Robotic vacuum cleaners have had a mixed reception over the past few years. Some work amazingly well (but you have to pay a lot for a good clean), while others just don’t have the capacity to store all the muck from your floors.
However, the Neato Robotics’ D7 Connected vacuum is really one of the best – and now it’s been made even smarter with a free update.
So what doest this upgrade include? The Neato Robotics vacuum utilises Lidar to work its way around your home and its latest software update will remember where it’s been around your home and use this to plan its next cleaning trip. Ie., if it misses a spot because there was an obstacle in the way, it will go back and check the area’s clear. If it is, it’ll clean that first for you.
You can also add areas you don’t want it to clean by adding “no go zones” on the maps. So once it’s created a floor plan for your home, just draw lines with your finger on the map and it’ll avoid these in future.The update adds the ability to create multiple maps – for example – if you want to create a map for all the floors in your home, you can now do this.
This “persistent mapping” technology adds a whole load of other opportunities for Neato to improve its products, IEEE Spectrum thinks, such as being able to clean the dirtiest areas of your home more often or integrating with other smart home devices.
Another update to Neato’s Robotic vacuum cleaner is quick boost charging, which will calculate how much power the vacuum cleaner will need to finish the job and top it up accordingly, so your home is always clean everywhere, not just where it’s managed to clean before running out of battery.
