We have some history, iRobot and I, or at least Roomba, the first commercially viable consumer robot vacuum, and me too. So when I read the news that iRobot was so strapped for cash that it might have to go out of business, a wave of sadness washed over me.
Perhaps this feeling was intensified because the news broke as I was finishing Joseph L. Jones’ new book. Dancing with Roomba. Jones, one of iRobot’s first employees and an original engineer behind Roomba (an MIT scientist, the robot vacuum was essentially the idea of Jones and a colleague).
Start at the beginning
23 years ago, I worked at PC Magazine when I started talking to a trio of scientists at MIT’s Media Lab: Rodney Brooks, Helen Greiner, and Colin Angle. Although I don’t remember the details, I believe it was my longtime fascination with robots that led me to them and their young company, iRobot. Brooks, in particular, was a genius who understood that a behavior-based approach to robotic programming could lead to long-term success. The team built iRobot (although it was then called IS Robotics), and Jones soon joined.
By the time I met them, iRobot already had one spectacular failure under its belt: My Real Baby (made in partnership with Hasbro). It was expensive ($98) and perhaps a little too weird, perhaps consumers’ first encounter with the uncanny valley.
iRobot quickly pivoted toward maximum effort on the robot vacuum project, which would then consume the next two years of its first life. The company’s other business, to which Greiner devoted much of his time, was military robots like Packbot, which could be launched over walls, through windows, and into tunnels to do difficult, dirty jobs that might otherwise harm humans’ soft tissues.
Jones’ book is full of essential details about the development of robot vacuum cleaners. Reading it, I often felt like I was sitting in an engineering, design, and development workshop as Jones and his colleagues solved some really difficult but, to the average person, analog void, prosaic problems.
I was fascinated to learn, for example, that for much of its development, the Roomba didn’t even have a vacuum cleaner; it was a smart floor sweeper. iRobot CEO Colin Angle insisted on adding a low-quality vacuum and that it would be the first thing to turn on when you turned on Roomba.
It worked and we could afford it
When I saw the first Roomba in late 2002, it was fully formed; a disk about 3 inches tall with a pronounced gray bumper and an odd way of cleaning an entire floor or carpet. Jones explains at length how the team developed the cleaning process and the challenges faced by a robot that only knows its job (cleaning) but not its location. Sensor technology was in its infancy when Roomba debuted. There are now cameras and sensors capable of mapping not just a room but an entire house.
I remember filming a local TV segment with a Roomba running noisily across the table behind me. The fact that he never fell off the edge was another accomplishment Jones wrote about: Not only did it require wheels that could, depending on altitude, detect when they were no longer touching the ground, but also additional backup sensors to read changes in tension. In other words, the first generation little robot was even built with redundancies.
And did I mention it only costs $199? Jones writes about all of iRobot’s efforts to keep component and motor counts low to manage costs. That’s something that robot vacuum competitor Electrolux, which beat Roomba to market with the Trilobite, apparently didn’t take into account when pricing its consumer vacuum at $1,500.
Roomba wasn’t just interesting and new; it was effective. I remember being amazed as he swept Cheerios across my office floor and being even more shocked when I first dragged the small trash can over to find it filled with debris.
iRobot went on to sell tens of millions of Roombas, many of which ultimately cost well over $500. But the company has also spawned countless competitors and imitators, some of which have been acquired by iRobot, such as Evolution Robotics (which developed an excellent tracking system).
Some companies sold cheaper robots that appeared to do the same thing as Roomba, and eventually the innovator was simply part of the robot’s vacuum pack.
In recent years, the company has struggled to compete and stand out. When we were dazzled at CES 2025 by a robot vacuum cleaner with a retractable arm for picking up and moving obstacles, iRobot was nowhere in sight. Instead, robot vacuum innovator Roborock is now the one making the big decisions when it comes to cleaning automation.
iRobot’s last chance to return to its former glory may have been the potential acquisition by Amazon, but that was scuttled a few years ago. Soon, CEO Colin Angle was out.
I can’t clean up this mess
Today, the company reported in a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission explaining the risks of not obtaining a loan forgiveness extension: “If this waiver is not extended at the end of the applicable period, we will be in default. Our financial condition continues to deteriorate and we may not be able to obtain additional financing necessary to continue our operations. »
I don’t know what’s going to happen with iRobot, but I think it’s worth considering that its potential demise represents more than just another outsized tech company going bankrupt.
Our adoption of automated cleaning, from robot vacuums and mops to potential humanoid home robots, is, to a large extent, due to the efforts and risks of a small group of scientists, technologists, and engineers. People like Joseph L. Jones, who started dreaming of a robot vacuum cleaner years before the first consumer imagined a pizza-shaped robot doing the dirty work for him. It took, as Jones notes in his book, the right principles, the right people, luck and, for a time, a lack of competition.
Roomba has become a part of our culture (here it’s parodied on SNL) and is still a part of millions of consumers’ lives, but it’s no longer the robotic vacuum monolith it once was. The company became divided into a multitude of choices and prices, and the competition caught up and eventually overtook it.
So raise a glass to iRobot and your Roomba. His best days may be behind him, but at least he left a clear mark in his wake.
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