The Eye hinges on a 360-degree camera that views the room at a 45 degree angle and takes 30 pictures per second. Those photos become a live map of the room. To get started, the Eye undocks itself from a charging station affixed to the wall. The robot triangulates its position in the room, finds the centre, and starts spiralling outward. Once it has vacuumed 10 square feet, it relocates to clean a new patch.
Infrared sensors keep the Eye aware of pets or thin table legs, but the bulk of the vacuum’s spatial smarts come from the real-time map of the room. Once it’s covered the entire floor, it scoots back into its charging dock.
The Eye has one of the company’s proprietary digital motors that whirs at 104,000 RPM — that Dyson estimates has 20 times the force of other robot vacuums. In place of standard wheels the Eye uses treads, so the Eye can climb over ledges or door frames, sucking dust out of cracks and crevices along the way. And unlike other scuttling vacuum cleaners, the Eye’s brush bar is as wide as the body of the robot, so that everything in its path gets a full sweep.
The Dyson 360 Eye goes on sale next spring, first in Japan and then worldwide. The price is not yet set.
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