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
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.
almost carried compelling exciting held next people robotics
Robotics has been around forever, and it's been the next big thing forever, and it is so exciting and compelling that it's easy to get carried away. People almost always do, and that's one of the things that has held back the industry.
best boxes car parents ran
I thought boxes were the best toy. When my parents got a new car, I ran to my mother and said, 'Did it come in a box?'
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.