is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
If you had a Roomba, especially in the early days of the robot vacuum, it was in many ways a fairly unsophisticated machine. It would just bump around your house, looking for something to suck up, until its battery died or its (way too small) tank filled up. Not that it mattered, though. You probably loved your Roomba. You probably gave it a name.
On this episode of Version History, we tell the story of the Roomba, and how it made vacuums lovable. The Verge’s David Pierce and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy are joined by iRobot’s co-founder and former CEO Colin Angle to trace the robovac revolution back to its origins, with a group of engineers trying desperately to build a business out of robots. Any kind of robots. We explain how iRobot developed Roomba for nearly a decade, all the times it nearly fell apart, and the somewhat surprising reasons the product took off. We also look at the vast market that grew around Roomba, and the ways iRobot failed to keep up.
This is the second episode of the fourth season of Version History. If you missed last week’s season premiere, on the Harmony remote, make sure you catch up! Here’s how to get every episode, and all our other fun stuff, as soon as it drops:
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If you want to know more about the Roomba’s long backstory, here are a few links to get you started:
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