Bedford-based iRobot launches a new, completely redesigned Roomba robotic vacuum today, a huge jump in performance — and price — for the popular device.
"Our vision for the ultimate vacuum system is the robot you never see, the robot you never touch," iRobot CEO and co-founder Colin Angle said in an interview. "In order to achieve that vision, we had to take out the brushes and take on upright vacuum cleaners."
Unless you benefit from a central vacuuming system or a maid, chances are you've had to clean the tangled-up hair and dirt that accumulates on brushes in the head of a vacuum. The new Roomba doesn't require that annoying ritual. That's because there are no nasty bristles to clean. The new technology, with 12 patents pending, is dubbed the AeroForce Performance Cleaning System, and it's the central innovation of the Roomba 880, which goes on sale for $699.99 at iRobot.com starting today.
Instead of rotating bristles, the Roomba 880 features a pair of rotating cylinders, between which dirt and debris are sucked in. Rubbery treads on the cylinders help beat the dirt and debris out of carpet and solid flooring, guiding it into the vacuum field.
Though I've only had mine since Saturday, the Roomba 880 has shown itself to be a formidable force in the face of two shedding dogs and a toddler. I haven't had to break out the upright vacuum yet. More on that in Monday's weekly gadget feature.
The new Roomba marks the biggest change to the famed line of autonomous vacuums since their introduction in 2002. According to iRobot, the new Roomba does a 50 percent better job cleaning floors, holds 60 percent more debris and contains five times the airflow of previous models.
"We felt it was such a leap forward in functionality that our consumers would be able to step up to the price," said Angle, an alum of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT.
Since the company's founding in 1990, iRobot has been a global leader in robotics, having designed underwater research vehicles, behavior-controlled rovers for NASA and military PackBots, which were the first robots to enter the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
With its defense business lagging as a result of government cutbacks, iRobot needs its home cleaning business, which makes up 90 percent of its revenue, to continue gaining traction in an increasingly competitive field of robovacs.
Fresh off a positive Consumer Reports review for its Roomba 760, iRobot saw shipments of its floor robot revenue increase 16 percent in the most recent quarter, driven by strong growth in Japan.
That's great news for the 500 workers the company employs in Massachusetts — and for the field of robotics, which depends on the cutting-edge research of iRobot.
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