6 ms·

iRobot made Roomba into an icon. Now, it's in a mess

24 points by mathattack 2y ago

Our_Benefactors 2y ago
Roombas are incompatible with good taste (otherwise known as Persian or oriental woven rugs with tassles)
- kbouck 2y ago
  In the rare event that robovacs manage to traverse the treacherous rug tassels, their algorithm should cause them to stay on that rug and finish it before exiting.
4ndrewl 2y ago
That's a shame. I have a 600 series and have replace many of it's parts - it's eminently repairable. Maybe that's part of the problem though - if I can repair it, I have no motivation to purchase a replacement device no matter how much "AI" it might have. /me goes off to buy a bunch of spares from irobot whilst I can
piva00 2y ago
> Just a few years ago, iRobot, best known as the maker of the Roomba, was riding high, with annual revenue topping $1 billion; Amazon bid $1.7 billion to add it to the e-commerce giant’s home technology business. But that deal fell through, and now the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company has reported plunging revenue and steep losses, and recently warned investors of “substantial doubt” about its “ability to continue as a going concern.” With its share price down drastically, it’s now worth about $100 billion. How did the creator of the iconic round robot vacuum—which has sold more than 50 million units—get into this mess? I cannot comprehend these valuations, US$1 billion is a lot of revenue but just because it's an appliance with a bit of technology/software in the products it pushes to P/E > 100, and a P/E of 100 is seen as a "low"? For an appliances company? The financial markets are extremely broken, anything that peddles being "tech of <placeholder>" becomes an absurdity. A P/E of 30-40 for an appliances maker would be very, very good.
- mathattack 2y ago
  Seems like currently consumer robotics companies are being valued like consumer electronics. Having AI doesn’t help the valuation.
- cartermatic 2y ago
  I think they meant $100 million. The current market cap is ~$67 million
- icegreentea2 2y ago
  I -think- the $100 billion is a typo. I -think- it's suppose to be ~$100 million. Anyhow, I don't think its wrong to say (as the article does) that iRobot failed to focus on its core market, but it's also really unfair to iRobot to say should not have attempted to compete in the new product categories (...you just need to look at the product websites for the competitors cited in the article to see that iRobot isn't alone in trying). Fundamentally, iRobot is competing in a commodity market. That's what home automation/electronics will be. I think you hit it right on the head - this is just another form of appliance.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Fuck. Thank you, I should have checked it myself instead of just trusting the article... Doh moment.
hyperman1 2y ago
My Roomba 530 from 2008(?) still goes strong, even if it looks like a war victim after bumping into too many objects. I've replaced the battery with a nonstandard lithium-ion, did a regrease, and replaced the bristles a few times. It always worked good enough for a midweek cat hair cleaning cycle but could never replace the full vacuum. We were looking to replace the poor thing in 2017 or so, and found iRobot wanted WiFi connection to upload our floor plans to the cloud. No way, was our reaction, so we bought some aftermarket parts and revived it. I do wonder how well its scratched surface still detects walls.
- mathattack 2y ago
  How much of the issue is long replacement cycles? No wonder companies introduce planned obsolescence.
  - miah_ 2y ago
    If they sold replacement parts and batteries we'd be fine and they're have their recurring revenue.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
It would be nice if you didn’t have to reconfigure your whole home to make sense for disc shaped robotic vacuuming.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  This. Also vacuuming and mopping are the quickest and easiest parts of the whole house cleaning process so it is not like it is saving yourself so much time anyway.
  - 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
    I do not have one, but as a pet owner, it is a tempting proposition. The task might be low effort, but it is enough that I do not want to handle it daily (or even weekly). Having a robot do a daily okay-ish job without intervention is worth something.
- thatswrong0 2y ago
  Wait why..? Most vacuums sold now make it easy to create no-go zones. The only thing I occasionally have to deal with is loose cables wreaking havoc
ndegruchy 2y ago
I have an i7 and I've been replacing parts on it for ~5 years now. It'd be a shame to have to get into something else, it really has done a great job of cleaning the house. Like another comment said, I might have to go buy a bunch of spare parts in case they do go under.
smartmic 2y ago
I bought a robot vacuum for the first time last fall. When searching for an appliance and reading test reports, it quickly became clear that I had the most faith in Chinese manufacturers in this product category - what a paradigm shift! And this despite the fact that well-known German brands such as Kärcher and Vorwerk also offer such appliances - when it comes to “classic” vacuum cleaners and household appliances in general, it would never have occurred to me to swap the reputation and quality of these brands for Chinese competitors. Times are changing, German manufacturers are simply left behind when it comes to such new innovations. (I'm German, hence my initial preference for German manufacturers - it's probably similar to iRobot for Americans)
kylec 2y ago
> With its share price down drastically, it’s now worth about $100 billion. Typo in the article? A company worth $100 billion must be doing something right I'd say
- azakai 2y ago
  Yeah, "billion" should be "million" in that sentence.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    Anyway market cap is a fiction loosely related to worth, if at all.
- SapporoChris 2y ago
  Stock high at $137 2021/02/08, currently $2.18. "A company worth $100 billion must be doing something right I'd say" I'd say you're wrong.
Larrikin 2y ago
Roomba is exactly what happens when you make a good product, get a good lead and then fill the company with MBAs and think you'll coast along on name alone instead of innovations. Nobody buys Roombas because everything else is way better with way more features. They don't even come up in discussions any more, because they can not compete with Dreame, Roborock or any other vacuum with lidar, step up ability, mopping, and now robotic hands.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  Not only are competitors products better and cheaper but iRobots products actually got worse over time. My first roomba was 2017 and I subsequently got 2 more with more supposed sensors and recognition abilities 2020-2023 and they are just awful. Just the basics of starting, cleaning, and returning to base to charge are handled worse than my 2017 model.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    This exactly. My four-year-old i9 effectively does not work. It can't complete a single run without getting stuck on something, complaining about the container being full (it's not), complaining about the base being full (it's not), not being able to empty the container into the base (and making a huge racket with the repeated attempts), or many other things. If I fix one of the issues, it'll soon find something else to complain about. After twenty years of owning robot vacuums, this is the worst one yet. I switched to a Roborock a few months ago, and so far, this is genuinely the first robot vacuum I've owned that works 99% of the time. It barely ever gets stuck on things and requires very little maintenance. The maintenance it does require is easy to do and clearly explained. Perhaps it'll start to break down in a year or so, but so far, so good.
    - jemmyw 2y ago
      I've got a roborock s6 from 2019 and it's still going very well. I I've had it dismantled a few times, once when the cat pissed on it, once to clean the vacuum motor, and most recently when one of the wheels got clogged. It's really easy to replace individual parts, this is how consumer electronics should be. Unfortunately I've read the later models are harder to repair, and I would like to upgrade for the better mopping and self emptying.
tlogan 2y ago
They’re talking about cheap Chinese alternatives, implying that Roombas are made in the U.S.—but in reality, Roombas are manufactured in Malaysia.
simpaticoder 2y ago
When the iRobot servers go down, it will be a brick, so now is the time to reverse the protocols and figure out how to control it over the local subnet. Besides, there is no justification for connecting it to the public internet, which is an unnecessary DOS risk and moderate privacy risk. I buy no hardware that requires a persistent service to function. I made an exception for this, and now must pay the hackers price.
- Larrikin 2y ago
  If you really want zero network theres always Valetudo, https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/ But most of the vacuums want internet access for setup, but then work completely fine being blocked from the internet after.
- don-code 2y ago
  I can't be sure about the latest models, but my two iRobot products - a Roomba 650 and a Braava 380t - don't have Wi-Fi connectivity to begin with. The Roomba has physical buttons on it, which allow you to set a cleaning schedule if you so choose. There's also a small LED display, and a speaker that "says" what's wrong. The Braava, by contrast, is a dumb-as-bricks device with two buttons - "mop" (which uses mop-like motions) and "sweep" (which uses broom-like motions). Do they bump into stuff? Yep. Do I call them "dumbass" as I watch them clean? Sure do. But they're otherwise perfectly capable little single-function devices that don't try to do anything more than they really need to do.
- echoangle 2y ago
  What are the odds you can even do that without extensive hardware modifications? If they have hardcoded URLs for the API and the certificates for that, how would you intercept that? Without rewriting the storage in the robot itself, which would be hard for most people.
rkagerer 2y ago
Has anyone made a Roomba (or clone) yet that plugs into a central vac inlet?
- Larrikin 2y ago
  Every single major player in the space has this feature. Some of the better ones also give you the ability plug directly into your water lines so you never have to refill or dump the mop water.
  - tguvot 2y ago
    show me one that plugs into central vacuum
    - joquarky 2y ago
      We aren't genAI.
      - tguvot 2y ago
        well, whoever i was responding to, was most definitely hallucinating answer. so chances are that he is at least llm
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        Larrikin 2y ago
        Explain what you think it means because you have a lot of grammatical errors in all of your posts, there are many vacuums with central bases that deposit their dirt, you don't have to dump them for months, and they are trivial to find in any cursory search of good robovacs. There's no problems explaining stuff if English isn't your first language, but you don't get to be snarky because of your mistakes.
        2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Hansenq 2y ago
This is one of the clearest example of overzealous regulation leading to the West losing one of its strongest household robot brands to Chinese upstarts. Robot was not in a particularly financial good shape beforehand, but at least had models that could compete against the Chinese competitors. Because it was running out of cash, it tried to get acquired by Amazon for $1.4B. This was, by no means, an ideal deal, but it would have put the company on stable financial footing, and let it continue as a brand (similar to Alexa or Ring). However, European and FTC regulators prevented the deal, saying that this was an invasion of home privacy by the big-bad Amazon. Fast forwards three years and today, all of the robot vacuums you buy today are Chinese-made and iRobot is about to declare bankruptcy. We traded off home privacy from Amazon to an upstart Chinese company and lost a leading $1.4B company. Great. I don't know about you, but I trust Amazon more with my data than a Chinese company. https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/amazon-irobot-abandon-merger-face-eu-opposition-2024-01-29/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/amazon-irobot-abandon-... https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23379036/amazon-irobot-roomba-elizabeth-warren-antitrust-ftc-lina-khan https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23379036/amazon-irobot-ro...
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  I don't understand - how was overzealous regulation the thing that held back iRobot?
- Larrikin 2y ago
  Ring is a shell of its former self, has implemented a bunch of things nobody wants, has bricked other products, was giving away camera data to anyone in the government that asked, among other terrible things. It is a brand to be avoided and is never recommended anymore in the smart home community. We would actually be better off if Ring had died as a company instead of being sold to Amazon.
- p_ing 2y ago
  Companies don't have a right to life. Nor would selling to Amazon guarantee the product had any future -- Amazon may pick apart the pieces they want and kill the robot anyway. And you can choose to not trust Amazon as well as $random$ Chinese company to your data. It's still possible to get an upright vacuum or broom.
milleramp 2y ago
I have bought more than 10 Roomba's (all used) over many years. I have slowly moved them around for different jobs, older 5,6,700 series made their way to clean the garage, while newer I, S models are working the upper levels of flooring and carpets. In the last 5-10 years it looks to me like they had two competing teams internally producing different models. The I,J series compared to the S series, are very different. The mops scooba vs braava. I really like their designs and repairability but if I had to update I would probably try one of the roborocks they seem to be a lot better.
4d4m 2y ago
Tide shifted in 2017 when the CEO suggested selling map data of people's private homes to tech company would be a revenue option. Glad we have wifi-as-a sensor to help fill the gap and help "advertisers" get an accurate picture of our 3d spaces and what's within. What a future.

24 points by mathattack 2y ago

Our_Benefactors 2y ago

Roombas are incompatible with good taste (otherwise known as Persian or oriental woven rugs with tassles)

kbouck 2y ago
In the rare event that robovacs manage to traverse the treacherous rug tassels, their algorithm should cause them to stay on that rug and finish it before exiting.

4ndrewl 2y ago

That's a shame. I have a 600 series and have replace many of it's parts - it's eminently repairable. Maybe that's part of the problem though - if I can repair it, I have no motivation to purchase a replacement device no matter how much "AI" it might have. /me goes off to buy a bunch of spares from irobot whilst I can

piva00 2y ago

> Just a few years ago, iRobot, best known as the maker of the Roomba, was riding high, with annual revenue topping $1 billion; Amazon bid $1.7 billion to add it to the e-commerce giant’s home technology business. But that deal fell through, and now the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company has reported plunging revenue and steep losses, and recently warned investors of “substantial doubt” about its “ability to continue as a going concern.” With its share price down drastically, it’s now worth about $100 billion. How did the creator of the iconic round robot vacuum—which has sold more than 50 million units—get into this mess? I cannot comprehend these valuations, US$1 billion is a lot of revenue but just because it's an appliance with a bit of technology/software in the products it pushes to P/E > 100, and a P/E of 100 is seen as a "low"? For an appliances company? The financial markets are extremely broken, anything that peddles being "tech of <placeholder>" becomes an absurdity. A P/E of 30-40 for an appliances maker would be very, very good.

mathattack 2y ago
Seems like currently consumer robotics companies are being valued like consumer electronics. Having AI doesn’t help the valuation.
cartermatic 2y ago
I think they meant $100 million. The current market cap is ~$67 million
icegreentea2 2y ago
I -think- the $100 billion is a typo. I -think- it's suppose to be ~$100 million. Anyhow, I don't think its wrong to say (as the article does) that iRobot failed to focus on its core market, but it's also really unfair to iRobot to say should not have attempted to compete in the new product categories (...you just need to look at the product websites for the competitors cited in the article to see that iRobot isn't alone in trying). Fundamentally, iRobot is competing in a commodity market. That's what home automation/electronics will be. I think you hit it right on the head - this is just another form of appliance.
- piva00 2y ago
  Fuck. Thank you, I should have checked it myself instead of just trusting the article... Doh moment.

hyperman1 2y ago

My Roomba 530 from 2008(?) still goes strong, even if it looks like a war victim after bumping into too many objects. I've replaced the battery with a nonstandard lithium-ion, did a regrease, and replaced the bristles a few times. It always worked good enough for a midweek cat hair cleaning cycle but could never replace the full vacuum. We were looking to replace the poor thing in 2017 or so, and found iRobot wanted WiFi connection to upload our floor plans to the cloud. No way, was our reaction, so we bought some aftermarket parts and revived it. I do wonder how well its scratched surface still detects walls.

mathattack 2y ago
How much of the issue is long replacement cycles? No wonder companies introduce planned obsolescence.
- miah_ 2y ago
  If they sold replacement parts and batteries we'd be fine and they're have their recurring revenue.

doctorpangloss 2y ago

It would be nice if you didn’t have to reconfigure your whole home to make sense for disc shaped robotic vacuuming.

prmoustache 2y ago
This. Also vacuuming and mopping are the quickest and easiest parts of the whole house cleaning process so it is not like it is saving yourself so much time anyway.
- 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
  I do not have one, but as a pet owner, it is a tempting proposition. The task might be low effort, but it is enough that I do not want to handle it daily (or even weekly). Having a robot do a daily okay-ish job without intervention is worth something.
thatswrong0 2y ago
Wait why..? Most vacuums sold now make it easy to create no-go zones. The only thing I occasionally have to deal with is loose cables wreaking havoc

ndegruchy 2y ago

I have an i7 and I've been replacing parts on it for ~5 years now. It'd be a shame to have to get into something else, it really has done a great job of cleaning the house. Like another comment said, I might have to go buy a bunch of spare parts in case they do go under.

smartmic 2y ago

I bought a robot vacuum for the first time last fall. When searching for an appliance and reading test reports, it quickly became clear that I had the most faith in Chinese manufacturers in this product category - what a paradigm shift! And this despite the fact that well-known German brands such as Kärcher and Vorwerk also offer such appliances - when it comes to “classic” vacuum cleaners and household appliances in general, it would never have occurred to me to swap the reputation and quality of these brands for Chinese competitors. Times are changing, German manufacturers are simply left behind when it comes to such new innovations. (I'm German, hence my initial preference for German manufacturers - it's probably similar to iRobot for Americans)

kylec 2y ago

> With its share price down drastically, it’s now worth about $100 billion. Typo in the article? A company worth $100 billion must be doing something right I'd say

azakai 2y ago
Yeah, "billion" should be "million" in that sentence.
- kazinator 2y ago
  Anyway market cap is a fiction loosely related to worth, if at all.
SapporoChris 2y ago
Stock high at $137 2021/02/08, currently $2.18. "A company worth $100 billion must be doing something right I'd say" I'd say you're wrong.

Larrikin 2y ago

Roomba is exactly what happens when you make a good product, get a good lead and then fill the company with MBAs and think you'll coast along on name alone instead of innovations. Nobody buys Roombas because everything else is way better with way more features. They don't even come up in discussions any more, because they can not compete with Dreame, Roborock or any other vacuum with lidar, step up ability, mopping, and now robotic hands.

steveBK123 2y ago
Not only are competitors products better and cheaper but iRobots products actually got worse over time. My first roomba was 2017 and I subsequently got 2 more with more supposed sensors and recognition abilities 2020-2023 and they are just awful. Just the basics of starting, cleaning, and returning to base to charge are handled worse than my 2017 model.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  This exactly. My four-year-old i9 effectively does not work. It can't complete a single run without getting stuck on something, complaining about the container being full (it's not), complaining about the base being full (it's not), not being able to empty the container into the base (and making a huge racket with the repeated attempts), or many other things. If I fix one of the issues, it'll soon find something else to complain about. After twenty years of owning robot vacuums, this is the worst one yet. I switched to a Roborock a few months ago, and so far, this is genuinely the first robot vacuum I've owned that works 99% of the time. It barely ever gets stuck on things and requires very little maintenance. The maintenance it does require is easy to do and clearly explained. Perhaps it'll start to break down in a year or so, but so far, so good.
  - jemmyw 2y ago
    I've got a roborock s6 from 2019 and it's still going very well. I I've had it dismantled a few times, once when the cat pissed on it, once to clean the vacuum motor, and most recently when one of the wheels got clogged. It's really easy to replace individual parts, this is how consumer electronics should be. Unfortunately I've read the later models are harder to repair, and I would like to upgrade for the better mopping and self emptying.

tlogan 2y ago

They’re talking about cheap Chinese alternatives, implying that Roombas are made in the U.S.—but in reality, Roombas are manufactured in Malaysia.

simpaticoder 2y ago

When the iRobot servers go down, it will be a brick, so now is the time to reverse the protocols and figure out how to control it over the local subnet. Besides, there is no justification for connecting it to the public internet, which is an unnecessary DOS risk and moderate privacy risk. I buy no hardware that requires a persistent service to function. I made an exception for this, and now must pay the hackers price.

Larrikin 2y ago
If you really want zero network theres always Valetudo, https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/ But most of the vacuums want internet access for setup, but then work completely fine being blocked from the internet after.
don-code 2y ago
I can't be sure about the latest models, but my two iRobot products - a Roomba 650 and a Braava 380t - don't have Wi-Fi connectivity to begin with. The Roomba has physical buttons on it, which allow you to set a cleaning schedule if you so choose. There's also a small LED display, and a speaker that "says" what's wrong. The Braava, by contrast, is a dumb-as-bricks device with two buttons - "mop" (which uses mop-like motions) and "sweep" (which uses broom-like motions). Do they bump into stuff? Yep. Do I call them "dumbass" as I watch them clean? Sure do. But they're otherwise perfectly capable little single-function devices that don't try to do anything more than they really need to do.
echoangle 2y ago
What are the odds you can even do that without extensive hardware modifications? If they have hardcoded URLs for the API and the certificates for that, how would you intercept that? Without rewriting the storage in the robot itself, which would be hard for most people.

rkagerer 2y ago

Has anyone made a Roomba (or clone) yet that plugs into a central vac inlet?

Larrikin 2y ago
Every single major player in the space has this feature. Some of the better ones also give you the ability plug directly into your water lines so you never have to refill or dump the mop water.
- tguvot 2y ago
  show me one that plugs into central vacuum
  - joquarky 2y ago
    We aren't genAI.
    - tguvot 2y ago
      well, whoever i was responding to, was most definitely hallucinating answer. so chances are that he is at least llm
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Larrikin 2y ago
        Explain what you think it means because you have a lot of grammatical errors in all of your posts, there are many vacuums with central bases that deposit their dirt, you don't have to dump them for months, and they are trivial to find in any cursory search of good robovacs. There's no problems explaining stuff if English isn't your first language, but you don't get to be snarky because of your mistakes.
        2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Hansenq 2y ago

This is one of the clearest example of overzealous regulation leading to the West losing one of its strongest household robot brands to Chinese upstarts. Robot was not in a particularly financial good shape beforehand, but at least had models that could compete against the Chinese competitors. Because it was running out of cash, it tried to get acquired by Amazon for $1.4B. This was, by no means, an ideal deal, but it would have put the company on stable financial footing, and let it continue as a brand (similar to Alexa or Ring). However, European and FTC regulators prevented the deal, saying that this was an invasion of home privacy by the big-bad Amazon. Fast forwards three years and today, all of the robot vacuums you buy today are Chinese-made and iRobot is about to declare bankruptcy. We traded off home privacy from Amazon to an upstart Chinese company and lost a leading $1.4B company. Great. I don't know about you, but I trust Amazon more with my data than a Chinese company. https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/amazon-irobot-abandon-merger-face-eu-opposition-2024-01-29/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/amazon-irobot-abandon-... https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23379036/amazon-irobot-roomba-elizabeth-warren-antitrust-ftc-lina-khan https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23379036/amazon-irobot-ro...

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
I don't understand - how was overzealous regulation the thing that held back iRobot?
Larrikin 2y ago
Ring is a shell of its former self, has implemented a bunch of things nobody wants, has bricked other products, was giving away camera data to anyone in the government that asked, among other terrible things. It is a brand to be avoided and is never recommended anymore in the smart home community. We would actually be better off if Ring had died as a company instead of being sold to Amazon.
p_ing 2y ago
Companies don't have a right to life. Nor would selling to Amazon guarantee the product had any future -- Amazon may pick apart the pieces they want and kill the robot anyway. And you can choose to not trust Amazon as well as $random$ Chinese company to your data. It's still possible to get an upright vacuum or broom.

milleramp 2y ago

I have bought more than 10 Roomba's (all used) over many years. I have slowly moved them around for different jobs, older 5,6,700 series made their way to clean the garage, while newer I, S models are working the upper levels of flooring and carpets. In the last 5-10 years it looks to me like they had two competing teams internally producing different models. The I,J series compared to the S series, are very different. The mops scooba vs braava. I really like their designs and repairability but if I had to update I would probably try one of the roborocks they seem to be a lot better.

4d4m 2y ago

Tide shifted in 2017 when the CEO suggested selling map data of people's private homes to tech company would be a revenue option. Glad we have wifi-as-a sensor to help fill the gap and help "advertisers" get an accurate picture of our 3d spaces and what's within. What a future.