Alexa's new wheels
Another day, another acquisition by Amazon. This time it bought the iRobotcompany, the maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner.
Why would Amazon buy the company and pay $1.7 billion when you can just go and buy the latest model of iRobot Roomba i7+ (7550) Robot Vacuum. It has automatic dirt disposal. It empties itself for up to 60 days. It’s Wi-Fi connected, uses Smart Mapping and works with Alexa. It’s ideal for pet hair, carpets and hard floors. It comes in black. And Amazon can get it for $760 directly on its own website.
Seems a little bit excessive. Why would Amazon do that?
There is this ongoing battle among tech companies for your house. They want to turn it into this 'super smart house'. From smart voice assistants, smart speakers and smart fridges to everything smart… With all this available, they can make you feel stupid when you have to set up everything by yourself.
With the Roomba, a cute vacuum cleaner wandering around your house, Amazon will gain access to a mobile platform. In the same way as it is providing computing resources to others, it will allow others to build new devices and functionality on top of that. But Amazon will offer more than that. The new platform will suddenly have access to almost unlimited computing resources. It will take advantage of all the connectivity and networking infrastructure available on AWS (Amazon Web Services) Plus, Alexa will be part of it now as well.
Like everything Amazon does, this is a long play. Do you remember the palm scanning technology or hair salon in London or its Sidewalk project?
What might the new devices be? Aside from the better-known Roomba, iRobot built products not only for home, but for military and policing, as well for medical usage. That’s another indication that Amazon didn't buy iRobot for the vacuum cleaner. Imagine robots for plant watering, collecting kids toys in the evening, pest control (patiently waiting, killing and collecting unsuspected mice), pets monitoring, or even acting as a housesitter. The list goes on and on.
As well, all the robots will be able to communicate with each other. They’ll be able to learn from each other. Does it sound too far-fetched? Perhaps. But think about this: scenario: your Amazon vacuum cleaner comes across an object and has to decide if it should clean it or leave it. You might get a quick note on your phone to identify the object and provide the decision to act.
The same image is then uploaded to the cloud for all the other vacuum cleaners to learn about the object and the most likely action associated with it.
Your vacuum cleaner might not be smart but it will become useful. Companies should stop trying to build Smart AI devices. Instead, they could simply build something which will be useful and easy to use. That's the recurrent pattern which everyone will appreciate.