Calm Surveillance in the Leaky Home: Living with a Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Understanding the attachment owners can feel to their robot vacuums, which also map and collect data about their homes, is key to understanding the ambivalences involved in the integration of automated visualities in the home. Drawing on qualitative video interviews and observations of people interacting with their robot vacuums, this article identifies three key factors in understanding how cohabitation with a robot vacuum and its particular form of automated sensoria is experienced by its user: firstly, the robot assists with work that we would otherwise do ourselves with the aid of a broom or traditional vacuum cleaner; it is thus often regarded as an extension of ourselves, the equivalent of a cleaning assistant, or even a kind of pet with which you can interact. Secondly, its ability to move autonomously increases the inclination to anthropomorphize the robot as a being with some level of agency and intelligence. Thirdly, the robot vacuum cleaner is a very visible part of the intimate sphere. It has its charging station in the home; it cannot be hidden away in a cupboard like an ordinary vacuum cleaner; more often than not, furniture needs to be moved around for it to run smoothly. This article argues that these three factors are important for understanding people’s difficulty in perceiving the robot as an entity that potentially participates in surveillance practices, and to understand the nature of this form of surveillance that emanates from the leaky home.