[bichiliad]

"This unique 360° vision system uses complex mathematics, probability theory, geometry and trigonometry to map and navigate a room. So it knows where it is, where it’s been and where it’s yet to clean."

I hate the "Oh, why don't we use slightly complex words to make the consumers feel impressed" marketing practice. Like when shampoo ads use phrases like "advanced [made-up-word] technology."

Edit: That was a bit grumpier than it should have been. I haven't had coffee yet.

[krisoft]

I have heard multiple people to complain that Roombas are just wandering around randomly. It's worth to note that none of these complainers had a Roomba at home, so the issue might only be a perceived one. But nevertheless in marketing these things count, and who knows? Maybe Dyson tried it and found the sensored version superior in engineering terms too.

So on one hand you have people complaining about 'random movements', and you have an automated vac which doesn't do that. How do you communicate this? The feature is clearly important enough for them to put it in the name. It's not called Dyson TankTrack or Dyson DoubleBristle, it's called Dyson 360 Eye.

So they could say: "doesn't move randomly" but that's probably not true, and doesn't sound any good. Quite likely it falls back to random wandering to re-locate from a kidnaped-robot situation. Besides negative statements ought to be avoided because they focus the costumer on what you don't have, instead of what you have. (at least so it goes the marketing wisdom)

They could also just say: "does SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping)" would be accurate, and would be totally cryptic for anyone who is not in the know.

Of course I haven't tested the robot, but if it does what they imply, then the consumer shouldn't feel impressed because of the complex words. They should feel impressed because this is impressive. Does it vacuum better? Who knows, we will see.

[masklinn]

> I have heard multiple people to complain that Roombas are just wandering around randomly.

The roombas do, as far as I know, mostly wander randomly. Not only (they'll also follow walls and stuff), but they most definitely don't map a room plan which they methodically go through, they don't have the sensors to.

There are other vacuums with room mapping (samsung's navibot), I'm not aware that they do better than roombas in the long run (although they probably pass over each spot at least once per session, which roombas don't necessarily do)

[ModernMech]

Eh, everyone does this. I see HNers do it all the time adding "with machine learning" to some otherwise mundane problem to make it sound more interesting/impressive.

[Schwolop]

Unique? Hmmm... for a vacuum cleaner, maybe. For indoor robotics, not so much. It's fairly standard Visual-SLAM.

[m_eiman]

Not unique for a vacuum; Samsung have been selling SLAM-ing bots for four years, at least: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/samsung-navibot-sr8845-sr...

[Grue3]

I'm pretty sure the software in the vacuum actually makes use of all of these. But then, so does your average roguelike.

[yen223]

To be fair, those stuff ain't easy.