Ok so I used to work for iRobot, the OG robot vacuum maker.
Robot vacuums used to vacuum randomly. To make them vacuum systematically, they need to map your house. One cheap way to do that is to use a camera roughly pointing at your ceiling and do Video SLAM. The camera identifies features on your ceiling and how they are changing to know where the robot is and map the room.
I guess ecovac thought they could add a camera feed feature for free since they already had a camera on the robot.
Am I the only one confused by why a vacume needs a live video feed? Who’s sitting there thinking “I want to watch what my vacume sees!”
Ok so I used to work for iRobot, the OG robot vacuum maker. Robot vacuums used to vacuum randomly. To make them vacuum systematically, they need to map your house. One cheap way to do that is to use a camera roughly pointing at your ceiling and do Video SLAM. The camera identifies features on your ceiling and how they are changing to know where the robot is and map the room.
I guess ecovac thought they could add a camera feed feature for free since they already had a camera on the robot.
Huh, I thought they were “dog poop sensors”
Probably to map the room and avoid obstacles like Chairs and pets. Low res cameras are probably the cheapest option for hardware.