Colin Angle
Colin Angle
iRobot Corporation is an American advanced technology company founded in 1990 by three MIT graduates who designed war robots. Now incorporated in Delaware, the company builds robots such as military and police robots, such as the PackBot along with autonomous home vacuum cleaner, the Scooba that scrubs and cleans hard floors...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
cleaning embraced felt robot
We felt that if we could do it at the right price, the cleaning robot would be embraced by the masses.
critical simplicity
The simplicity of the interaction is one of the most critical things.
age creating early grew mostly
I grew up mostly in Schenectady, N.Y. From an early age, building and creating things was a real passion for me.
human
What did everyone think robot vacuuming was going to be? Well, they think Rosie the Robot from 'The Jetsons,' a human robot that pushed a vacuum. That was never going to happen.
wildly
It's wildly impractical to do so in any real sense.
connect designed function home legs meet name people robots supposed unreliable
We're going to have robots in the home, but they're not going to be walking. Legs are complicated, unreliable and costly. Robots are going to look and be designed to meet the function they're supposed to perform. People will still name them and connect with them.
opportunity people cost
In the end, robots do things that people can do. So there is a cost above which you can hire somebody to do it, and that bounds the opportunity.
ideas likes hollywood
Hollywood likes to imagine robots as mechanical copies of ourselves - which is a terrible idea.
people robots building
Building robot versions of people is very expensive.
support lines robots
In the beginning of Roomba, we all took turns answering the support line. Once, a woman called and explained that her robot had a defective motor. I said, 'Send it back. We'll send you a new one.' She said, 'No - I'm not sending you Rosie.'
real passion creating-things
I grew up mostly in Schenectady, N.Y. From an early age, building and creating things was a real passion for me.
mean ideas understanding
The answer is navigation, manipulation, and implementation of more sophisticated intelligence. The idea that a robot will become more aware of its environment, that telling it to "go to the kitchen" means something - navigation and understanding of the environment is a robot problem. Those are the technological frontiers of the robotics industry.
distance team risk
At the World Cup, there is a constant risk that you might find a bag or some object that has been left behind, and no one is quite sure what it is. To bring in a full bomb-disposal team for each item can be very time-consuming. The PackBot can go over rough terrain, climb stairs, pick things up, and also be operated from a safe distance.
mother book age
I was focused on building things from an early age. When I was about 3, our toilet broke, and my mother was ready to call the plumber. I told her I would fix it and asked her to get my Richard Scarry book 'How Things Work in Busytown.' Between the picture of a toilet and the text she read to me explaining how the parts worked, I fixed it.