"There's something painfully American about the arc of iRobot, the company that taught your vacuum to navigate around the furniture. Founded in 1990 in Bedford, Massachusetts by MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks and his former students Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, ending a 35-year run that took it from the dreams of AI researchers to your kitchen floor and, finally, to the tender mercies of its Chinese supplier."
"Brooks, the founding director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and the robotics field's resident provocateur, spent the eighties watching insects and having epiphanies about how simple systems could produce complex behaviors. By 1990, he'd translated those insights into a company that would eventually sell over 50 million robots. The Roomba, launched in 2002, became the rare gadget that transcended its category to become a verb, a meme, and, to the amusement of many, a cat-transportation device."
iRobot was founded in 1990 in Bedford, Massachusetts by MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks and former students Colin Angle and Helen Greiner. The company applied simple, insect-inspired robotic principles to create consumer robots and sold over 50 million devices. The Roomba vacuum, launched in 2002, became a cultural phenomenon and a dominant consumer product. iRobot raised venture capital, went public in 2005, and by 2015 had established a venture arm to invest in robotics startups. Amazon agreed to acquire iRobot for $1.7 billion in 2022, offering an apparent exit. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after 35 years, impacted by manufacturing and supplier dynamics.
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