Technology Jun 21, 2026 · 1 min read

How Roomba started a robot revolution

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 probabl...

TH
The Verge
by David Pierce
How Roomba started a robot revolution
A photo of a robot vacuum sucking up cereal.

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 try …

Read the full story at The Verge.

TH
Source

This article was originally published by The Verge and written by David Pierce.

Read original article on The Verge
Back to Discover

Reading List