Ecovacs robot vacuums in multiple US cities were hacked in the space of a few days, with the attacker physically controlling them and yelling obscenities through their onboard speakers.
SkyNet is coming. When it’s AI controlling the robots instead of hackers, watch out!
To be serious though, I’ve got a robot vac that’s pretty dumb by today’s standards - no camera etc. It hasn’t had a firmware update for ages, so if it was hacked, I’m dubious the company would fix such an old model. The one benefit is that I think it’s so old and dumb, I think I can actually run it without connecting to a network. But I would lose app control and the ability to change any settings.
I find they are all dumb. I spend more time helping the stupid machine get unstuck from under the couch, pulling random crap that gets stuck from its brushes. I basically needed to follow it around the house which defeated the purpose of automatic. It never gets used as it’s faster to do it myself. AND the bigger vac is quieter than the dumb thing.
we have an ol’ 880 that does the rounds every other day - it’s very very good for keeping on top of the dross. Doesn’t replace the big vacuum, but it does cut down on the number of times we have to vacuum per week, keeps the walkways clear and eats all the cat fur. Ours is brushless though, I’ve tried a brushed version, it’s a piece of shit that chokes.
This has been my experience too. I bought a new model from LG last year, thinking the technology would have evolved enough by now to be useful. Instead it consistently gets itself stuck in the stupidest places and re-cleans the same spots repeatedly whilst completely ignoring others. In the accompanying app I can see a map of what it thinks the room looks like and it’s always wrong because the vacuum has this habit of continuing to drive into walls and recording it as forward movement in an open space instead of a wall, which completely skews the dimensions.
SkyNet is coming. When it’s AI controlling the robots instead of hackers, watch out!
To be serious though, I’ve got a robot vac that’s pretty dumb by today’s standards - no camera etc. It hasn’t had a firmware update for ages, so if it was hacked, I’m dubious the company would fix such an old model. The one benefit is that I think it’s so old and dumb, I think I can actually run it without connecting to a network. But I would lose app control and the ability to change any settings.
I find they are all dumb. I spend more time helping the stupid machine get unstuck from under the couch, pulling random crap that gets stuck from its brushes. I basically needed to follow it around the house which defeated the purpose of automatic. It never gets used as it’s faster to do it myself. AND the bigger vac is quieter than the dumb thing.
we have an ol’ 880 that does the rounds every other day - it’s very very good for keeping on top of the dross. Doesn’t replace the big vacuum, but it does cut down on the number of times we have to vacuum per week, keeps the walkways clear and eats all the cat fur. Ours is brushless though, I’ve tried a brushed version, it’s a piece of shit that chokes.
This has been my experience too. I bought a new model from LG last year, thinking the technology would have evolved enough by now to be useful. Instead it consistently gets itself stuck in the stupidest places and re-cleans the same spots repeatedly whilst completely ignoring others. In the accompanying app I can see a map of what it thinks the room looks like and it’s always wrong because the vacuum has this habit of continuing to drive into walls and recording it as forward movement in an open space instead of a wall, which completely skews the dimensions.