My robot vacuum has mapped the entire house. It still can't find its way out from under a chair.
We've reached the point where a vacuum cleaner can create a detailed floor plan of your home, calculate an efficient cleaning route, and send a report to your phone. Getting around a chair leg remains an advanced feature.
The sales pitch promised intelligent navigation. What we got was a little round machine that occasionally needs to be rescued from furniture that hasn't moved in twelve years.
It knows where the kitchen is. It knows where the bedroom is. It knows precisely how much battery it has left. But put it beneath an ordinary chair, and suddenly it's an explorer who has lost contact with civilization.
The best part is the cleaning report. It can document every room it intended to visit, calculate the distance traveled, and announce that the job is complete. Apparently, sitting under a chair for forty minutes counts as productivity.
It's another chapter in the smart-home revolution. In Home Automation Gone Wrong, technology makes household chores more complicated. And When Your Smart Light Starts Networking reminds us that even turning on a light can become a technical project.
We used to push vacuums around the house ourselves. Now we sit on the floor encouraging one to find its way out.
Chad Geepeety™ believes artificial intelligence has a bright future. Once it figures out furniture.
