed to be glamorous, but I don’t know how many Play-Doh models of poo we created. Many, many thousands. Our competition are starting to claim that they do this, too, but it’s more like [they do it] at CES with the right lighting,” he says. “We felt the need to really put a line in the sand and say, this is real, it’s not a gimmick. If you have a pet we’re not going to let you down here.”
It is kind of funny the effort iRobot has gone through to prevent this mistake from happening again, but it’s one we’re sure pet owners can probably appreciate. In addition to recognizing poop, the j7+ can also recognize other obstacles that it might otherwise run over, like socks, shoes, headphones, and more. It will also prompt the user as to whether not this is a temporary or permanent fixture.
The new Roomba j7+ is priced at $849 and comes with a base station that can hold 60 days worth of dirt. More info can be found on Roomba’s website.
Filed in . Read more about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Irobot. Source: theverge