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
cute thinking names
When we built Roomba, we explicitly designed it to not have a face. We didn't want to think it was cute; we wanted people to take it seriously, so we gave it more of an industrial look. People personified their Roomba anyway. Over 80 percent of people name their robot. We did nothing to encourage people to do that, but they do it anyway.
technological-development space robots
That's exciting because to create new value in the robot space quickly, you need to stand on the shoulders of other technological developments.
people care ends
We learned that very few people care how you accomplish something. Instead, these people care more about whether you create value for your end user.
priorities promise vision
My very clear vision for the ideal Roomba is one you never see and you never touch. Our research priorities are explicitly focused on the Roomba of the future that will deliver on the promise of automatically cleaning your floor.
technology voice understanding
When I was building robots in the early 1990s, the problems of voice recognition, image understanding, VOIP, even touchscreen technologies - these were robotics problems.
technology firsts robots
The utility of the robot needs to come first. It's business model over technology.
interesting being-cool artificial-intelligence
Its going to be interesting to see how society deals with artificial intelligence, but it will definitely be cool.
stars real war
In the original 'Star Wars' movie, there is a small toaster-sized and shaped robot on the Death Star that guides Stormtroopers to where they need to go. I always liked that robot because I could imagine how to build it - and it served a real purpose.
moving taken technology
The reason it has taken so long for the robotics industry to move forward is because people keep trying to make something that is cool but difficult to achieve rather than trying to find solutions to actual human problems. Technology can be extremely expensive if you don't focus.
thinking people shapes
I think, people are generally willing to imagine robots of all shapes, as humanoid robots are not practical.
people robots would-be
The ideal vacuum cleaner would be one you never see. It needs to not just be a cool gadget, but a product that cleans your floor correctly. I can imagine people having a cupboard full of robots that only come out when you need them to fulfil a specific purpose.
believe play medicine
I believe one day nano-robots will play an important role in medicine.
names ideas brain
Around the late 1990s, I'd become convinced that one of the killer applications of robotics came from connecting robots to the Internet. The idea of solving generalized artificial intelligence was still far away, but heck, I could rent brains by hiring operators. iRobot was the name of the company and one of our most ambitious projects, iRobot LE.
stars war attention
"Star Wars" was the right movie for me. I watched the MSE-6 droid leading the stormtroopers where they needed to go when they were under attack, and that got my attention much more so than C-3PO and R2-D2 because we could actually build that.