A new robotic vacuum from iRobot Corp. doesn’t just collect dirt: It collects mapping data about your home interior. Such data could be a gold mine to technology giants such as Amazon, Apple, and Google parent company Alphabet, all of which are investing heavily in internet-enabled “smart” home devices. Some customers, though, might balk at the privacy implications.

Robotic vacuum cleaners have been around for several years. They whiz around your house using infrared or laser sensors to detect walls or obstacles such as furniture. But in 2015, manufacturer iRobot added a camera and upgraded sensors to its top-of-the-line Roomba robotic vacuum, enabling it to build a map of your house and to locate itself on the map.

The technology allows Roomba to break off vacuuming, return to its charging station for a few minutes, and then return to the same spot and resume vacuuming. But the spatial data is useful for more than simply guiding a robot.

“There’s an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared,” iRobot CEO Colin Angle told the Reuters news service.

A huge database of in-home maps could allow smart sound systems to match home acoustics, according to Guy Hoffman, a robotics professor at Cornell University who also spoke to Reuters. Smart air conditioning and heating could schedule airflow by room. And smart lighting could adjust itself based on the position of the windows and time of day. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple could use the data to recommend home products for their customers, said Hoffman.

IRobot may soon reach a deal to share home maps with one or more of the “big three” tech companies. Analysts have warned that sharing interior maps of users’ homes raises privacy concerns, but iRobot’s Colin Angle told Reuters his company would not share data without a customer’s permission. He expressed confidence that most will give consent so they can access smart home functions.

Braking habits

With the July rollout of the Tesla Model 3, many experts are suggesting electric cars are ready to go mainstream. But as more people switch from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, they’ll quickly learn that the biggest change isn’t plugging in your vehicle at night. It’s the change in how you drive.

In an electric car, the accelerator pedal not only speeds up the car—it slows it down. In a process called “regenerative braking,” lifting your foot off the accelerator pedal causes the car’s momentum to wind up something like a flywheel that runs the electric motor as a generator, recapturing the car’s kinetic energy and converting it to electricity to top off the battery.

In some newer electric car models, “regen” braking can generate enough force to slow the car down to near zero, requiring the brake pedal only to bring it to a complete stop. Later this year, Nissan will be the first automaker to introduce one-pedal driving with its “e-Pedal” option, according to Wired magazine. (The brake pedal will still be there for panic stops.)

Regenerative braking reduces wear and tear on brake pads, lowering maintenance costs. Most significantly, energy that would have been wasted as heat is recaptured, extending the car’s range. —M.C.