How the Dyson 360 Vis Nav could get smarter

There’s no denying Dyson’s latest robot vacuum cleaner – the 360 Vis Nav – offers serious suction, and it does so while very much looking the part. I challenge you to find a better looking robot vacuum cleaner.

But when it comes to features, some of the 360 Vis Nav’s competitors have the edge. There’s no self-emptying bin on the Dyson 360 Vis Nav for example, and it can’t mop and vacuum simultaneously like the likes of the iRobot J7+ or Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra.

That’s not to say the 360 Vis Nav isn’t smart in its own right, however. And in fact, there’s a chance it could be smarter than its rivals in some areas in the future. I spoke to Paul Keast, Product Manager for Intelligent Machines at Dyson, and we discussed a potential feature that could come to Dyson 360 Vis Nav in a future software update.

Every 10 weeks 

One of the key things I took away from my interview with Keast was that Dyson engineers are continuously working on software, not only for the Dyson 360 Vis Nav, but the older 360 Heurist robot that came out in 2019 too.

Keast told me that Dyson “updates the software twice every 10 weeks” on the most recent robot vacuum cleaner, ensuring the “performance will only get better over time.”

What was even more interesting however, was how one of the latest updates that could lead to a very beneficial future feature.

Keast said: “One of the recent updates we’ve done is now we have data about how dirty certain areas are.”

You’ll see this if you have the Dyson 360 Vis Nav and you tap on the play button at the bottom of the MyDyson app. A list of your rooms will appear, with predictions on how dusty or dirty they could be. For example, my living room has a high dust prediction, while the hallway is moderate. 

In order to make these predications, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav has a Piezo sensor that Paul explains “can sense individual particles of dust and turn it into an electrical signal so we can actually count the number of particles at different sizes and levels.” 

At the moment, when you use Auto mode, like the Dyson Gen5detect, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav uses the information from the Piezo sensor to increase vacuuming power when it comes across a particularly dirty area.

That’s not too dissimilar from Roborock’s latest flagship models that have Dirt Detect on board, assessing how dirty particular areas are and adapting on the fly.

Smarter over time 

Where the Dyson 360 Vis Nav could end up with the edge however, is recommended modes and schedules based on the information this Piezo sensor gathers. As I mentioned, currently the MyDyson app will show you dust predications for the different rooms in your home and you can tap to adjust the modes based on those predictions. You can also see a color-coded dust map indicating the different levels of dust throughout your home.

It is possible that a future update will see the MyDyson app not only predicting the dust levels, but offering recommendations for the mode the Dyson 360 Vis Nav should use for those rooms and perhaps even a schedule, however. 

I said to Keast when I spoke to him at Dyson HQ having learned about the 10-week update cycle that it would be useful if the Dyson 360 Vis Nav sensed your home over a period of time, a couple of months perhaps, and then turned the data and dust predictions for each room into a recommended schedule with the recommended modes.

The idea would be that you would go into the MyDyson app and the modes alongside each room would have changed to what the app suggests rather than all set to auto unless you as a user change them manually.

Keast said “that’s exactly the sort of thing that we potentially might deliver in the future.”

To me that suggests the Dyson 360 Vis Nav could not only recommend what mode you should use for the different rooms in your home based on the dust information it has collected, but it could recommend a schedule too, taking much of the leg work out and actually becoming a significantly helpful robot vacuum cleaner.

Whether it will happen in the next 10 weeks remains to be seen for now, but I’m here for products getting smarter over time without you having to replace hardware so fingers crossed this feature goes from potentially to definitely.