iRobot CEO says the company won't share your Roomba home mapping data without your OK

Colin Angle, iRobot CEO and the father of modern robot vacuums, may have some cleaning up of his own to do.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Angle indicated iRobot might want to sell home mapping data collected by its Roomba robot vacuums to third party smart home product companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon in the future.

Angle said the Virtual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (VSLAM) data its popular Roomba vacuum uses to learn the dimensions and layout of your rooms and home could someday be used by other smart home devices to improve their intelligence and performance.

"There's an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared," Angle told Reuters.

Early Roombas used bump and wheel sensors to find walls and furniture and IR beacons that blocked the little round robot from wandering out of a room. In 2012, however, iRobot purchased robot vacuum competitors Evolution Robotics and soon started adding the more sophisticated VSLAM system to its top-of-the-line Roombas ($699 and up). Roomba competitor Dyson 360 Eye robot vacuum uses a similar location mapping technology.

In the interview, Angle told Reuters that he could make a deal to start sharing, through partnerships, the collected home mapping data to a company like Amazon, Google, or Apple within a couple of years.

Privacy watchdog groups are already taking Angle to task for these plans.

However, there's no indication that mapping data ever leaves the Roomba or its connected mobile devices (most Roombas work with your smartphone when connected over a standard Wi-Fi network or the Internet).

That said, there are a raft of open questions revolving around this home mapping data strategy, some of which Angle answered in an email exchange with Mashable. It has been edited for clarity.

Mashable: I read the Reuters interview you gave regarding selling home mapping info and wanted to get some clarity on a few points.

Colin Angle: iRobot takes privacy and security of its customers very seriously. We will always ask your permission to even store map data. Right now, iRobot is building maps to enable the Roomba to efficiently and effectively clean your home. In the future, with your permission, this information will enable the smart home and the devices within it to work better.

The VSLAM data that Roomba currently captures, is it being sent back to the connected mobile device? Also, does it currently head over to your cloud?

The VSLAM data the Roomba currently captures stays on the robot. Some usage data (how long did it clean, how far did it go, did it encounter any error codes, is it functioning correctly) is sent to the cloud so it can be shown on your mobile device. The Roomba does not send images used for navigation to the cloud. If you click accept on having your map data viewable on your mobile device, then that data is also sent up.

I assume that the data you capture only covers rooms you clean with the Roomba. Is there any plan to extend that capture using the vacuum in a sort of roam mode?

The data we capture only covers the rooms we clean.

Are you looking to actually sell that data en masse, or open a location API that other smart devices can tap into so they can use your VSLAM data on a per-home basis?

We have not formed any plans to sell the data. We do hope to extract value from the information, but would only do so with the permission of our customers. For example, if you wanted your home to understand which connected lights were where in which rooms so your Alexa would work better, your Roomba would be able to provide that if you're opted in. It is still unclear what, if any, actual “partnership” with, in my example Amazon, would be needed to make that happen. It could just be another reason to own a Roomba rather than a competitive product.

Have you actually had any conversations with Apple, Google, or Amazon regarding this data? I know you thought a deal could happen in the next 2 years, but that's a pretty long timeline.

We talk with many companies about their visions of the smart home and how we can work together. We are already linked to both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, so you can turn on your Roombas with voice commands. Getting that done required conversations. This is a dynamic space and I can’t really say more than that.

Can you give me an example of how other smart home gadgets, like Alexa or Nest Cam, might use this data?

As we live our lives at home, we often use the concept of rooms as an organizing concept. Rooms have lighting, TVs, stereos, heating, blinds, and other appliances. When we think about “what is supposed to happen” when I enter a room, everything depends on the room at a foundational level knowing what is in it. In order to “do the right thing” when you say, “turn on the lights,” the room must know what lights it has to turn on. Same thing for music, TV, heat, blinds, stove, coffee machine, fan, gaming console, smart picture frames, or robot pet. Understanding spatial context is the required foundation for the true smart home.

As I recall, your cheaper home cleaning devices do not use VSLAM. So what percentage of iRobot customers actually have products collecting this home mapping data?

The only statistics we have publicly released is that by the end of this year, we will have shipped over 2 million connected products. You are right that not all of them make maps, but with the launch of the [Roomba] 960, we have multiple models capable of mapping on the market today.