Monday, Oct. 25, 2010
iRobot Roomba
How does a company transition from making robots that pick up bombs to making robots that pick up dirt off the kitchen floor? What about the robots that clean your pool, vacuum the nuts and bolts off the workshop floor or wash floors for that matter? In 1990, a group of engineers from MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab founded iRobot. Eight years later they received a DARPA contract that led to the creation of the PackBot, a military robot that has been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to aid in the disposal of bombs and other dangerous situations. The Roomba came two years later, in 2000, and has become a YouTube sensation for its ability to carry kittens.