iRobot

iRobot
legal form	Corporation
ISIN	US4627261005
founding	1990
Seat	Bedford , USA
management	Colin M. Angle ( CEO )
Number of employees	1,128 (2019)
sales	$ 1.21 billion (2019)
Branch	mechanical engineering
Website	www.irobot.com
	As of December 31, 2019

IRobot's corporate headquarters in Bedford, Massachusetts

iRobot is a US company that manufactures robots and is listed on the NASDAQ technology stock market index . The best- known service robots from iRobot are the vacuum cleaner robot Roomba and the floor cleaning robot Scooba (now Braava). The company also originally made robots for military use.

history

IRobot founders Rodney Brooks , Colin Angle and Helen Greiner were inspired to build and develop robots from their previous work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Rodney Brooks was also director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1997 to 2007 .

iRobot was founded in 1990 and went public in 2003. On December 9, 2005, the company raised $ 120 million from the sale of five million shares. In September 2012 iRobot bought Evolution robotics . In February 2016, iRobot announced the sale of its military and security robots business to Arlington Capital Partners for $ 45 million to focus on home robots and home automation technologies. Endeavor Robotics, a military equipment company based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts , emerged from the defense and security division . Endeavor Robotics has been a subsidiary of FLIR Systems since 2019 .

In 2017 iRobot took over the Sales on Demand Corporation (SODC) and founded new branches in Japan. In the same year, the Lyon-based distributor Robopolis, now Irobot France, was taken over and new branches were established in Europe.

According to its own information, iRobot has sold around 30 million home robots worldwide. (Status: 2020)

Development of the service robot division

2002: Presentation of the Roomba floor vacuum robot

2005: Presentation of the Scooba robot mop

2007: Presentation of the pool cleaning robot Verro

2007: Presentation of the gutter cleaning robot Looj

2007: Presentation of the programmable mobile robot Create

2013: Presentation of the pool cleaning robot Mirra

2016: Presentation of the Braava jet mopping robot (emerged from the Mint of the acquired company Evolution Robotics)

2019: The Root coding robot is added

2019: Announcement of the Terra robotic lawnmower

Data transfer to Google

Vacuum cleaners from the Roomba i7 device class automatically create maps of the apartment or house in order not to drive around blindly. All wireless devices in the vicinity and their location are known through WLAN signals. These cards are sent to iRobot servers in the United States. In order to receive the map data, Google agreed to hand it over to the Google Assistant. The Google Assistant should automatically assign devices to rooms.

Products

Service robot (as of June 2020)

Roomba : vacuum cleaner robot , several model lines. The premium line is the s series

Braava jet : robot mop for kitchens, bathrooms, small areas (wet and dry). The premium line is the m series

Terra : robotic lawnmower, model t7

Mirra : pool cleaning robot, model 530

Looj : Gutter cleaning robot for professional use, model 330

Programmable service robots (as of June 2020)

Create : self-programmable robot without suction unit based on Roomba , model 2
Root : version for the youngest

Former police and military robots

PackBot : Police, SWAT and military robots

SUGV (Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle): Police and military robot, the successor to the PackBot and part of the US Army's Future Combat Systems program
First look : military robots
Warrior : military robots