We have some history, iRobot and I, or at least Roomba, the first commercially viable consumer robot vacuum, and I do. So when I read the news that iRobot was so cash-strapped that it might have to cease operations, a wave of sadness washed over me.
Perhaps this feeling was intensified because the news came as I was finishing Joseph L. Jones’s new book. Dancing with Roomba. Jones, an early iRobot employee and the original engineer behind Roomba (an MIT scientist, the robot vacuum was basically the idea of Jones and a colleague).
Starting 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. While I don’t remember the details, I think it was my long-standing fascination with robots that led me to them and their still young company, iRobot. Brooks, in particular, was a genius who discovered that a behavior-based approach to robot programming could lead to long-term success. The team built iRobot (although it was then called IS Robotics) and Jones soon joined.
When I met them, iRobot already had one spectacular flop under their belt: My Real Baby (made in association with Hasbro). It was expensive ($98) and perhaps a little strange, perhaps consumers’ first encounter with the uncanny valley.
iRobot quickly pivoted to maximum effort on the robot vacuum project, which would then consume the next two years of its initial life. The company’s other business, on which Greiner focused much of his time, was military robots like Packbot, which could be thrown through walls, windows and tunnels to perform hard, dirty jobs that might otherwise damage 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 the engineering, design and development workshop while Jones and his colleagues solved some really difficult but, to the average analog vacuum, prosaic problems.
I was fascinated to learn, for example, that for much of its development, 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 cleaner and that it would be the first thing to turn on when you turn on the Roomba.
It worked and we could afford it.
When I saw the first Roomba in late 2002, it was already fully formed; a disc about 3 inches tall with a pronounced gray bumper and an odd way to clean an entire floor or carpet. Jones explains in detail how the team solved 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 started. There are now cameras and sensors that can map not just a room but an entire house.
I remember filming a local TV segment with a Roomba running loudly on the table behind me. The fact that it never plummeted was another achievement that Jones wrote required not only wheels that could, depending on elevation, detect when they were no longer touching the ground, but also additional backup sensors to read voltage changes. In other words, the first-generation small robot was even built with redundancies.
And did I mention it was only $199? Jones writes about all the effort iRobot put into keeping the number of components and motors low to manage costs. It was 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 cleaner at an exorbitant $1,500.
Roomba was not only interesting and new; It was effective. I remember marveling when he swept up the Cheerios on my office floor and being even more surprised when I first pulled out the small trash can and found it full of debris.
iRobot went on to sell tens of millions of Roombas, and many of them ended up costing well over $500. But the company also spawned countless competitors and imitators, some of which iRobot bought, such as Evolution Robotics (which developed an excellent localization system).
Some companies sold cheaper robots that seemed to do the same thing as Roomba, and eventually the innovator was simply part of the robot’s vacuum package.
In recent years, the company has struggled to compete and stand out. When we were dazzled at CES 2025 by a robot vacuum cleaner that came with a retractable arm to pick up and move obstacles, iRobot was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the innovative Roborock robot vacuum cleaner is now making great strides in cleaning automation.
Perhaps iRobot’s last chance to return to its former glory was a potential acquisition by Amazon, but that was scuttled a couple of years ago. Soon, CEO Colin Angle exited.
I can’t clean up this mess
Now, the company reported in a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission explaining the risks of not obtaining a loan waiver extension: “If this waiver is not extended to the end of the applicable period, we will be in default. “Our financial situation continues to worsen and we may not be able to secure the additional financing necessary to continue our operations.”
I don’t know what will happen to iRobot, but I think it’s worth considering that its possible demise represents more than just another overextended technology company going under.
Our adoption of automated cleaning, from robotic vacuum cleaners and mops to potential humanoid home robots, is largely due to the efforts and risks of a small group of scientists, technologists and engineers. People like Joseph L. Jones, who started dreaming about a robot vacuum cleaner years before the first consumer imagined a pizza-shaped robot doing their dirty work for them. It took, as Jones points out in his book, the right principles, people, luck and, for a time, a lack of competition.
Roomba has become a part of our culture (it’s parodied here on SNL) and remains a part of the lives of millions of consumers, but it’s no longer the robotic vacuum monolith it once was. The business fractured into a multitude of options and prices, and competition caught up and eventually surpassed it.
So toast iRobot and your Roomba. His brightest days may be behind him, but at least he left a clean trail in his path.
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