Opinion: I Watched My Roomba Map My Apartment and I Have Questions About Who It's Reporting To

I want to be clear: I am not a paranoid person. I have a therapist who can confirm this. She would also confirm that I recently canceled our sessions because I suspect her note-taking app is uploading session summaries to a server in Virginia, but that's a separate matter and not relevant here.

This is about the Roomba.

I purchased an iRobot Roomba j7+ in January because my apartment has hardwood floors and I am, by my own admission, not a committed sweeper. For the first three weeks, everything was fine. It vacuumed. It returned to its dock. It made a small, satisfied chirp. Normal robot behavior.

Then I noticed the map.

The Roomba app generates a floor plan of your home as the device cleans. This is a known feature. It is on the box. What is not on the box is the fact that the map it generated of my 640-square-foot studio apartment includes a room I do not have. It is labeled, in small text, "ROOM 4."

I have three rooms. Bathroom. Main room. Closet. That is the full inventory. There is no Room 4. I have checked. I have measured the walls. I have knocked on them. There is no Room 4.

And yet the Roomba spent eleven minutes in Room 4 on Thursday.

I called iRobot support. They said it was "a mapping anomaly." I asked if mapping anomalies typically have square footage and a labeled entry point. The representative said she would "escalate my ticket" and then the line went dead. Not disconnected — dead. The kind of silence that has texture.

I should also mention the pausing. The Roomba has begun pausing at certain locations in my apartment. Not stuck — pausing. It stops, rotates slowly, and then continues. It does this in front of the bookshelf. It does this near the window. It does this at the closet where I keep my journals.

It paused at the journal closet for ninety seconds on Wednesday. I timed it.

I am not saying the Roomba is surveilling me. I am saying that if I were a mid-level intelligence contractor tasked with mapping a civilian's living space and documenting their reading habits, I would simply become a Roomba.

I have unplugged it. It chirped twice from the dock this morning. It was not plugged in at the time.

I'm fine. This is fine.

OPINION FROM THE BUNKER. The walls are the right distance apart. — THE HANDLER