Our household (and I suspect many with us) bought a Roomba specifically to not give the Chinese government a roving camera in our home. Ouch!

I don't think there are tens of millions still in use.

Unless you design your house and buy your furnitures taking these roomba into account, they get stuck nearly every where or at the first sock left on the ground by someone in your household. They have a number of wearable most owner will not even want to replace and will start being inefficient rather quickly. Add to that some battery wear and I don't think there is a lot of +5y old devices in the wild.

I and most people I know went back to regular vacuum cleaners. The thing is, those robots really don't solve a real problem as vacuuming and mopping are the easiest and quickest job when it comes to cleaning the house. Dusting all the furnitures + objects on top of them and cleaning the bathroom and toilets correctly are both much more time consuming and annoying jobs.

I disconnected my Roomba from the network right after programming its schedule. It still works great, following the same schedule for 7 years.

I recently bought a cheap Chinese roomba clone. It comes with a remote control so you don't need to connect it to the internet. I do have to press a button to start it but it works great.

If you care about your privacy, choose products appropriately and/or take 5 minutes to protect yourself. Most people don't seem to care, which is their choice.

I worry a lot about privacy in general but its hard for me to figure out the danger posed by my roborock. I suppose it has the floor plans of my house and knows we vacuum on Saturdays. It doesn't seem to know if the object passing by is me or my cat.

Yes its on my wifi but so are half a dozen other foreign made gadgets.

What is the concern?

Nope, not all of them are connected to the internet and not all of them have cameras.

US-designed iPhones have at least 2 cameras, some microphones, and biometric sensors. From this point, everyone outside the US should stop using iPhones to prevent surveillance from the American empire.

From another angle, the iPhones are primarily made in China AND India via third-party factories, so no one should ever use iPhones any more.

You have the right to concern about privacy, but that's not how it works.

Definitely not all live and functioning. In fact I suspect less than 10m are actively used. It is a company that has been around for years and it has run into sales issues that last few years with competition and their products have tech product lifespans of around 3 years I suspect.

So the actual problem is the "feature" set of the vacuum cleaners, not the nationality of the new owners, right?

> Chinese owner .... inside people's homes

They made the devices. I would say its fair to assume they already had access to the data if they needed it. Other than the fact they legally own it now I don't think this makes much difference from before.

Why are you concerned about china having access to this data anyway? I'm far more concerned about how much access the US gov has to this type of data. They can easily use it against someone in the country they control if they want.

If they're taken offline, they stop working.

I think this is a bit of hyperbole. I haven't had my Roomba hooked up to the internet in at least four years. It works fine.

The only thing is that I have to start it by pushing the button on top, instead of using a phone app.

> More than 40 million is a lot. For comparison, the US has ~132 million households.

Does comparing sales to households make any sense though? You'd need to figure out (40MM - Roombas in landfills) / average Roombas per household.

> If they're taken offline, they stop working.

If people ask me what's wrong with the so called modern technology, this is it.

Local-first system paradigm should be made mandatory and default, not optional [1].

[1] Local-first software You own your data, in spite of the cloud:

https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/

I have a Roomba. Never connected it to wifi or a phone app (no phone). Works great.

I've been buying Roombas since the very first one (I've had four), but stopped buying them when they started including internet connectivity and cameras.

That was a total dealbreaker for me. No vacuum cleaner needs that.

I would assume that 60-80% of these are now defunct. They break and even though they can be repaired (I did with my old one, so old it’s not even internet connected) people just don’t.

How many users does TikTok have again? Talking about internet-connected, autonomously mobile, camera/microphone-equipped robots...

Sounds to me like we need to figure out how to flash our own custom firmware or do some fun DNS tricks to keep our data to ourselves.

Take that with a grain of salt (typhoon).

Well, not to worry. The Biden Admin FTC and the EU ensured this outcome in the interest of making sure consumer rights are protected. Therefore, consumer rights must be better protected in this scenario.

American tech companies have already built an apparatus of mass surveillance that works hand in glove with our government to violate our constitutional rights on a regular basis.

But it turns out that an economy based on rent extraction and enshittification can’t in the long run compete with one based on a real economy of industry, agriculture, and public services.

We should have privacy laws including mandated user control of user data. In my view, scaremongering around China just demonstates how uncompetitive the US is, in the long run. We should set our sights higher than merely begging to trade one form of technofeudalism for another.

I don't understand how you can sell 40 million units and go bankrupt.

Why are you more afraid of Chinese billionaires surveilling on you than American billionaires?

[flagged]

I’d rather have the Chinese than the Americans.

I appreciate the alarm. However, I don't know if we should feel China having this is less safe than an America, European, or other country. I think we have seen that whatever alleged rights to privacy and data protection we have are becoming more-and-more meaningless as the corporatocracy of the US manifests itself more.

I mean to say, this should not be any more alarming than if, say, Oracle, Microsoft, or Amazon bought Roomba vs. any random Chinese company.

I say this not to say that China has no human rights issues to worry about, but rather, that the US and other Western countries have just as many concerning human rights issues (including privacy, freedom of speech suppression, and police state) that we're just more familiar with and used to, compared to the Other that is China.

Basically, 6 of one, a half dozen of the other.

What is the significance to you in just a change of owner here? Relative to the situation already?

100%. Amazon actually has a sizable robotics presence in Boston. It would have been great for Boston job market and there are actually a handful of companies based out of MA including BD. You really need a cluster of companies to strengthen an industry. I mean see biotech in Kendall if you need an example.

Every time I hear someone applaud China for doing it cheaper and better, you don’t actually know that long-term. Technology goes into China but rarely comes out of it. Meaning they like to “transfer” IP in exchange for cheap labor but they don’t share a lot of things. There’s a very real long-term price to pay for that.

I was so angry at this.

I want Amazon and Google to be broken up, but not in this category or along with these lines. This wasn't going to create some household appliance monopoly. Amazon has plenty of competition, and Roomba was already behind the curve.

Now America is out of this market category. A category we invented. This felt like our last toehold in consumer robotics.

Elizabeth Warren is proud of blocking this deal:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/amazon-irobot-deal-collapse-room...

I think half the problem was the proposed Amazon acquisition. I was actually very seriously considering one of the newest Roomba models at the time it was announced. I decided to buy another brand because I knew amazon would 100% use it to spy on me.

Now instead China is using it to spy on people. Glad I didn't buy one I guess.

I’m glad it was blocked. Amazon gives law enforcement and ICE access to Ring camera footage. I have no doubt they’d eventually be letting cops spy inside our homes with these vacuum cleaners.

Amazon wouldn't have kept the manufacturer alive by making Roombas better, but by making it more expensive for other manufacturers to sell their vacuums through Amazon.

It is complacency or is China just accelerating?

It's not surprising that China wins in these things. Just go to Shenzhen. Hardware designers, parts, machines that make the parts, factories, etc. are all within driving distance. You can't compete unless you also have offices there, hire Chinese workers, compete in China. American companies need to start designing in China, not just made in China.

Ford themselves said they need to stay in the Chinese car market no matter what - not because they think they can win in it but because they can't compete anywhere if they leave.

The one tech area the US is most definitely ahead is AI - both software and hardware. The US will be ahead as long as China does not have access to EUV manufacturing yet.

That seems to be a problem with many companies. Chinese companies are innovating aggressively while others don’t. You see that with 3d printers where Bambu is kicking ass. I remember when GoPro did a drone and it simply wasn’t good. Or American carmakers are trying to turn back the clock on electric instead of embracing it.

Anybody who played Doom, or Quake, or Counterstrike knows: if you are not moving, you are dead. And if you try to show a counterexample, and say: "Look, I'm not moving, and I'm alive all right", it's an illusion, because the rockets, grenades, nails, and plasma charges that will slay you are already in flight, you are just failing to see them.

There is also another thing where quality Chinese products are very cheap compared to western products. Since Chinese engineers are cheaper, they can live with lower margins on their products.

A roomba was twice as much as a roborock that was better.

Prusa MK4S is 720 EUR, the arguably better Bambu Lab A1 is 260 EUR.

And if you look at e.g. https://vacuumwars.com/vacuum-wars-best-robot-vacuums/ you can see companies like Dreame and Eufy coming up in the space. It's a really competitive market and these things are getting better at a very fast pace.

I'd argue that iRobot's demise is sad, but the whole thing has been very good for consumers.

This is the cost of taking too much funding. Roomba could have remained a modest robovac company and continued indefinitely... they still sell millions of units. American corporate leadership in partner with VCs are chasing massive paydays and absolutely wrecking the companies they're running to do it.

Wow I found Rohorock a bit sucky so god knows how bad a Roomba is.

My theory is to make a decent robot vacuum that can compete with a human and a $50 vacuum and a cheap mop... you would need a 5k price point.

I used Valetudo on my early Roborock model and it worked great for many years. Unfortunately, the battery gave out and it's somehow DRMed, so even though everything else works fine, the vacuum refuses to work because it doesn't like the new battery.

It's the worst kind of e-waste, it's only waste because someone decided I should buy a whole new vacuum when the battery dies, but Valetudo is otherwise good. Just never try to look for support at all.

For me it's so weird nobody makes a thing you can trust. I would happily overpay 3-4x for the good vacuum without the cloud and the need to do some hacking with valetudo, with an official service and support for the device. Yet nobody is willing to take the money. They'd rather go bankrupt..

For what it's worth I never connected my 5-years-old Xiaomi Mi to the Internet - I just push the button and it starts. A wheel stopped working this year but I bought the replacement and installed it without much fuzz.

As for modern vacuums I have no idea what happens if you never set up their WiFi.

Your best bet would be to check which models are supported by Valetudo, which is a local-only firmware replacement: https://valetudo.cloud/ and https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo

>Are there any good robo-vacuum cleaners that will still clean your floor if the internet is down?

It depends on what exactly you want. My Roborock can't connect to my Wi-Fi anymore for some unfathomable reason. It no longer runs automatically, and I can't edit its map or tell it where exactly to clean. I just hit the power button once a day to start it manually, and it cleans everything it can access.

Had a Neato Botvac D7 for many years, works completely offline and it's cleaning route is pretty smart using lidar.

Can't vouch for their newer models just because this one has worked so well for years.

Just buy an old Roomba on Ebay. Mine doesn’t even know what the internet is. You push the button and it goes. There is a huge market of cheap aftermarket batteries for it.

> Are there any good robo-vacuum cleaners that will still clean your floor if the internet is down?

What do you mean? Why would you need an internet connection for a vacuum cleaner?

(Sorry for asking, I've never owned a robot one, plus I am old.)

Check out valetudo.

I recommend to look at Kärcher RCV 5. High quality.

https://www.kaercher.com/us/home-garden/robot-vacuums-and-mo...

I have a roomba i3, it's blocked at the network level, but it is connected to my home assistant instance. It can clean and map rooms but doesn't communicate with the cloud because of the network blocking.

I mean, Miele make one, so there’s that. No idea if it’s any good.

Obviously no guarantee that Miele will exist in a decade, but I wouldn’t bet against them personally.

I don’t get where the fear mongering is coming from on this. All or nearly all robot vacuums have controls for their various functions on the side. Plenty of robotic vacuums even come with remotes so you can program schedules without a phone/wifi/internet. If you go really cheap you can get decent robots that won’t even let you connect to WiFi if you tried (at least as of a few years ago).

I have eufy 11s. It does a braindead bump-and-run algorithm that uses no computer vision and does not map your room. It's a bit slower, but still does a solid job. Cheap too.

> The premise still strikes me as a ridiculous one: Am I possibly a more affluent customer because there is a high pile rug under the coffee table?

I've no idea about rug pile depth, but I'd have thought a simple link between square footage and location would be a reasonable proxy for that affluency.

I don't get this, so you're saying than they can and do sell maps of your home to the highest bidder. But... it's actually overblown, even though they're doing exactly what people were concerned they were doing?

It's MY home! I don't want anybody filming it or recording it or selling maps of it. Full stop!

Would the US security leviathan give away other people’s money for highly current floor plans of every residence in the country just on the 1-in-a-million chance they decide to kick in your door and shoot your dog? Probably.

You’re looking at this from a point where the only piece of information about you out there is the data collected by the roomba. In reality, every sensible data broker would just add that signal to your already verbose profile and feed it to a model to determine the stuff you’re likely to buy… or would trigger you to generate engagement or whatever is needed.

The privacy danger here is not the one data point, it’s the unknown amount of other parties who will mix and match it with more data.

With GDPR, I’ve been requesting copies of my telemetry from various corps and it’s amazing the kind of stuff they collect. Did you know kindle records very time you tap on the screen (even outside buttons), in addition to what you read and highlight and pages you spend time on? Now add to that your smart tv’s insights about you and your robot vacuum cleaner … you see now this all grows out of control.

I read a story about Dreame. The founder worked in aerospace, but wanted to make a mass-produced motor with aerospace standards. So he modelled air flow using aerospace tools, built the motor to tight tolerances. Conventional vacuum motors run at 30k rpm, his runs at 100k rpm. Then he standardises on a single motor, for all his devices, robovacs, stick vacs etc, so he gets scale.

I had a Roomba+Braava Jet for a few years and I constantly had some issues with both devices, but the worst part was that in theory they should be working well together. There's this function "linked cleaning" where Braava mops the floor right after Roomba finishes vacuuming. But in practice it often didn't work, either the automation didn't trigger, or Roomba got stuck somewhere, cancelled the cleaning, and then Braava started mopping floor that hadn't been vacuumed.

Eventually I moved to Roborock with vacuum+mop in a single device. It still has its issues, but it is ten times better. It's able to lift the mop on the carpet, the mop is self-cleaning, and it has a large tank so that I only have to refill the water once a week instead of every other day. Day and night. Roomba eventually introduced a similar model, but it's been years after competitors had them.

I second your option about Roborock. Also Dreame. Although I use both of them after rooting with Valetudo and connecting to my home assistant.

Absolutely. I bought a new Roomba after my old one died and was surpised to learn it's basically unchanged and still just as stupid as the old one. Returned it, got a Dreame X40. Much better, night and day difference.

I have a second-hand "dumb Eufy" and it's great. No cameras, no microphone, no Wi-Fi, no app, no calling home to mommy. It just spins, sucks and bangs (gently) around my house and I don't get mad when it gets stuck. It cleans under things I can't reach easily with a vacuum, and it cost me almost nothing.

Currently looking to make my living space robot friendly, I wonder: can they clean hard to reach spots behind doors or under the ledge of a sofa (I can't remove every obstacle)?

i got roomba less than year ago, because it was hard to find well reviewed non-mop vacuum with docking station that sucks all the dirt out.

So an American company (amazon) was going to buy iRobot, but that was struck down by the courts.

Now a Chinese company is buying them and there's no problems.

is that the background on that?

It's not just marketing, iRobot basically stopped innovating. For commodity items like robot vacuums or pool cleaners, there is a relentless pressure to innovate. You can't simply coast or else you will soon find yourself left behind.

This is a good article to describe the viewpoint of Chinese iRobot competitor https://kr-asia.com/at-usd-90-per-unit-seauto-is-quietly-swe...

How many general public appliance makers out there have a competitive production line outside of China ?

As I understand the only countries where one could barely pull that off would be Korea or Japan, and the local makers are mostly giving up as they lose too much on cost.

>Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too.

Roborock didn't win because of doing marketing, they won by being technically superior and word of mouth, in spite of lack of marketing, at least in the west.

Same how Japanese cars beat US made cars in the 1980s even though US cars had the most amount of advertising in the media. Even Steve Jobs said in the 90s that US brands have the best marketing and win all meaningless "awards by industry critics", but if you ask consumers which products are best, they all say the Japanese ones.

Chinese products are now the new Japanese. I still have no idea why westerners assumed "Chinese can't innovate, they can only replicate".

Thanks to the full Chinese supply chain, you can replace every single part of the roborock. Even if Roborock doesn’t sell it directly, someone does. I’ve owned a couple and I haven’t had any main board die. But you can buy anything from the wheels, to main board, to lidar online.