Dyson announced its first robotic vacuum, the Dyson 360 Eye. Forget about suction, I want to see the inevitable cockfights between the Eye and the Roomba!
From Businessweek:
The 360 Eye "sees" its surroundings using a vision system developed over more than 100,000 hours by 31 robotic software engineers, according to Dyson. The camera atop the circular machine takes up to 30 frames per second to help the vacuum interpret its environment. The internal software then processes each one of those images looking for standout features, such as the corner of a sofa, and uses trigonometry to calculate how far the robot is from each of those landmarks depending on how much things have moved in each image. Since the shutter speed of the camera matches the speed of the machine, the 360 Eye knows exactly where it is in the room and where it has yet to clean. The infrared sensors detect obstacles.
