The new iRobot Roomba is the first to store maps of your home

There is a new Roomba coming. The latest iRobot creation, launched today and delivered on Sept. 12, has two major features that the Bedford-based domestic robotics leader hopes to distinguish in a range of stand-alone vacuums now crowded .

The first is a docking station that automatically empties the moored Roomba into a larger receptacle without any messy cleaning. The second, which adds to the room mapping feature that Roomba models have since 2015, is the ability of the new Roomba i7 + to store cards from inside your home and learn from them over time.

"With the ability to learn, adapt and memorize a home floor plan and the introduction of automatic dirt removal, the iRobot Roomba i7 + is the most advanced robotic vacuum cleaner. never built, "said Colin Angle, President and CEO of iRobot. "This robot responds to the original vision we had when we started building a robot vacuum almost 20 years ago."

Storing local maps locally is likely to raise pirates of privacy advocates. In July of last year, iRobot put a lot of heat after the Reuters CEO announced that iRobot might consider selling map data to companies like Apple, Amazon and Google. A correction was subsequently published by Reuters stating that the map data would only be shared with third parties such as Apple for free and with the customer's consent. Nevertheless, the flashback before the correction highlights the sensitivity of the problem.

Companies such as Apple and Google could use map data to adapt smart home technology to specific environments, such as the composition of a home audio system based on the acoustics of the home. 39, a room.

With a new Roomba coming out, I met Ken Bazydola, iRobot Product Manager at Roomba, for information. He was unequivocal about iRobot's position on the sale of customer mapping data. "The data is private," he said. "We do not sell it, we use data to make robots more efficient, and we look for trends and trends in data usage."

Previous Roomba models with mapping capabilities downloaded encrypted personal data to the cloud, but did not store the cards locally. iRobot uses Amazon Web Services for hosting.

"We had clean cards for a while," Bazydola told me. "When the data is in flight from the robot to the cloud, we have secure keys and the encryption keys are exchanged.In the servers, everything is also encrypted."

By storing the cards locally, the new i7 + is able to learn the contours of a space during a few cleanings in order to clean more efficiently. Bazydola estimates that the new Roomba cleans his house about ten percent faster than previous models.

The other great advantage is that users can now direct the i7 + to clean a specific room via the app that accompanies it. This is an important and impossible function with previous models that erased cards after each run.

It remains to be seen if the new feature exceeds the discomfort inherent in most personal data.

Privacy issues aside, as a technology, the i7 + looks like an impressive evolution of iRobot's proven concept. The Clean Base Home Station uses a built-in vacuum cleaner to draw Roomba's dirt into a larger receptacle. The i7 + is also compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant compatible devices.

All these improvements are at an exorbitant price. The i7 + with optional cleaning base is available for a pre-order price of $ 949. Without the cleaning base, the i7 will cost you $ 699. A subsequent upgrade to the base will cost you $ 299.