I cognise , right ? What could the makers of Roomba and astronomers possibly be contend over ? This is the story of how an isolated slice of the electromagnetic spectrum become theobject of one acrid conflict .
iRobot , the company behind the Roomba , has been looking to bring its little robot engineering to the out-of-doors , concord to FCC filingsunearthed by IEEE Spectrum . Now automated lawnmowers already be , but they require you to bury wire all around the lawn . This “ bound wire ” lets the automaton know to remain inside your lawn , but it ’s also a painfulness for us human overlords .
iRobot want to exchange the buried wire scheme with a handful of modest wireless beacons . These beacons will intercommunicate with the automaton lawnmower with radio waves in the chain of mountains of 6240 to 6740 MHz cooking stove , which is used by nobody except … the National Radio Astronomy Observatory .
The NRAO operate radio telescopes in a few country and Chile . It happens to expend that same frequency to detect methyl alcohol out in space , which is a signature tune of star shaping . The NRAO says that iRobot lawnmowers buzzing around could cut off its radio telescopes in New Mexico , West Virginia , and Puerto Rico . What followed was a peaceful - aggressive back and forth in papers filed to the FCC.IEEE Spectrum ’s Evan Ackermanhighlighted some of the , erh , more colorful language :
iRobot : “ The iRobot RLM will be marketed for consumer use only , and iRobot has offered to place a notice in the drug user manual and on the robot that states : Consumer manipulation only ; use must be limited to residential expanse . ”
NRAO : “ A toothless warning to apply only in residential areas does not do . ”
It ’s ultimately up to the FCC to resolve whether iRobot get to use that spectrum or careen to a different one . We have to say , the idea of a robot lawnmower mess up up the radiocommunication scope data is pretty tragicomic .
[ IEEE SpectrumviaWired ]
Top image : kurhan / shutterstock
AstronomyPhysicsRoombaScienceSpectrum
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