Roomba
The only robot that truly conquered the home did it by vacuuming, not by promising.
Why this verdict · Updated July 2026
We rate it REAL with the most massive argument there is: twenty-four years and more than 50 million units operating in the least scriptable environment on Earth, other people's homes, with rearranged furniture, cables, pets and stairs. No home robot has passed anything remotely like that exam. The honest caution is corporate, not technical: iRobot filed for Chapter 11 in December 2025 and emerged in February 2026 in the hands of Picea Robotics, its Chinese manufacturer. The robot is real; the business of selling it barely survived.
What it does well
- The most proven home autonomy in history: 24 years in real houses
- It defined the whole category: robot vacuum and Roomba are near synonyms
- It does one task and does it unsupervised, the pattern that actually works
- Appliance pricing, not luxury-gadget pricing
What it doesn’t
- Its maker went bankrupt in 2025: it now belongs to its former Chinese manufacturer
- Rivals like Roborock outpaced it on features and market share for years
- It only vacuums (and mops on some models): expect nothing more
- Camera models raise the privacy questions of any robot with eyes
Specifications
| Maker | iRobot (Bedford, Massachusetts, 1990) |
|---|---|
| Launch | September 18, 2002, at $199.95 |
| Robots sold (iRobot) | 50 million+ |
| Navigation | From behavioral bounce to camera and lidar mapping |
| Current price | From ~$250 to ~$1,400 depending on tier |
| Maker's status | Chapter 11 (Dec 2025), acquired by Picea Robotics (Feb 2026) |
A disc that thinks like an insect
The first Roomba didn't know where it was. No map, no camera, no memory of the living room: it bumped gently, turned, spiraled and recrossed the room on paths that looked random because they were. That apparent chaos was a scientific thesis: Rodney Brooks, iRobot co-founder and MIT professor, had argued since the 1980s that intelligence needs no central plan, and had proven it with Genghis, a six-legged insect robot that walked without understanding the concept of walking. The Roomba is that insect's direct descendant: a handful of simple behaviors (advance, bounce, follow the wall, spiral) that add up to a clean room.
Today's generations do carry a map: they navigate with cameras or lidar and the SLAM techniques that later reached warehouse robots and cars. But the dinner-table fact is still the original one: the world's best-selling vacuum descends from a robot built to walk like an insect, and for its first years it cleaned millions of homes without knowing which one it was in.
Fourteen failures before the first clean house
Behind the disc are three people and twelve years of closed doors. Brooks and two of his students from MIT's AI lab, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, founded iRobot in 1990 and tried, by their own count, fourteen business models before hitting: space robots, toys with Hasbro, military robots. Every failure left a part behind (the toys taught them to manufacture cheaply, the military bots to survive mud) and all of them ended up inside a $199.95 vacuum. We tell that full story, characters included, in Fourteen failures and a vacuum cleaner.
The same year the Roomba hit stores, 2002, the same company's military PackBots were exploring caves in Afghanistan, and in 2011 they would enter the Fukushima reactors where no human could. Few companies have covered a range like that: from your living room to a nuclear plant in meltdown, with the same philosophy of ugly, cheap, useful robots.
The pioneer that nearly died of success
The end of the story is less kind. Amazon announced in 2022 it would buy iRobot for $1.7 billion; European regulators frowned and the deal collapsed in January 2024, leaving the company indebted with no plan B while Chinese rivals like Roborock overtook it on features and price. On December 14, 2025, iRobot filed for Chapter 11; in February 2026 it emerged from the process as the property of Picea Robotics, the Chinese manufacturer that assembled its robots. The company that taught the world a robot could live at home ended up bought by its own assembly line.
For anyone who owns or wants a Roomba, the practical verdict doesn't change: the robots remain on sale, the apps work and the warranties hold. But the deeper lesson belongs to all of home robotics: being real is not enough to win. The Roomba solved autonomy and its creator still lost the market; the home humanoids arriving teleoperated today have both battles ahead of them.
Industries
Stories
Fourteen failures and a vacuum cleaner
Frequently asked
Who invented the Roomba?
iRobot, the company founded in 1990 by Rodney Brooks, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, three engineers from MIT's AI lab. They launched it on September 18, 2002 at $199.95, after twelve years and fourteen failed business models.
What happened to iRobot? Does Roomba still exist?
iRobot filed for Chapter 11 in December 2025, after its sale to Amazon collapsed and years of losing ground to Chinese rivals. It emerged in February 2026 owned by Picea Robotics, its Chinese manufacturer. Roombas remain on sale and the apps and warranties are maintained.
How much does a Roomba cost?
From about $250 for basic models to near $1,400 for flagships with auto-empty and mopping. The 2002 original cost $199.95, the price that turned the robot into an appliance.
Are Roombas truly autonomous?
Yes, within their task: they navigate, clean, avoid obstacles and return to charge without intervention. It is the most proven home autonomy in existence, with 24 years and tens of millions of units in real homes. What they don't do is anything other than clean floors.