IRobot CEO On Tech’s Future: Imagine Your Whole Home As A Robot

Imagine a home that gently nudges you awake in the morning. It opens the shades, turns on soft lights and heats or cools your bedroom.

You get up and the daily news “follows” you from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen, through speakers.

Your home really comes alive when you leave for the day — not too different from the vision outlined in the 1960s-era cartoon “The Jetsons.” The robots vacuum, mop and mow, while patrolling the home for security.

Your home knows when you pull into the driveway after work, and it acts accordingly. Maybe the oven preheats itself. Maybe there’s music playing when you walk in your front door.

This is a vision of the not-so-distant future, when your whole home is a robot, said Colin Angle, CEO of Bedford robotics firm iRobot (Nasdaq: IRBT), in a speech on Wednesday that could be indicative of what the $1 billion company might be working on next.

“This vision that I’ve described, this hope of the future, is taking shape today,” he said at the annual LiveWorx conference in Boston hosted by Needham-based tech firm PTC (Nasdaq: PTC).

IRobot is the creator of home-vacuum robots like the Roomba and the Braava jet. Earlier this year, the company sold its defense and security unit to Arlington Capital Partners, a Washington, D.C.- based private equity firm for $45 million, bowing to pressure from activist investor Red Mountain to focus on consumer robots for the home.

Angle said this vision of a connected home is between five to seven years away, and that the experience he’s describing is “largely inevitable.”

But the reason it’s still years away is because consumers have traditionally been hesitant to use internet-connected devices that are too complex. Companies in the smart-home business have also struggled to gain traction in certain areas. Alphabet Inc.-owned home automation business Nest, for example, recently lost its CEO following a tumultuous few years and no recent product launches at the company.

Angle said 83 percent of owners of connected devices have trouble using them. To make the connected-home vision a reality, connected devices have to be simple, automated, intuitive and personal, he said in his speech.

With Angle at the helm, it seems that iRobot is slowly leading the way to that vision. After spending more than $100 million in research and development costs, iRobot last year debuted its smartest vacuum robot to date.

His speech may have hinted at what iRobot’s ultimate vision for a “smart” connected home could be.

The Roomba 980 is technologically advanced because of the way it can navigate through an entire level of a house while simultaneously mapping it. The technology is called “visual simultaneous localization and mapping” and it’s the cornerstone of the new Roomba’s intelligence. To date, Angle said in his speech that the new Roomba has mapped over half a billion square feet in customers’ homes.

As it turns out, that mapping technology is the first step toward an evolution of smart-home robotics.

“If I know where the kitchen is, and I know where the beer is, then I can grab it,” Angle said, hypothesizing a home-robot scenario.

In a Business Journal interview with Angle last September, he said the fact that the newest Roomba can now be controlled easily from anywhere, at anytime, with a mobile app, is part of a larger, connected-home vision for the company.

“This opens up possibilities for smart homes of the future that are much more capable than exist today,” he said in the interview.

In his speech, Angle spoke briefly about the importance of privacy when it comes to robots mapping consumers’ homes. He said the company needs to ensure that the infrastructure is secure before the visualization data can be uploaded to the cloud, in the event that a Roomba customer wants to see how the robot maps his or her house. That prompted a question, at the event, about Angle’s thoughts on the rise of artificial intelligence, and whether it poses a threat to humans.

Angle said society has to thoughtfully consider the ramifications of artificial intelligence, but it’s already ubiquitous.

“If you send a resume to Google, before anyone reads it, it’s been vetted by an AI system,” he said. “… Robots are somehow the lightning rod for this paranoia, but I vacuum floors. I don’t determine careers. I don’t determine spending habits.”

Source: Boston Business Journal, Sara Castellanos
Photo: The iRobot Roomba 980 was released last year and is technologically advanced because of the way it can navigate through an entire level of a house while simultaneously mapping it. The technology is called “visual simultaneous localization and mapping” and it’s the cornerstone of the new Roomba’s intelligence. The robot can recharge and resume by itself, as needed, until the cleaning job is done and can also be controlled via a mobile app. (Courtesy iRobot)