SoftBank Group Corp. has put billions of dollars into a laser-based technology that could allow cars to drive themselves and help astronauts land on distant planets. It turns out that same technology makes 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 extremely high-end Roomba that SoftBank will start selling to companies in the U.S. on Tuesday for $499 a month.
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 (about 1,394 square meters), according to the company.