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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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
On this episode of Version History<\/em><\/a>, we tell the story of the Roomba, and how it made vacuums lovable. The Verge<\/em>\u2019s David Pierce and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy are joined by iRobot\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is the second episode of the fourth season of Version History<\/em>. If you missed last week\u2019s season premiere, on the Harmony remote<\/a>, make sure you catch up! Here\u2019s how to get every episode, and all our other fun stuff, as soon as it drops:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n