Firm hopes this robot will really clean up
Like pool sweepers, vacuum device roams around home on its own power
By Hiawatha Bray
New York Times Service
Sep. 23, 2002. 01:00 AM
SOMERVILLE, MASS. — iRobot Corp. has
sent its robots into the caves of Afghanistan and across the sands of
Egypt. Now comes the hard part — getting past the front door of
the average home.
So far, the only household robots have been costly toys like Sony's
artificial dog Aibo. But iRobot chief executive Colin Angle wants to
put robots in millions of homes. He says that will only happen when
somebody makes a cheap robot that does something useful.
Angle is hoping that the company's latest product, Roomba, an
automated floor cleaner, may fit that bill. Roomba is a six-pound
battery-powered disk with just enough intelligence to scour the dust
and dirt from carpets and bare floors. A user can turn it on and
leave, according to the company, and Roomba will find its way around
the room using a combination of infrared sensors and sophisticated
navigation software embedded in its tiny brain.
While Roomba isn't nearly as advanced as the company's PackBot
military droids, Angle sees the floor cleaner as a far more
significant product. If it catches on, he said, it could create a mass
market for robots. That could liberate the robotics industry from its
dependence of specialized niche markets, and, perhaps, also help
transform iRobot from a little-known 100-person firm into a consumer
electronics company.
In a demonstration at iRobot's offices, Roomba appeared to work
well. But will consumers take a chance on it? Takeo Kanade, professor
of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, has his
doubts. "The customers must have the right expectation and
balance between the cost and utility," said
Kanade. "People's expectations tend to be much higher than what
you think.''
For example, Kanade said Roomba users will have to "pre-clean''
the room, by removing objects that would interfere with the device,
like shoes or books. He questioned whether potential users will want
to be bothered. On the other hand, he praised the $200 price tag and
iRobot's emphasis on the consumer market. "In order for the
robotics field to move on, it must find a mass-market robotics
application," Kanade said. "That's the key.''
iRobot's been in business for about 12 years. MIT graduate Angle
co-founded it with his former professor Rodney Brooks, director of
MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab. The company has made a variety of
industrial and military robots.
Up to now, the company's proudest creation has been the PackBot, a
super tough $50,000 unit that's light enough to be carried into battle
on a soldier's back. PackBots were used to scour the wreckage of
buildings adjoining the World Trade Center after Sept. 11, and they're
also being used by infantrymen to check out Afghan caves for booby
traps and dug-in terrorists. Another iRobot machine is presently on
location in Egypt with Fox Television and the National Geographic
Society, probing unexplored passages inside the Great Pyramid of
Khufu.
But iRobot's newest product grew out of efforts in two far less
glamorous fields — heavy-duty floor cleaning and talking
dolls. "Industrial floor cleaning is a $50 billion a year
industry," said Angle, "and it's almost all
labour."
S.C. Johnson Commercial Markets Inc. teamed with iRobot to invent a
floor-cleaning robot for office buildings and factories. That product
never came to fruition, but along the way, iRobot's engineers became
specialists in sanitation systems. "We really had to understand
the physics of cleaning," said Angle.
At the same time, iRobot worked with toy maker Hasbro to develop My
Real Baby, a $100 doll with realistic behaviours and facial
expressions, activated by touch and motion. Angle says that experience
taught him that for robots to succeed, they had to be priced low
enough for ordinary consumers. "We knew we needed not just to
clean the floor, but to clean the floor at the right price," he
said.
So Roomba's design cuts a few corners. It's made in China of
inexpensive plastics. Its brain is a cheap 8-bit microprocessor,
feeble compared to today's 32-bit Pentium processors. But then, it
doesn't have a lot of thinking to do. It doesn't know whether the
floor is dirty, or whether that shiny object it just picked up was a
gum wrapper or an engagement ring. All it does is run around on the
floor, sweeping and vacuuming.
A software algorithm sets it off on a series of spirals and straight
lines, until it bumps into something. An impact sensor sends the
Roomba scurrying in a new direction, sweeping along until it hits
something else. Angle says that the Roomba will clean a typical room
within half an hour, saving its owner hours of cleaning time a
week. Sounding more like a vacuum cleaner salesman than an engineer,
Angle calls Roomba "four hours of time in a box.''
But the Roomba can't tell when the job is done and shut itself
off. Adding sensors that could tell whether the floor was clean would
make the Roomba far too costly. The user must switch it off or the
battery runs out in about 90 minutes. A recharge takes all night, but
iRobot plans to offer a $69 charger that'll re-juice the battery in a
couple of hours.
Still, Angle is betting that iRobot has found a way to crack the
consumer market. With the holiday shopping season coming up, he'll
soon find out if he's right.
SOMERVILLE, Mass. (September 24) -- A private company working with artificial intelligence claims it's the first to introduce a robotic vacuum cleaner in the United States. The Roomba Intelligent FloorVac, developed by iRobot Corp., sells for $199.95. It was shipped last week to Brookstone, Hammacher Schlemmer and The Sharper Image, but the robot cleaner was designed for the mass market, said Colin Angle, the company's co-founder and chief executive officer.
The trendy retailers were selected because "it's so important for Roomba to be demonstrated," he said. Likewise, a schedule of 30-minute infomercials developed by Infoworx will begin on six popular cable networks Oct. 5. Ultimately the plan is to approach some of the nation's leading chains.
Angle said Roomba would not compete with the Electrolux Trilobite, selling in Europe for more than $1,300; Hoover's promised robot; and other high-end machines. Roomba is battery-operated and can clean a carpeted room in about 60 minutes, making one pass for large particles and a second for fine dirt. Roomba is manufactured in southern China, where iRobot already is making interactive toys for Hasbro, said Angle.