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.
wildly
It's wildly impractical to do so in any real sense.
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.
floors home robot vacuum
You're not going to talk to your vacuum cleaning robot: in fact, you may never see your vacuum cleaning robot because, ideally, you come home every day and your floors are freshly vacuumed.
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.
cell consumer core robot strong synergy ultimately
There is strong synergy with consumer electronics. The core of a robot could ultimately be a cell phone.
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.
build platform reliable stuff
If you want to make a serious, rugged, reliable robot, you can start with the Create platform and just build stuff on top of it.
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.