When the original Roomba from iRobot first hit the scene it was revolutionary: a vacuum that roamed (and cleaned) your room on its own. iRobot has quite the track record making military robots, so why not infiltrate the home front? LG also has quite the experience with military production, so it comes as no surprise that LG’s new HOM-BOT does what an iRobot does, but smarter.

Unveiled for the first time at their CES press conference, the LG HOM-BOT is a network-connected Wi-Fi robotic vacuum cleaner. Instead of randomly going around your living room in a haphazard way, the HOM-BOT actually knows where it’s been in your home and where it needs to go. You can even look at its cleaning path overlaid on your home’s floor plan via any web browser.

That’s a real game changer. I can’t say how well it cleans compared to the iRobot, and how you would go about programming your house plan into the Roomba’s memory (possibly by web gui), but the concept is quite intriguing. There’s even a webcam mounted on the front to show you a live video feed from your HOM-BOT’s perspective via the web.

The LG HOM-BOT is part of a bigger strategy to make everything “smarter.” LG is showing off smart ovens, smart fridges, smart TVs, and… well, smartphones too. That Tegra2-powered Optimus 2X looks pretty darn nice.

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