iRobot Bankruptcy, Robots, and Smarts

by Rian

iRobot filed for Chapter 11. The news shouldn’t surprise anyone. Since the Amazon deal faltered, it seemed only a matter of time until some form of reorganization is needed. This bankruptcy may be that catalyst, a second chance. That’s likely the business side of iRobot’s saga. I believe the current downfall of iRobot has less to do with robots themselves, but softwares or “smarts”.

Looking back, iRobot’s slow adaption of latest hardware feature did play some roles: limited modes of cleaning and maintenance-heavy. At the time of writing, most mid to high end robot vacuums are vacuum-mop hybrids. Though there are variations of how the mopping is done, it is undoubtedly faster than the model iRobot had suggested (Linked Clean, two robots working independently). If the robots were smart enough, if the Linked Clean worked smartly, it could have kept the product line some time. And these robots also needed more frequent maintenance by the user. For example, the mop pad on the robot had to be replaced by hand; whereas, most mopping robots from the competitors already had self-washing per room. It was an odd choice iRobot did not see value in some form of self-washing or self-loading mop pads, when the vacuums already had self-emptying bins.

Ultimately it’s the smarts of these robots that broke iRobot’s back. The apps and firmwares rarely introduced a new feature, and a lot of times it was only available through a new machine. Linked Clean as an example, it needed some significant scheduling features to make it work properly. For instance, the vacuum should cover the overlapping areas (e.g. hallways leading to each rooms) before the mop could begin. In reality, unless the user manually initiate separate cleaning per rooms and areas, it was impossible to make such a cleaning routine. One could argue it still “worked”, but not enough to consider buying one at the same price point when competitors were offering new features and hardware improvements.

Long-term software support is the upmost importance in this day and age. Hardwares, while the latest products will always have advantage, can be equipped with better softwares to stand the test of time for few more years. I doubt anyone would think a serious overhaul is necessary to create a scheduling feature for routines; and it won’t be a huge burden to the servers or to the user’s smartphone either. I hope it is a lesson all appliance manufacturers willing to put “smart” in their products would take it heart — it better be actually smart, or at least get smarter.