Latest news with #Roombas
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Yes, photos taken by Roomba robot vacuums made their way online in 2020
Claim: In 2020, photos of people inside their homes taken by Roomba robot vacuums appeared on social media. Rating: Context: The Roombas in question were not commercially available — they were development robots given to testers. However, several researchers have uncovered privacy issues with robot vacuums produced by several different manufacturers. In December 2022, MIT Technology Review published an article, titled, "A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?" The article explained exactly what its headline stated — that in 2020, photos taken by Roomba robot vacuums, some of which could be viewed as potentially compromising, made their way onto Facebook. A viral video posted to Facebook in May 2025 re-upped interest in the story, and Snopes readers searched the site wondering if it was true. It was. The story was published in a highly trusted magazine, cited several security experts, and included a comment from iRobot, the manufacturer of the Roomba, confirming that the images found online were taken on Roomba robots in 2020. Snopes reached out to iRobot for comment on the story. A spokesperson directed us to the MIT Technology Review article. According to a statement from iRobot in the article, the photos in question were not taken by commercially available Roombas, however. Instead, they were from "special development robots with hardware and software modifications that are not and never were present on iRobot consumer products for purchase"; owned by "paid collectors and employees," who the company said signed agreements acknowledging that the robots would be capturing photos and videos for training; and that featured a "bright green sticker that read 'video recording in progress.'" According to the story, the vacuums took pictures of their surroundings for the purpose of training artificial intelligence models. In order for a robot to understand what it's looking at, however, a human first needs to tell the robot what various objects are. iRobot outsourced that work to a company called ScaleAI, which contracts workers around the world to look at a photo and label what's in it, according to the article. That's how workers from Venezuela got their hands on the photos and how they made their way onto social media. MIT Technology Review wrote that iRobot did not allow them to see the consent forms, and the company did not allow reporters to speak with any of the employees or paid collectors. In a follow-up story, however, several individuals who tested the special robots told MIT Technology Review they felt misled by the consent agreement they signed and were concerned about how iRobot used their data. It is important to note that in this case, the robots were not commercially available, and whether or not iRobot breached its data privacy agreement, the robots were labeled as being able to take photo and video. IRobot's privacy policy contains the following section on how it uses data from Roombas: Some of our devices are equipped with "smart technology" that can wirelessly send us data. These devices include, but are not limited to: If you have one of these devices, we may collect information about your: This data is stored in a deidentified state (separated from identifiable information). But because most robot vacuums connect to Wi-Fi, have cameras (and some have speakers and/or microphones), there are several valid security concerns about robot vacuums — give experienced hackers enough time and they'll probably find a way to get into a system. In 2020, for instance, researchers at the University of Maryland were able to record audio using a "laser-based navigation system" that vacuum robots use to determine where objects are. More recently, Dennis Giese, an independent researcher who tears down and hacks robot vacuums in his spare time, helped the Australian Broadcasting Corporation hack into an Ecovacs Deebot X2 in 2024 — earlier that year, according to a separate ABC article, several Ecovacs robots were hacked in cities across America, and shouted racial slurs at their owners. - YouTube. Accessed 9 May 2025. "A Roomba Recorded a Woman on the Toilet. How Did Screenshots End up on Facebook?" MIT Technology Review, Accessed 9 May 2025. "Could Your Vacuum Be Listening to You?" Maryland Today, 18 Nov. 2020, Dennis's Homepage. Accessed 9 May 2025. Giese, Dennis. Vacuum Robot Security and Privacy. 2023. "Hackers Take Control of Robot Vacuums in Multiple US Cities and Abuse Owners." ABC News, 10 Oct. 2024. Pringle, Eleanor. "A Roomba Photographed a Woman on the Toilet and It Ended up on Social Media." Fortune, Accessed 9 May 2025. Privacy Policy | iRobot. Accessed 9 May 2025. "Roomba Testers Feel Misled after Intimate Images Ended up on Facebook." MIT Technology Review, Accessed 9 May 2025. "The World's Largest Home Robotics Company Has a Problem – Its Vacuum Cleaners Can Be Hacked from Afar." ABC News, 3 Oct. 2024.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Robot vacuums are ‘too idle' and can be reprogrammed to water plants, researchers say
Robot vacuums can be modified to complete simple household tasks like watering plants, researchers have revealed. A team of computer scientists from the University of Bath reprogrammed a Roomba to perform four new tasks in an effort to maximise its utility during idle hours. New functions include charging phones, providing live feed of pets, projecting displays onto walls, and deterring disturbances. The researchers identified more than 100 tasks that the robot vacuum could perform with some relatively simple modifications, such as playing with cats with a fitted laser pen, or carrying groceries from the car to the house. 'Mobile domestic robots, like robot vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers, are perceived as limited, single-task devices but there is a strong argument that they are under-used for practical tasks. For most of the day, they sit idle,' said Yoshiaki Shiokawa, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath, who came up with the modifications. 'We should be extending their utility beyond their primary tasks by programming them to physically navigate the home to perform a range of additional functions. Just think how much more efficiently households would run if Roombas could be converted into household assistants.' Mr Shiokawa noted that robot vacuum cleaners currently only clean for just one hour and 47 minutes each day on average, leaving a huge amount of untapped potential. Other applications proposed by the researchers include searching for lost items, receiving and delivering packages, and 'playing a card game'. Similar functionalities could also be added to other domestic robots, such as robotic lawnmowers. 'Idle time presents unique opportunities for value-adding interactions and it aligns with the growing need for adaptable robots and integrated systems that can seamlessly fit into our daily lives,' said Dr Adwait Sharma, a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Bath. 'A robot vacuum could, for instance, use its idle time to monitor home security, water the plants or assist an older person to stand from a sitting position. These tasks tap into the robot's advanced sensors, as well as its mobility.' The scientists detailed the revamped robot in a new paper titled 'Beyond vacuuming: How can we exploit domestic robots' idle time?' The study was presented at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, taking place in Yokohama, Japan, this week. Sign in to access your portfolio
CNN
31-03-2025
- Business
- CNN
The maker of Roomba has ‘substantial doubt' about surviving
Roomba's parent company is warning that its future is on shaky ground, more than a year after a planned $1.7 billion acquisition by Amazon fell through. iRobot (IRBT), a maker of robotic vacuum cleaners, has 'substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue,' it revealed in its quarterly earnings report Wednesday. The stark warning torpedoed the company's stock 30% lower in premarket trading. The Massachusetts-based company also said its board is exploring a 'strategic review of alternatives for the business' that could portend a sale and refinancing of its mounting debt. The news comes about 14 months after Amazon abandoned plans to buy the company because of concerns from European Union's regulators, who threatened to block the deal. Soon afterward, iRobot founder Colin Angle departed the company, its stock cratered and the company laid off about half of its employees. iRobot has been working to turn things around. This week the company released eight new Roombas, marking the largest product launch in the company's 30-year history. iRobot hopes the new products will help boost its revenue, which plunged 44% in the fourth quarter compared to a year earlier. However, the company warned Wednesday that there's 'no assurance' the new products 'will be successful due to potential factors, including, but not limited to, consumer demand, competition, macroeconomic conditions, and tariff policies.' CEO Gary Cohen, however, remains optimistic. In the earnings release he said 'this strong pipeline of breakthrough new products' should improve profit margins compared to earlier product lines and 'should begin to support year-over-year revenue growth in 2025.'
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Yahoo
7 of my favorite upgrades in the all-new Roomba robovacs – plus 2 I'm worried about
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. It's a big day for iRobot. The brand behind what used to be the best robot vacuums in the business has scrapped almost its entire fleet of Roombas and replaced it with five brand new bots. The new lineup introduces some fairly major upgrades that should hopefully once again make iRobot the formidable player it once was in the robot vacuum world. Here's a rundown of the features I'm most excited about in the new Roomba range, plus a couple of developments I'm less sold on. It's taken iRobot far too long to get on board with LiDAR, but better late than never. LiDAR is basically the industry standard form of robot vacuum navigation, and generally agreed to be far better than the older SLAM method found in iRobot's old bots. Its introduction means the new Roombas should offer faster, more reliable navigation and mapping. There are more practical benefits too – it means the robot can navigate in the dark, for instance, rather than requiring a light source. (Head to our LiDAR vs VSLAM article for more on how the two technologies compare.) In line with the upgraded aesthetic, none of the new combination robots feature the retracting mop pad that until now had been iRobot's calling card. In its place on the 'Plus' models (the 405 and 505) are two rotating disc-shaped pads – the approach favored by much of the market now, and the one that has generally proven more efficient at cleaning in our reviews. One can even kick out to one side to offer more efficient edge mopping – a feature included in some premium competitor models. The mop pads can lift up to 1cm to traverse over rugs or carpet, and the retracting static pad is still present on the Combo 10 Max for those who are still concerned about damp carpets. Note that this improved mopping setup isn't present on the basic Roombas (the 105 and 205), which simply have a static, D-shaped mop pad. They do, however, come with automatic carpet detection, which means they shouldn't try and mop your rugs. It's less of an essential, I guess, but I'm also a big fan of how the new lineup looks. Robot vacuums in general are quite generic looking these days, and iRobot has recognized that perhaps shiny black or white plastic isn't everyone's aesthetic of choice. The new bots have a design the brand has dubbed 'GRID' – Geometric, Rational, Iconic and Dynamic. That might be overselling it a bit, but I do think the mix of matte and shiny finishes looks friendlier and more likely to fit in with softer home decor than your average bot. I also appreciate that iRobot has gone out of its way to create a look that's distinctive to the brand – in that way, it's a step ahead of the competition. For some people, 'dust management' might not seem especially exciting. Well, I write about vacuum cleaners as a big chunk of my job, and I suffer from a dust allergy, so I guess I'm more invested than most. There are a couple of interesting developments here. The first is that the dust bag in the auto-empty dock can automatically seal itself when it's full – great news for allergy sufferers, because there's now basically zero opportunity for the allergens to sneak their way back out into the air once they've been sucked up. The second is that one of the bots – the Roomba 205 DustCompactor Combo – is designed to compress the dust in its onboard bin. That means it can hold far more debris than usual, without the need for a bulky dock. For people with small homes and no space for a massive auto-empty dock, it looks very interesting indeed. I didn't have huge complaints about iRobot's original app, but the brand has rebooted it to go with its shiny new bots, and the new-and-improved one looks even better. You can set custom cleaning routines, get estimates for how long the current task will take to clean, and access insights into the rooms that need most attention. Because we've now got LiDAR, it's also possible to watch your bot as it goes about its cleaning routine, rather than having to guess where it is and what it's up to. This one is small, but significant for the customer experience: iRobot will hopefully once again share the maximum suction power of each model, in Pascals. This is something the brand stopped doing a while ago, claiming it's not the be-all-and-end-all, and that things like the roller design play a huge part in how well a robot cleans. While they're not wrong there, it's still a very useful guide to how sucky a bot might be, and without suction specs it was difficult to make sense of the Roomba range, and even trickier to place its models within the wider market. I say 'hopefully', because while this was part of my initial briefing, the marketing materials I've received since don't have suction specs. Instead, they say things like "70X more suction" (that's compared to the Roomba 600 series, which launched over a decade ago). Sigh. Based on my initial notes, the new models have 7,000Pa of suction. That's not quite up there with the competition, but still a decent amount for the prices iRobot is charging. Combined with an efficient design (we've always been fans of iRobot's dual rollers), may well be plenty to provide a good maintenance clean for the average household. Another overdue upgrade, in terms of customer-friendliness, is that iRobot has rethought its naming conventions. The new fleet is separated into Roomba, Roomba Plus, and Roomba Max models, following a good > better > best setup so you might actually have an idea how the lineup compares. There might be some confusion with those who remember that in the old system, 'Plus' meant there was an auto-empty dock, whereas here it does not mean that. Overall, though, I far prefer this to the mess of j-something, i-somethings – hold on, is that an i or a j anyway? – that preceded it. The LiDAR here is called 'ClearView' and appears across all models. Interestingly, iRobot has removed the raised puck on the 205 DustCompactor Combo, to give a more streamlined design. This model uses the same LiDAR technology, but it's shifted into the front of the robot. The issue is, the puck is there for a purpose; to enable the bot to 'see' all around, and navigate accurately. Shifting the LiDAR tech into the front of the robovac means a far narrower field of view. Other brands are also experimenting with removing the puck, but all those I've come across have introduced new technology to compensate for that more limited field of view. For instance, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete and Roborock Saros 10 (reviews incoming) have a puck that can retract into the body of the robot when it approaches an area of limited height, but will pop back up when space allows. The Roborock Qrevo Slim and Saros 10R do away with a puck entirely, but for this the brand has engineered a whole new navigation method entirely, called StarSight, to ensure navigation isn't compromised. I'm no engineer, but surely they wouldn't be going to all that trouble if you could just chop the puck off with no impact. The iRobot spokesperson I chatted with assured me there would be no compromise in navigation accuracy – they told me they were testing two bots, one with the puck and one without, and they were both behaving the same way. I'll be really interested to test this out and see for myself. My other slight misgiving is that the current 'Max' segment consists only of the Combo 10 Max. It only launched in July 2024, so perhaps iRobot felt it was too soon to scrap it. However, as what should be the shining star of the Roomba fleet, it's underwhelming. It was generally not well received – we awarded it a less-than-ideal 3 stars in our Roomba Combo 10 Max review, with our tester complaining of painfully slow mapping (no LiDAR here) and sub-standard mop cleaning. Both of these aspects have been improved on in the new Plus models, which look far more promising to me. Overall, though, it's promising news from iRobot, and I appreciate that the brand has been bold enough to accept that what it was doing wasn't working, and go for a big reboot. I'm excited to get these new models into my flat and test the new features out for myself. 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Globe and Mail
12-03-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT) Sounds Alarm Over Status as Going Concern
It was not so long ago that household robot maker iRobot (IRBT), the people who brought us the Roomba, was on top of the world. A potential buyout target from Amazon (AMZN), the leader in autonomous cleaning robots, and more made iRobot a household name. But times have changed, and now, iRobot is warning that it may not be a 'going concern' much longer. Shares cratered, down nearly 34% in Wednesday afternoon's trading. Light Up your Portfolio with Spark: Easily identify stocks' risks and opportunities. Discover stocks' market position with detailed competitor analyses. In order to address this very serious problem that could ultimately take iRobot out of the market, it has begun a 'strategic review' of its operations. After posting fourth quarter earnings that featured not only revenue that was lower than expected, but also a bigger overall loss than expected, it became clear that iRobot was going to have a tough time just paying its bills. It was expecting to grow its sales as it rolled out new products, but even iRobot seems to doubt just how far that will go. A recent filing noted: 'Given these uncertainties and the implication they may have on the company's financials, there is substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least 12 months.' How About More New Products? Even as iRobot faces concern about whether or not it can remain a concern, it is still trying, to the last, to win the market over with new products. In fact, it just rolled out fully eight new models, including one that offers—for an automated housecleaning robot, anyway—a major new feature: a dust compactor. Reports note that the new Roombas will all offer better suction, improved navigation, and even bagless options for storing all the dust they pick up off the floor. But these new models will not come without some drawbacks: the Combo Essential model is out the door, replaced with the Roomba 105 and 205. The I and J series Roombas, meanwhile, will be thrown over for the Roomba Plus 405 and 505. Roombas will run between $299 and $899, reports note. Is iRobot a Good Stock to Buy? Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on IRBT stock based on one Buy assigned in the past three months from Needham analyst James Ricchiuti, as indicated by the graphic below. Despite a 57% loss in its share price over the past year, Ricchiuti has no price target on the stock. See more IRBT analyst ratings Disclosure Questions or Comments about the article? Write to editor@
