SoftBank Is Selling a Roomba Competitor in the U.S. – Bloomberg

A Whiz autonomous floor-cleaning machine operates during a demonstration.

Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

SoftBank Group Corp. has put billions of dollars into a laser-based technology that could allow cars to drive themselvesand help astronauts land on distant planets. It turns out that same technologymakes a pretty good vacuum cleaner.

Engineers at SoftBank Robotics have spent years applying lidar, which accurately maps distances in real-time, to carpet cleaning.The result is Whiz, a sort of ultra-high-end Roomba that SoftBank will start selling to companies in the U.S. on Tuesday for $499 a month.

Whiz.

Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Given the high price, offices are the target market. The robot can run for three hours on a charge and clean as much as 15,000 square feet, according to the company.In the cleaning industry, theres been a lot of excitement about this, said Kass Dawson, head of business strategy at SoftBank Robotics America.

SoftBank is most commonly associated with its mobile network in Japan and the massive amounts of cash its investing in tech companies around the worldsometimes unwisely, as in the case of WeWork. But robotics has long been an interestof SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. The Japanese conglomerate introduced a humanoid named Pepper five years ago that can be found at airports and stores attempting to answercustomers questions.Although Pepper can move on wheels, it typically stays in placeand lacks the sophistication of Whizs movement. When Pepper debuted, according to Dawson, people frequently asked if it could vacuum. It cant.

Controls on a Whiz.

Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Another SoftBank robot called Nao is focused on education.The company wants to gradually refine its robotics chops as it works toward more complicated tasks, such as in logistics and warehousing.The eventual goal is to freeup human workers to focus on more complicated work, Dawson said. We need to do some researchand figure out which is the right repeatable task to be replaced, he said.

But its up to people to train their eventual robot replacement. Whiz needs to be taught the cleaning route before it can get started. After that, the vacuum can learn to account for changes in the layout, such as furniture moved into new positions. The project has benefitedfrom SoftBanks wide array of investments. Whizs operating system, BrainOS, is made by a company called Brain Corp., which is backed by SoftBanks Vision Fund.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Continue reading here:
SoftBank Is Selling a Roomba Competitor in the U.S. - Bloomberg