We’ve all experienced it. We think we’re done vacuuming, put everything away, and later discover dirt in spots on our carpet that we forgot to drag our vacuum cleaner over – but what if it didn’t have to be this way? What if you could know exactly where you had and hadn’t cleaned in your home, so you could make it spotless every time?
That’s where Dyson’s new creation comes into the picture: the Dyson CleanTrace – expected to launch in June this year. This AR tool allows your phone – provided it has a LiDAR scanner – to track your vacuum cleaner as you clean. Anything your Dyson vacuum has passed over will be mapped out in purple, while uncleaned areas of your floor will be left blank.
It’s inspired by the technology used by Dyson’s 360 Vis Nav robot vacuum cleaner – which recently arrived in the US – and as Dyson noted, this tool will not only help you pay more attention to those oft-forgotten recesses in your living space, but also It should also save you time as you won’t have to revisit areas that you can see have already been vacuumed.
Additionally, because it’s a challenge to hold a phone up while you clean, Dyson will also release a Dyson CleanTrace phone clamp that will hold it in place for you. Unfortunately, Dyson hasn’t yet said how much the clamp or the Dyson CleanTrace service will cost, but considering it’s launching in just a few months, we won’t have to wait long before we know this vital information.
This AR cleaning tool looks a lot like a demo that is being shared Reddit by developer u/push_matrix, and when it surfaced, we and many in the various subreddits where the clip was shared had the same reaction: this look is super useful. So it’s quite exciting that Dyson has managed to bring a version of it to life in a form that seems more accessible – especially by swapping a mixed-reality headset used in the Reddit version for a smartphone.
There’s just one pretty big problem: Dyson’s CleanTrace AR cleaning tool only works with a Dyson Gen5detect – one of Dyson’s most expensive models (although, as we highlight in our Dyson Gen5detect review, it’s impressive).
This is a shame, as we’d love it if it could be used by other Dysons that populate our best cordless vacuum cleaner guide, such as the Dyson V15 Detect Absolute or more affordable options. However, at the moment it’s unclear when or even if CleanTrace will be extended to other Dyson vacuums – although we seriously hope it will.