Today at CES in Las Vegas, LG showed off its Hom-Bot floor cleaning robot. Though it looks similar to iRobot's Roomba, it is equipped with Wi-Fi and not one but two cameras (facing forward and upward). It's capable of mapping a whole room, tracking the area it cleaned, streaming video to you over the Internet — and feeding your pet while you're away.
It's only 3.5 inches high, and puts out only 60 decibels of noise, which LG says is low enough to let you watch TV. It uses infrared and ultrasonic sensors, and like Roomba, it can auto-dock to recharge.
As you can see from the diagram, you'll be able to pull up a Web window with a camera view of the vacu-sucking action, as well mini-map of the territory. Now, iRobot's Roomba, now in its sixth generation, has a lot of smarts, but they're all for Roomba itself, so it can better handle the environment. LG is building this thing as a platform that you interact with, more and more, if their promise of "even more convenient options through Smart Access in the near future" is to be believed.
Now about that pet feeding feature. LG didn't go into great detail, but it does worry me a tad. You do realize what might happen as soon as your pet realizes there's a new food bringer in town, right? The bonds of man and best friend break down, robots curry favor — and the overlords win. [More on LG Hom-Bot, Smart Access]
