CNET's Road Trip 2010 series dropped by iRobot HQ, where "Cool Stuff" is aptly emblazoned on the doors. They snapped a number of interesting photos of lesser-known iRobot history / robots, including: underwater gliders, previously unseen chembot prototypes, and Landroids (mini-Packbots). But perhaps the most interesting nugget was the Roomba testing lab, where Roombas scuttle around for 1500-2000 hours of durability testing across various floor types with different levels of dirtiness -- check out the video below. The multi-floor testing is uncannily similar to that which we performed on the Roomba Dustpan robot.
This is the Roomba testing lab:
The CNET article talked at length about the iRobot military connection, but I found these two statements (about iRobot's research efforts and new healthcare robotics push) particularly interesting:
With that in mind, iRobot's research division focuses on four main areas:
- Autonomy--which Dyer obviously sees as a big part of the company's future;
- Human-Robot Interaction, which will, in part, utilize autonomy to help users more efficiently control their robots;
- Collaboration--which could mean single users can simultaneously control multiple robots;
- and New platforms.
But Angle also had a forward-looking message. To him, iRobot's commercial future is centered on health care and care-giving. He explained that over time, as humans live longer, the number of people available to take care of the elderly--family members and friends, mainly--is shrinking due to major cultural and demographic shifts.
CNET's gallery has many interesting items, including (left-to-right): the "cool stuff" HQ doors, a new chembot prototype, and a mini-Packbot "landroid" robot.
[CNET via Robot Stock News]