Roomba maker wants to sell your home’s floor plan

From New York Post.com (July 25):

Robot burglars had better not get any ideas.

The maker of the Roomba robotic vacuum, iRobot, wants to start selling mapped floor plans of customers’ homes to Google, Amazon and Apple, the company said Tuesday.

The privacy-invading plan will help other smart home devices operate more efficiently using movement data collected by the circular cleaning gadget, CEO Colin Angle told Reuters.

“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 said.

The home layout data will likely include info on the location of everything from lamps to home security cameras and thermostats, according to the firm.

But the thought of a robot collecting such sensitive info pushed some customers’ buttons.

“Your friendly little Roomba could soon become a creepy little spy,” one Twitter user slammed.

Others feared the data could be hacked. [read more]

Yea, I am not too sure about this idea, but I guess this is what tech companies are doing now.