Things continue to look bleak for the original robot vacuum maker. iRobot’s third-quarter results, released last week, show that revenue is down and “well below our internal expectations due to continuing market headwinds, ongoing production delays, and unforeseen shipping disruptions,” said Gary Cohen, iRobot CEO, in a press release.
This meant they had to spend more cash and are now down to under $25 million. “At this time, the Company has no sources upon which it can draw for additional capital,” said Cohen.
The Roomba manufacturer has been struggling for several years in the face of increased competition from Chinese manufacturers. A sale to Amazon in 2022 looked to be its lifeline; however, regulatory scrutiny scuppered the deal, and the company was left in further turmoil. It laid off over 30 percent of its staff, lost its founder and CEO, Colin Angle, and was left with substantial debt as a result of the fallout.
This year, iRobot launched an entirely new line of robot vacuums, ostensibly to better compete with companies like Roborock, Ecovacs, and Dreame, adding lidar navigation to its line for the first time (over VSLAM). The new models look significantly different from the original Roombas and more like their competitors. They also use a different app with fewer features, but added some new hardware features the previous models lacked, including spinning mop pads and a roller mop.
In a regulatory filing earlier this month, the company warned it may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection following the breakdown of advanced negotiations with a potential buyer, and if it couldn’t secure additional funding.
Roomba customers are understandably concerned about the impact these current financial troubles might have on their home cleaning robots.
Earlier this month, fellow American robot vacuum manufacturer Neato, which shut down in 2023, pulled the plug on its cloud services, leaving its robots unable to communicate with the Neato app. However, the vacuums can still be controlled manually.
Similarly, if iRobot goes out of business and its cloud shuts down, most Roombas should still continue to work in offline mode — pressing the physical button on the robot to start, stop, and dock it. However, they likely wouldn’t be controllable via the app for features like scheduling or specific room cleaning, or via voice commands. This potential dilemma just further highlights that cloud-connected devices should be enhanced by connectivity, not reliant on it.
There is at least one Robo vac that does not rely on the cloud, and personally I can’t imagine feeling comfortable with a robovac being cloud connected for no reason.
I hope they open source it before dying (if they do end up going under)
Customers shouldn’t need to be concerned because the company going down should not brick your PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
And yet, here we are
My lil neato bot from 2017/2018ish makes a perimeter map around my place each time it deploys, then makes back and forth sweeps. It’s got a built in weekly timer by the quarter hour to schedule sweeps. It beeps at me when its bin is full. Why do robot vacuums need the internet?
@BlindFrog @Feathercrown Same. I buy broken ones of the same model off ebay and use them for parts when needed, because I don’t want a newer vacuum with wifi. It *would* be nice to move off of NiMH batteries, but they’re good enough for now.
I’ve got one, and it works well enough when offline.
If not, I could set up Home Assistant and self-host it.
It’s a shame, as Mozilla gave iRobot one of the better privacy ratings. That’s the only reason I allowed it in my house to begin with.
But, clearly, a Google Home or Amazon Alexa needs cloud connectivity to function. And short of Stop Killing Games regulations forcing companies to release software to keep purchases functional after server shutdowns, there’s going to be no alternative when they shut down the servers.
But where do we draw the line?
A smart fridge should obviously keep working without cloud connectivity, since cloud features aren’t relevant to its core functionality.
A
spywarehouse-scanning vacuum robot, on the other hand, that stores video of your entire house on web servers “to map your home” may not have the processing power to model the home based on itssurveillancevideo recordings. So, is it reasonable, then, that these break when servers go offline?Without any regulations, the answer is just “consumers can go fuck themselves”, which clearly isn’t a good answer.
He said Home Assistant not Google home.
You mean the person who posted 3 hours after me?
This is why IoT isn’t sustainable. If you don’t have total control you’re fucked.
Why proprietary cloud-based IoT isn’t sustainable.
Definitely. I use home assistant but I found a lot of things require enabling integrations with other platforms. They’re bricks if that platform decides they are.
Chinese robot cleaners are much better and cheaper than iRobot. No wonder iRobot is failing.
Sure, if you want China to have videos of you, your kids and your home. Roomba so far has the “best” privacy policy from all the companies. I am not saying its warranted, it never is with proprietary software/hardware, but Chinese companies are known for ignoring laws regarding privacy.
From a non US Perspective (most of the world) this is a non issue.
Because for the rest of the world the answer to this dilemma boils down to:
Do you want to be shook down by the big guy in the left corner with the can of coke in his hand or do you prefer to be fucked over by that big Asian guy in the right corner who’s slurping on his bubble tea?
I choose the one who demands the least.
Yeah… because the US hasn’t spied on anyone in recent history…
He did say “best”
For most people, the best case scenario is vacuuming their floors with offline options.
It is, but such solutions do not always meet with wife’s approval 😅
I don’t trust the biggest guys on the market… I wouldn’t trust iRobot if Amazon did acquire it. But smaller companies do not have enough leverage on EU (I am from EU). They have to adhere, there are audits that must be made and I somehow trust more in audits and rule adherence on US side rather than the Chinese ones.
solution: get the cheapest one that doesn’t have a camera
Mine shan’t have a camera
still better than Americans when it comes to privacy. It is the lesser of the evils.
I am not fan of America, believe me, but US companies (apart from Zuck and a few others) still have more incentive to adhere to EU rules than the Chinese ones. Also the Chinese companies have to also adhere to Chinese govt rules, that have way more hidden agenda than the US ones (we will see what happens with the trumpette guy…)
but provides mechanisms for the companies or the courts to reject or challenge these if they believe the request violates the privacy rights of the foreign country the data is stored in
require American companies to seek clearance from European officials before complying with United States warrants seeking private data.
Again I am not saying US is ok, but for every 1 PRISM in US there is 100 in china.
The worst of China is still better than the best of America. America wrote the book on mass surveillance and privacy violations.
Catastrophe because we gave up the broom and mop. Oh no.
This potential dilemma just further highlights that cloud-connected devices should be enhanced by connectivity, not reliant on it.
This should be everyone’s takeaway.
The problem isn’t the company possibly going out of business, its the loss of online service nerfing the device that is the real issue.
We could have consumer protection laws that mandate when a service that a consumer product relies on is no longer being served by the company, they must release the source code as FOSS for the community to carry it on if they so chose. This could apply to video game servers as well as robot vacuums.
We could, if someone cared to put in the effort to make that happen.
Oh look, another example of a product that worked fine without internet connectivity and was improved by adding extra bullshit you don’t actually need that then gets worse when those features can’t function properly because their server is offline.
We got a basic roomba 650 (the one that crashes into stuff and randomly cleans) like 10 years ago and it still works fine (well, as well as it ever worked which wasn’t great), you program the time and day of the week with physical buttons, and leave it alone.
Yeah. I’ve got an 870 that’s still cleaning. It gets stuck under furniture and needs to be rescued at least once a week, and last week it lost its
assdustbin somehow mid clean, but it’s still kicking.I would watch this screen version of The Brave Little Toaster 2.
Lmao
So instead of a janitor you become a robot technician. No thanks.
A fair assesment. Except that you have to (and should be) cleaning the upright vacuum as well. Vacuum fires are no joke.
My vacuum doesn’t get lost under the furniture.
Your vacuum doesn’t go under furniture more than likely so to clean under there you quit being a janitor to become a furniture mover?
I guess it’s turtles all the way down.
The cat crawling under there dust mops regularly.
Probably.
If only there was such a thing like bluetooth to connect mobile apps to local devices
Mobile apps bit rot pretty quickly when they stop updating them. A web UI would be better. A server or internet connection is not needed, a web UI can be hosted directly on the device.
An accessible documented API would be better. A standardized one for all vacuums would be best.
If one came with Valetudo pre-installed (or installation was officially supported), I would be very interested.
What does this even mean?
That means apps tend to stop working if the developers don’t keep updating them. Mobile operating systems much, much worse backwards compatibility than windows. If the device hosts its own website instead of using an app, it will most likely work fine decades from now without any updates.
Mobile apps that aren’t supported lose functionality quicker then webUI alternatives (since web standards stick around longer I’d guess)
it means android api changes, google play restrictions and removals
I have a roomba, it is called “me with a vacuum”
While singing “I want to break free” at full blast.
Wearing a dress and moustache.
I bought a robot vacuum, rooted it, and installed Valetudo (Wyze WVCR200S w/motherboard from a Viomi V6 - same robot).
I don’t have to worry about this shit anymore. The vacuum still does the vacuum thing whether or not it’s connected to the internet.
How difficult was this to do?
I had to replace the motherboard with one from a different variant (same base robot) that could be rooted. Outside of that - super easy.
Is this a COA for irobot Roombas?
What?
Happy cake day. I was asking, before I dive into the hunt, if you saw any docs for doing the same sort of firmware update / swap for plain old irobot vacuums.
Idk how motivated to be to go do this. Just started reading about valetudo.
COA => course of action
Ahh. To my knowledge, iRobot units aren’t rootable, and are therefore unsupported by Valetudo.
https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
My Wyze is based on an ODM unit, the 3irobotix CRL-200S. Companies like Wyze, Xiaomi, Viomi, iLife, Conga, and other brands customize and sell it as their own models since that’s cheaper than manufacturing their own units. Parts are swappable between them as they are all the same robot underneath… Kinda like how car companies rebrand models based on region. As far as I’m aware though, iRobot builds their own robots.
How did they squander being the name in autonomous vacuum devices…? It’s kinda baffling tbh.
Well, Chinese manufactures cloned the design and came in well under price, took the Chinese market, then improved the product and challenged iRobot globally.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
A big part of it is also that in the grand scheme of things, roombas are kind of gimmicky because they don’t really do the time consuming parts of cleaning, like moving furniture or dusting baseboards. The value proposition of paying more for different tiers of branded mediocrity just isn’t there.
I would not say they cloned the design. The first breakthrough for Roborock was the S5, which had LiDAR and a map. Both was not something iRobot had at the time. iRobot simply chose to not innovate in the areas people wanted first. People didn’t like the random cleaning that the roombas did for a long time compared to the structured of almost everybody else.
I used to work at iRobot. Chinese manufacturers cloned Roomba so well that parts from their robot like wheels assemblies could be dropped in and the Roomba would work.
The issue is that iRobot decided not to litigate patent infringement in China because it’s an uphill battle.
I agree that iRobot was very slow to innovate. They were on the brink of releasing a lawn mower robot but covid hit and the C suites made the decision to kill that product and fire that team to reduce risk…
I was working with the education division about a decade and a bit ago when they had an open source platform with sensors and motors. Then iRobot abruptly killed that division too, right as our project was getting going.
I haven’t felt good about that company since.
The saddest news is that they are down to like 4 mechanical engineers. There were at least 30 when I was working there.
I was told all the engineering actually gets done by the contractors in China. The engineers just send a wish list and the China team hacks it together.
iRobot not going to make it. 4 engineers can’t innovate just like that.
I mean if you just get super ninja 10x engineers, that’s like 40 engineers.
How did they squander being the name in autonomous vacuum devices…?
Letting a picture of a customer using the bathroom leak onto Facebook cannot have helped.
Really? It’s not a mystery. China. For the past 5+ years they have had better and cheaper vacuums. Meanwhile innovation has been at a standstill with irobot for the past decade.
They should have diversified into ass wiping robots when they had the chance.
All the robots became self aware and reformatted themselves
Glad we have dumb “roomba” that has just one physical sensor when he bumps into something and infra for detecting docking station and for remote control. It does the job and that’s the main thing. Over the years only had to replace the battery.
Glad we have dumb “roomba”
That’s what my wife calls me. JFC America, burn a calorie.
I go ride my bike instead of vacuuming
yeah I usually go work out while it’s running lol, or do some yardwork or something
Calories are expensive, and I’m not made of money.
Pressing a physical button to stop it. So you gotta chase your roomba down before it eats your chinchilla. Sounds fun.
Do people genuinely rely on these or are they really just a novelty?
rely? no
find it a useful assist? yes
the Roomba can:
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get under couches that my other vacuums cannot
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deal with 90% of the average mess (dog hair and miscellaneous crumbs) without my input
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pick up the little bits that you can never manage to sweep into a dust pan
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do this within about 10-20% of the time it would take me to do it myself
things it cannot do:
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vacuum carpets
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get into corners
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deal with large messes
typically, I will sweep crumbs and crap out of corners into the middle of a room. I do this all the way around this level of the house in under two minutes, which includes picking up the large clumps of fluffy dog hair that have accumulated along the walls and tossing them in the garbage and putting the broom back. I can then run the Roomba, and the only thing left to do after is brush/vacuum the carpets & rugs well.
I also like the mopbot thingy because that definitely takes less time than doing it myself
-
My Roborock is genuinely an important cleaning tool for keeping my messy house with three kids clean.
Same, I have a Roborock and it cleans my house 3 times a week, mops and vacuums. I still need to vaccums in corners and narrow spots occasionally but the bot does 95% of the work for me
I do rely on them. I have two. They basically enable me to never vacuum myself the last 6 years
Honestly I couldn’t imagine life without them anymore
Thanks for that input. I might look into something.
If the apartment/house layout is good for the roomba, it is a great tool. It doesn’t replace vacuuming and floor washing, but it does reduce the dirtness on the floor.
I have a dog and a cat. It saves me ~3 hours of work every month. I make abput 21€ per hour. So that’s basically 63€ I saved monthly.
Who pays you on your off time? Bad logic.
Those 3 hours are hours I invest in my business generating a second income.
Every hour you spend doing chores could be hours spend enjoying your free time or working on projects.
There is no glory in vacuuming… if I can automate it, I will
Don’t have a roomba (shark owner) and me and my two other vacuum cleaners depend on my robot vacuum to help pickup both my godwn retriever and corgi hair on a daily basis.
It makes my life easier for sure. I just start it when I head outside for work, errands, etc, and it’s done by the time I get back home.
