Silicon Investor - iRobot Corp.

[Glenn Petersen] Amazon terminates iRobot deal, vacuum maker to lay off 31% of staff PUBLISHED M...

Glenn Petersen — 1/29/2024 10:15:08 AM

Amazon terminates iRobot deal, vacuum maker to lay off 31% of staff

PUBLISHED MON, JAN 29 20248:37 AM EST
UPDATED 2 MIN AGO
Rohan Goswami @IN/ROHANGOSWAMICNBC/ @ROGOSWAMI
CNBC.com

The iRobot headquarters in Bedford, Massachusetts, US, on Friday, June 16, 2023. Amazon.com Inc.’s proposed $1.7 billion deal to buy robot vacuum firm iRobot Corp. was given the all-clear by the UKs antitrust agency. Photographer: Sophie Park/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
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Amazon said on Monday it would not move forward with a planned acquisition of vacuum-maker iRobot, with the two companies saying in a release there was “no path to regulatory approval for the deal.”

The vacuum maker also announced it would lay off 31% of its employees, around 350 people, and that its chair and CEO Colin Angle would step down effective immediately.

iRobot shares fell 15% on the news.

The fate of the deal was plunged into uncertainty after The Wall Street Journal reported that the European Union would not offer regulatory approval.

“We’re disappointed that Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot could not proceed,” Amazon senior vice president and general counsel David Zapolsky said in a release.

iRobot said it would focus on margin improvements, reduce spending on research and development and pause all work on “non-floorcare” products, including its air purifiers and robotic lawn mowers.

Amazon will pay iRobot a previously-agreed-upon $94 million breakup fee. The terminated deal would have valued iRobot at roughly $1.7 billion.

The robotic vacuum maker has a market capitalization of under $400 million, following Monday’s news and prior reports that the European Union would move to block the deal.

The European Commission did not immediately return CNBC’s request for comment.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Amazon terminates iRobot deal, vacuum maker to lay off 31% of staff (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] iRobot shares close up 39% on report Amazon deal set to get EU approval PUBLISH...

Glenn Petersen — 11/26/2023 10:50:08 AM

iRobot shares close up 39% on report Amazon deal set to get EU approval

PUBLISHED FRI, NOV 24 20231:13 PM EST
UPDATED FRI, NOV 24 20231:57 PM EST
Todd Haselton @ROBOTODD
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

Shares of iRobot, the maker of Roomba vacuums, closed up about 39% Friday after a report said the European Union is set to approve Amazon’s acquisition of the company.
Reuters said Thursday morning the deal is set to “win unconditional EU antitrust approval,” citing three sources.
The deal is still under review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Shares of iRobot, the maker of Roomba vacuums, closed up about 39% Friday after a report said the European Union is set to approve Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of the company.

Reuters said Thursday morning the deal is set to “win unconditional EU antitrust approval,” citing three sources familiar with the matter. The European Commission is expected to rule on the deal by Feb. 14.

Representatives from the European Commission didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The deal is still under review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority said in June the deal would not result in “a substantial lessening of competition” in the U.K.

Amazon shares were flat.

Amazon announced its intention to acquire iRobot in August 2022 for $61 a share in an all-cash deal.

The acquisition marks Amazon’s fourth-largest deal, behind its $13.7 billion purchase of grocery chain Whole Foods in 2017, its $8.45 billion purchase of film studio MGM in 2021 and its $3.9 billion acquisition of boutique primary-care provider One Medical, announced last July.

— CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report.

iRobot stock up 39% on report Amazon deal set to get EU approval (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Exclusive: Amazon to win unconditional EU nod for iRobot deal -sources By Foo ...

Glenn Petersen — 11/24/2023 7:16:30 AM

Exclusive: Amazon to win unconditional EU nod for iRobot deal -sources

By Foo Yun Chee
Reuters
November 23, 20234:21 AM CST
Updated a day ago

BRUSSELS, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Amazon (AMZN.O) is set to win unconditional EU antitrust approval for its $1.4 billion acquisition of robot vacuum maker iRobot (IRBT.O), three people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Antitrust enforcers around the world have stepped up scrutiny of Big Tech acquiring smaller rivals, concerned about the accumulation of troves of data by a few companies and big players leveraging their dominance into new markets.

The European Commission, which acts as the EU's competition watchdog, warned Amazon in July that the deal could reduce competition in robot vacuum cleaners and reinforce the U.S. company's dominant position as an online marketplace provider.

The Commission, which is due to decide on the deal by Feb. 14, declined to comment. Amazon did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The deal announced in August would add iRobot's Roomba robot vacuum to U.S. online retail giant Amazon's portfolio of smart devices, includes the Alexa voice assistant, smart thermostats, security devices and wall-mounted smart displays.

The UK antitrust agency cleared the deal unconditionally after a preliminary review.

Reporting by Foo Yun Chee Editing by Mark Potter and David Goodman

Exclusive: Amazon to win unconditional EU nod for iRobot deal -sources | Reuters

[Glenn Petersen] Amazon's iRobot deal in EU antitrust crosshairs By Foo Yun Chee Reuters July 6...

Glenn Petersen — 7/7/2023 9:58:17 AM

Amazon's iRobot deal in EU antitrust crosshairs

By Foo Yun Chee
Reuters
July 6, 20231:07 PM CDT
Updated 20 hours ago

BRUSSELS, July 6 (Reuters) - Amazon's (AMZN.O) $1.7 billion acquisition of robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot (IRBT.O) may reduce competition and strengthen Amazon's position as online marketplace provider, EU antitrust regulators warned on Thursday.

The European Commission opened a full-scale investigation and will decide by November 15 whether to clear or block the deal.

"We continue to work through the process with the European Commission and are focused on addressing its questions and any identified concerns at this stage," an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters.

Antitrust enforcers around the world have stepped up scrutiny of Big Tech acquiring smaller rivals, concerned about the accumulation of troves of data by a few companies, and big players leveraging their dominance into new markets.

The acquisition announced in August last year would add iRobot's Roomba robot vacuum to Amazon's portfolio of smart devices, which include the Alexa voice assistant, smart thermostats, security devices and wall-mounted smart displays.

IRobot made its first Roomba robot vacuum in 2002. Amazon has previously said the vacuum cleaner market is very competitive, with lots of Chinese players.

"The Commission is concerned that the transaction would allow Amazon to restrict competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners and to strengthen its position as online marketplace provider, " the EU executive said.

"The Commission closely cooperated with other competition authorities during the initial investigation and will continue such cooperation during the in-depth investigation (...) the opening of an in-depth inquiry does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation".

The Amazon spokesperson also said the company could "offer a company like iRobot the resources to accelerate innovation and invest in critical features while lowering prices for consumers."

The EU competition enforcer's decision confirmed a Reuters story last month and came a month after the UK antitrust agency cleared the deal unconditionally after a preliminary review.

At around 1800 GMT, Amazon shares were down 1.3% on Wall Street, underperforming the Dow Jones (.DJI) (-1.1%).

Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten

Amazon's iRobot deal in EU antitrust crosshairs | Reuters

[Glenn Petersen] IRBT is up approximately 23% in early morning trading. Amazon’s $1.7 Billion iR...

Glenn Petersen — 6/16/2023 6:48:08 AM

IRBT is up approximately 23% in early morning trading.

Amazon’s $1.7 Billion iRobot Deal Gets UK Deal Clearance

By Katharine Gemmell
Bloomberg
June 16, 2023, 9:23 AM UTC

Amazon.com Inc.’s proposed $1.7 billion deal to buy robot vacuum firm iRobot Corp. was given the all-clear by the UK’s antitrust agency.

The Competition and Markets Authority said the deal would not lead to competition concerns in the UK market after an initial review, according to a statement Friday.

The iRobot deal, announced in August, has raised competition and privacy worries from tech advocacy groups as the e-commerce giant seeks more internet-connected devices in people’s homes. The deal is also facing an in-depth review by the Federal Trade Commission in the US and a review by the European Commission in Brussels.

The agency said that iRobot’s position in supplying robot vacuum cleaners in the UK is modest and has significant rivals. It also found it would not disadvantage Amazon’s rival smart home platforms.

“After a thorough investigation, we’re satisfied that the deal would have no impact on competition in the UK,” said Colin Raftery, senior director of mergers at the CMA.

The approval will be a relief to the tech giant given how the CMA has taken a more aggressive line with Big Tech mergers of late. It decided to to block Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision Blizzard Inc. deal in April and put a stop to Meta Platforms Inc.’s purchase of Giphy last year.

Seattle-based Amazon is also facing separate scrutiny from UK regulators including a cloud probe into the AWS business spearheaded by UK telecoms regulator Ofcom. and another CMA investigation into Amazon Marketplace.

Read More: Amazon Faces EU Review for $1.65 Billion iRobot Purchase

Amazon’s iRobot Deal Gets UK Competition and Markets Authority Clearance (AMZN) - Bloomberg (archive.ph)

[Glenn Petersen] Amazon’s Roomba Deal Keeps Getting Messier Roomba maker’s stock has shed entire...

Glenn Petersen — 4/14/2023 10:43:09 AM

Amazon’s Roomba Deal Keeps Getting Messier

Roomba maker’s stock has shed entire deal premium as regulatory scrutiny builds

By Dan Gallagher
Wall Street Journal
April 13, 2023 7:00 am ET

Amazon has tempted fate with deal regulators before. It would be ironic if its attempt to suck up iRobot turns out to seal it.

The pending $1.7 billion acquisition of the maker of Roomba robot vacuums isn’t even Amazon’s biggest in recent history. The company shelled out $6.5 billion on Hollywood studio legend MGM last year and $3.9 billion on the parent of One Medical earlier this year. Both of those deals were announced in a time when lawmakers and regulators had their knives out for big tech, but Amazon still managed to cut through the red tape—with a bit of patience. The MGM deal took nearly 10 months to close, while the One Medical transaction took seven months. By way of comparison, the $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 was wrapped in less than three months.

The iRobot deal is now eight months into the process. And from the looks of it, a closure isn’t on the near-term horizon. The Federal Trade Commission has been looking into the deal since September. And last week, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, announced that it is taking a deeper look as well to determine if the merger will result in “substantial lessening of competition.” The same body has been investigating Microsoft’s proposed takeover of Activision Blizzard since July of last year.

iRobot shareholders are clearly bracing for the worst. The stock price has fallen back in line with its 30-day average from before the deal was announced in August of last year, and is now nearly 32% below the $61 per share price offered by Amazon. That is 7 percentage points worse than the largest gap Activision’s shares ever registered against the price of Microsoft’s offer, which has also faced enhanced scrutiny.
There is good reason. While Activision’s business has strengthened considerably since the deal was first announced, iRobot’s has done the opposite. Revenue averaged a 30% slide over the last three quarterly reports issued since the Amazon deal was announced.

Other makers of premium consumer electronics products such as GoPro, Sonos, Peloton and Garmin also saw sales weaken in the last half of 2022, though none to the same degree. And iRobot’s business was slipping even before that; the company’s weakening sales outlook allowed Amazon to cut its offer from $64 a share to $61 during the two months of negotiations before the deal was announced, according to the transaction background outlined in iRobot’s regulatory filings.

Analysts currently expect iRobot’s sales to show another double-digit decline for the first quarter before turning positive again in the June period. But the company will be hard-pressed to make a case for the latter, as it no longer holds earnings calls or issues forecasts since agreeing to the Amazon deal. The company has also been burning cash for the last two years.

Citing lack of guidance from the company and “extreme deterioration in the business model,” Paul Chung of J.P. Morgan said in a note to clients following the company’s latest results in February that iRobot faces “a tough analysis of valuation levels if a deal were to not go through with Amazon.”

Amazon hasn’t signaled any change in its commitment to the deal. But it is hardly a case of need; even doubling iRobot’s current annual sales of about $1.2 billion would barely make for a rounding error on the $556 billion in revenue Wall Street expects Amazon to produce this year.

And iRobot’s relative small size belies the fact that it is the dominant force in robotic vacuums. The company claimed a 62% share of the global market excluding China in late 2021—a far more dominant position than Whole Foods, MGM and One Medical ever commanded in their respective markets. That naturally gets regulators’ attention—“The iRobot deal more naturally fits the profile of the things we know this FTC is concerned about,” said Paul Gallant, policy analyst for TD Cowen. Hoovering up Roomba is proving to be no quick cleanup.

Write to Dan Gallagher at dan.gallagher@wsj.com

Amazon’s Roomba Deal Keeps Getting Messier - WSJ (archive.ph)

[Glenn Petersen] h/t kidl Applicable to AMZN's acquisition of iRobot: Washington prepares for w...

Glenn Petersen — 3/20/2023 1:38:41 PM

h/t kidl

Applicable to AMZN's acquisition of iRobot:

Washington prepares for war with Amazon - POLITICO

[Glenn Petersen] Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7 billion Published Fri...

Glenn Petersen — 8/5/2022 8:56:46 AM

Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7 billion

Published Fri, Aug 5 20228:05 AM EDTUpdated 3 Min Ago
Annie Palmer @annierpalmer
CNBC.com

Key Points

Amazon is acquiring iRobot for $61 a share, an all-cash deal that values the Roomba maker at $1.7 billion, the companies announced Friday.

Amazon is acquiring iRobot for $61 a share, an all-cash deal that values the Roomba maker at $1.7 billion, the companies announced Friday.

The deal will deepen Amazon's presence in consumer robotics. Amazon made a bold bet on the space last year when it unveiled the Astro home robot, a $1,500 device that's equipped with the company's Alexa digital assistant and can follow consumers around their home. It's also launched an array of smart home devices that consumers can control with their voice, like thermometers, lightbulbs and microwaves.

"Over many years, the iRobot team has proven its ability to reinvent how people clean with products that are incredibly practical and inventive — from cleaning when and where customers want while avoiding common obstacles in the home, to automatically emptying the collection bin," said Dave Limp, Amazon's hardware devices chief, in a statement. "Customers love iRobot products — and I'm excited to work with the iRobot team to invent in ways that make customers' lives easier and more enjoyable."

iRobot, founded in 1990 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology roboticists, is best known for making the Roomba, a robotic vacuum that can clean consumers' floors autonomously. It has also launched robotic mops and pool cleaners, and it has a subscription program that offers automatic equipment replenishment, among other services.

Once the deal closes, iRobot CEO Colin Angle will continue to run the company.

Shares of iRobot surged more than 18% in premarket trading, after they were briefly halted following the announcement of the deal. Amazon's stock was down about 0.5%.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

cnbc.com

[Glenn Petersen] Roomba Maker Needs to Suck Up More Chips iRobot’s shares slide as supply constr...

Glenn Petersen — 2/13/2022 2:35:47 PM

Roomba Maker Needs to Suck Up More Chips

iRobot’s shares slide as supply constraints hurt growth and margins, but ambitious long-term targets remain

By Dan Gallagher
Wall Street Journal
Feb. 11, 2022 7:00 am ET

iRobot’s exposure to some of the most constrained chip categories caused its latest results to come up short, but the Roomba maker is making a big bet that conditions will improve. PHOTO: HANDOUT/REUTERS
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Among the inequities of the great chip shortage is that even companies in similar industries aren’t being affected to the same extent.

Within personal and home electronics, the latest earnings season has seen relatively strong reports from companies including Apple, Sonos and GoPro. All three managed to exceed Wall Street’s revenue expectations for the December quarter, and both Apple and Sonos noted that sales would have been even higher if not for shortages of necessary components. The shares of all three got a lift following their respective reports; Sonos shares rose 4% Thursday following its fiscal first-quarter results.

iRobot IRBT 3.22% wasn’t so fortunate. The maker of the Roomba line of automated vacuum cleaners said late Wednesday that fourth-quarter revenue fell 16% from a year earlier to $455.4 million. That was 3% below analysts’ forecasts for the quarter and the first time in a decade that the company’s revenue has fallen during the crucial holiday period. The company noted that more than $35 million worth of orders went unfulfilled due to shortages and shipping delays.

It projected full-year revenue for 2022 that was slightly ahead of forecasts, but that projection is heavily predicated on sales improving strongly later in the year. The company said it expects 65% of full-year revenue to come in the second half; the past five years have averaged 60% in that period.

The report took iRobot’s share price down 14% Thursday, closing out a rough year for the company during which sales rose only 9% after averaging 22% annual growth over the previous four years. Shortages and logistics weighed elsewhere too; iRobot’s gross margins for the year came in at 35%, dipping below the 45% line for the first time since 2012. By contrast, Sonos’s gross margins for calendar 2021 came in at 47.7%—2 percentage points higher than the previous year and on the high side of the company’s historical levels, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Why the difference? One factor is that not all chips are equally hard to come by. The mechanical nature of even the most high-tech vacuum cleaners exposes iRobot to some of the same supply-chain issues facing industries such as autos. On his company’s call Thursday morning, iRobot Chief Executive Colin Angle specifically called out the same shortage of microcontrollers—a relatively low-cost chip typically made using older equipment—that has bedeviled car makers. Microcontrollers are the most constrained chip segment, with lead times in January nearly 33% longer than the chip industry’s average, according to Christopher Rolland of Susquehanna.

iRobot expects the situation to improve enough to deliver about 15% revenue growth this year—a 6-percentage-point acceleration from 2021. The company is also standing by the long-term target it gave in its December analyst meeting of hitting about $2.5 billion in annual revenue in 2024, which reflects a compounded annual growth rate of 16% to 18% over the next three years compared with an average of 13% over the past three. It is an ambitious goal, especially considering microcontrollers are expected to remain supply constrained through at least the rest of this year. iRobot will need to hoover up every chip it can find.

Write to Dan Gallagher at dan.gallagher@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the February 12, 2022, print edition as 'Roomba’s Supply Chain Has Hit the Wall.'

Roomba Maker Needs to Suck Up More Chips - WSJ

[Glenn Petersen] More than just vacuums: iRobot is building the platform for the robots of the fu...

Glenn Petersen — 8/27/2020 7:39:58 PM

More than just vacuums: iRobot is building the platform for the robots of the future

The company is revamping the software that powers its cleaning robots, with an eye toward helpful machines of all kinds in the future.

Mike Murphy
Protocol
August 25, 2020

Consider the dishwasher.

It is, whether you realize it or not, a very capable robot. You load it up, ask it to complete a task, and without fail, it cleans your dishes night in, night out. But most of the devices in our homes, especially the ones that are supposed to be "smart," are often complicated products that require someone with a modicum of technical know-how to set up, or, more importantly, troubleshoot when they stop working.

Machines are rarely contextually intelligent. A dishwasher is very good at washing dishes, but it can't load itself, nor could it tell you that you tend to wash your dishes every night at 10 p.m., but if you ran it at 3 a.m., you'd save on energy. We're starting to see examples of this in software, but few companies have been able to merge the difficult tasks of building automated software and hardware into something that can adapt to the world it lives in. But iRobot, the maker of Roomba vacuums, may have just started to bridge that gap.

iRobot is unveiling Genius Home Intelligence, a rethinking from the ground up of how its robots do their jobs. The most immediate change users will see is a revamped iRobot app, which will be available in the App Store on Tuesday. It'll be a far more intuitive, user-focused product than the previous version, but more importantly, according to the company's co-founder and CEO Colin Angle, it lays the groundwork for a future where robots of all kinds can operate safely in your home. Today's robots can follow simple tasks, just like our dear dishwashers, but tomorrow's won't even have to wait for us to ask them to do something — they'll just know.

A new, smarter system

Genius is a complete reimagining of what iRobot offers its customers, Angle told me. Previously, the iRobot app was extremely simple: Opening it up, you were just greeted with a white screen and a large green button that said "clean."

"Really what we were telling everybody is, 'We've got this: Push the button, and everything is just going to be taken care of, the robot is just going to do the right thing,'" Angle said. But in the past, people were skeptical that robots could efficiently clean their entire house. "Every sale involves getting the buyer over that skeptical barrier," Angle said. But that gap, he admitted, between what we now expect from our devices thanks to products like the Amazon Echo and modern smartphones, is closing.

Roombas now have contextual awareness of their environments, which can be called upon by voice assistants. Image: iRobot
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Now, Angle says, "people flipped from being skeptical to being impatient that the robot couldn't do more." And after listening to user feedback about what people actually wanted out of the robots, the company decided something deeper than the current one-button app was required. iRobot has already been working on building smarter mapping technology in its robots, allowing the machines to learn what area of a house is the kitchen, the living room and so on, but with the Genius redesign, the technology is going to get far more granular.
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Through the app, iRobot's Roomba will now be able to tell you when it thinks it's found certain objects, like a sofa, tables or kitchen counters. You can then tell the robot just to clean those areas. Say you've just finished cooking and know you were not the tidiest chef, you can use the app to send your robot to clean up after your mess. And using partnerships with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, you can ask your voice assistant to do it for you. By just saying, "Alexa, clean under the kitchen counter," the robot will venture out, without any additional clarification needed.

You can take these automations even further, setting up routines for specific tasks you often do — like cleaning up after dinner, or cleaning up a playroom before bedtime — that you can call upon just like a specific task. But where the software starts to take on a life of its own is when the robots have enough data to actually start making recommendations. If the system realizes that you tend to always clean at 7 p.m. or send the robot out every Monday, it'll ask if you want the robot to automatically start cleaning at that time without you having to ask it. "We've got to get away from magic incantations," Angle said, of relying on Alexa and others to carry out your demands.

iRobot's software will now go deeper than daily or spot cleans to help people with the context of their own lives. It can now recommend deeper cleanings at certain times of the year around your allergies or your pets' shedding season, if you decide you want to give it that information. You can also select areas of the maps the robots create to keep out of; if you have dog bowls on the floor, for example, you could highlight them in the map and tell the bots to avoid them. Using other connected devices that can track whether someone is in a room or not, like an Ecobee thermostat, Roombas can also be set to run when those other devices alert them that the house is empty.

Roomba will now know to not smash into your dog's bowls. Image: iRobot
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Redesigning for the pandemic and beyond

In the 18 years since Roomba first launched, Angle said the company has managed to capture roughly 80% of the robotic vacuum market as well as a sizable chunk of the overall vacuum market. It has 6.9 million connected vacuums (up from 4 million the year before, Angle said), and perhaps unsurprisingly, the pandemic has helped drive new business. "What happened as people started working from home, they were more aware of how dirty their home was," Angle said.

More people have been running their machines more often during the last few months, Angle said, which also helped shore up some of the thinking behind the Genius redesign. "After Tesla, we have probably one of the largest fleets out there," he added. Although cleaning missions on Roombas are up during the pandemic, so are cancelations. People have set up basic automations the current app offers (cleaning at a certain time on a given day), but are frustrated by that with their new schedules at home. "Cleaning at times when it's going to come over, annoy you, and you're going to turn it off — that's a big failure," Angle said. With Genius, people can provide recommendations for automations based on what people with similar homes tend to do.

With everything iRobot is announcing, Angle was quick to point out that this software was very much version 1.0, saying version 2.0 should be out in six months, and the next version six months after that. "This focus on the control of the robot, it's only going to get more natural, and the type of collaboration that is possible between the owner and the robot will continue to grow," Angle said. "Our ambitions are not just to have an intelligence system that drives vacuuming robots, but instead, an intelligence system that drives all robots.

iRobot's products start to fit more fully into your life. Image: iRobot
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Today's software is a first step toward that grander vision. The robots iRobot currently sells will get more intuitive, and the robots it hopes to build in the future will only be able to safely operate in the home because of the context first gleaned by these 1.0 models.

"The bleeding edge of AI for robotics is all about understanding the environment so that the robot can have some context as to where to go, and understanding the will and desires of the customer," Angle said. "They're actually quite linked, because if you don't know different places, how people refer to them, it's very difficult to interpret the commands from the user."

For now, that means better vacuuming robots, but in future iterations of the Genius software, that could be all sorts of robots that are designed for the home. One of Angle and iRobot's long-term goals is to build elder-care robots that extend people's ability to live on their own at home independently. "If you wanted to build an elder-care robot, the understanding of the home, the ability to listen to the requests of the people that the robot serves — just imagine how critical that is," Angle said. "The trust that the owner of the robot could develop by feeling like I have tremendous flexibility in the types of things that I can take to the robot."

Robots need to be able to understand higher-level commands to be able to operate in our homes, Angle said. You're not going to program a bot to track every step between where it is and the mailbox, how to reach in and grab your mail, and how to navigate to you — you just want to be able to say, "Go get the mail for me." And that's how Angle sees the Genius revamp: "What we're doing with iRobot Genius is laying the foundation for rich man-machine interaction."

But it's still going to take an ecosystem of partners to get there. No one company has proven it can do it all yet, or that it even wants to, according to Angle. "Back 10 years ago, I expected Apple to go and create the ultimate smart-home experience — they kind of went a different direction," Angle said. "Maybe they could do it in the future, but they don't have all the pieces they would need to pull it together, and Google and Amazon have slightly different missions."

Angle sees players in more specific fields — like how iRobot has primarily concentrated on its cleaning bots — as more likely to succeed as part of a larger partnership with voice platforms and other IoT manufacturers.

protocol.com

[Glenn Petersen] Rodney Brooks The professor who got robots zipping through the world—and cleani...

Glenn Petersen — 8/25/2019 10:40:36 AM

Rodney Brooks

The professor who got robots zipping through the world—and cleaning house—by challenging conventional wisdom in AI.

by Brian Bergstein
MIT Technology Review
Aug 21, 2019

Christie Hemm Klok
Rodney Brooks
The professor who got robots zipping through the world—and cleaning house—by challenging conventional wisdom in AI.
_________________________________

Rodney Brooks was hot, bored, and isolated at his in-laws’ home in Thailand when he had an inspiration that would redirect the field of robotics and lead to Roomba vacuums in millions of homes.

It was December 1984. Brooks was turning 30, and as a new member of the MIT faculty, he was trying to get robots to move about in the world. If they could, they might grant wishes from science fiction: venture into dangerous places, explore space, clean our houses.

But while stationary robot arms had been performing repetitive tasks in factories since the 1960s, mobile robots barely existed. An early example was Shakey, an ungainly computer on wheels developed by researchers at SRI International in the late 1960s and early ’70s. To navigate rooms filled with large blocks, Shakey needed so much computational power it had a wireless link to a mainframe.

Artificial-intelligence researchers tried to streamline Shakey’s general setup with algorithms that could elegantly crystallize a machine’s master-planning abilities. Progress was slow—literally. In the late 1970s, Stanford’s Hans Moravec developed a cart that would roll for a while before stopping, taking pictures, and plotting its next moves. It could avoid obstacles in a room, but it traveled a meter every 15 minutes.

Brooks was pursuing roughly similar approaches in 1984. In one project, he was figuring out how robots could mathematically account for imprecision in their movements when they updated maps of their surroundings. Before going to Thailand for a month with his then-wife and their baby son, he produced “the most boring paper in the world,” he recalls. “Full of math equations.”

Brooks, who grew up in Australia, didn’t speak Thai. His wife’s family didn’t speak English. “And when my wife was with her family, she didn’t speak English either,” he says. “So I just got to sit there. I had a lot of time to think.” Daydreaming in the tropical heat, “I’m watching these insects buzz around. And they’ve got tiny, tiny little brains, some as small 100,000 neurons, and I’m thinking, ‘They can’t do the mathematics I’m asking my robots to do for an even simpler thing. They’re hunting. They’re eating. They’re foraging. They’re mating. They’re getting out of my way when I’m trying to slap them. How are they doing all this stuff? They must be organized differently.’

“That was where things started. That was the a-ha!”

Bugs don’t assess every situation, consider various options, and then plan each movement. Instead, their brains are driven by feedback loops honed over hundreds of millions of years. Tidbits of sensory information provoke them to react in specific ways; combinations of these reactions add up to quick, assured behaviors. So when Brooks got back to Cambridge, he stopped trying to program robots with complicated mathematics and started writing software with simple rules.

The first machine he built this way, which he named Allen in honor of AI researcher Allen Newell, looked like an inverted trash can on wheels. It had sonar to sense objects, and Brooks gave it a basic instruction: don’t hit stuff. Allen would sit there until someone walked up to it; then it moved away. Next, Brooks added a second feedback loop. He told the machine to wander. Now with just some sensors and two main goals, it could weave its way through a crowded room and keep up with a slow-walking human.

Brooks added only one more layer of feedback to make Allen’s behavior substantially more complex. He told Allen to detect distant places and head toward them. This third rule could suppress the instinct to merely wander unless the first rule—Avoid obstacles!—came into effect. In that case, the robot should revert to just getting out of the way before continuing to the distant spot.

Allen did all this without first deciding to do it because each set of sensors generated sufficient feedback to adjust what the other two layers were doing. That bothered some of Brooks’s elders in AI, who had spent decades laboring on symbolic representations of thought and action for computers to process. Two prominent researchers later told Brooks that when he explained Allen at a conference, one whispered to the other, “Why is this young man throwing his career away?”

Undeterred, Brooks replicated Allen’s behaviors in toy cars named Tom and Jerry. He made Herbert, which could detect and grab soda cans. Genghis, a one--kilogram bot with six legs, could scurry over uneven terrain.

In a 1990 paper, “Elephants Don’t Play Chess,” Brooks argued that his robots revealed the shortcomings of classical AI approaches that fed complicated models of the world to disembodied electronic brains. Why not just have machines explore the world? “The world is its own best model,” Brooks wrote. “It is always exactly up to date. It always contains every detail there is to be known. The trick is to sense it appropriately and often enough.”

Classical AI researchers would point out things his simple robots could not do. But, Brooks responded, with more complex feedback, machines like his could carry out more sophisticated tasks. “Likewise it is unfair to claim that an elephant has no intelligence worth studying just because it does not play chess,” he wrote.

Brooks proved the point at iRobot, a company he founded in 1990 with two of his students, Helen Greiner ’89, SM ’90, and Colin Angle ’89, SM ’91. iRobot developed mobile robots for the US military—bots that find and destroy land mines, search through rubble, or carry gear for soldiers—and released the Roomba vacuum in 2002. Later came models that can clear your gutters, wash your floor, or scrub your pool. The company has sold 25 million robots.

Brooks was less successful with Rethink Robotics, a company he cofounded in 2008. Rethink created robots named Baxter and Sawyer that could work alongside humans in factories and packaging facilities, but demand was soft and last year the company sold off its technologies. Now Brooks is cooking up a startup called Robust.AI that will develop software for a range of robots.

Although computer scientists have made stunning progress in the past decade with neural networks and other AI techniques, Brooks still insists machines won’t become truly intelligent agents unless they also physically engage with the world. That puts him at odds with technologists who say ultra-powerful AI is imminent, but he has never minded being a contrarian.

“Science works by most people throwing away their careers,” he says. “You don’t know who it’s going to be. You make an intellectual bet, and you have to work on it for a long time, and maybe it pays.”

technologyreview.com

[stocker22] In Play: iRobot's (IRBT) Numbers Revealed crweworld.com

stocker22 — 4/25/2018 12:44:35 AM

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank Takes Stake in Roomba-Maker iRobot By Giles Turner, Dinesh Nair, Ed Ha...

Glenn Petersen — 7/25/2017 6:46:45 PM

SoftBank Takes Stake in Roomba-Maker iRobot

By Giles Turner, Dinesh Nair, Ed Hammond, and Alex Sherman
Bloomberg
July 25, 2017

-- IRobot stake is below 5%, under U.S. disclosure threshold

-- Japanese firm has raised over $93 billion for Vision Fund

An iRobot employee demonstrates the Roomba's features in Bedford, Massachusetts, on Aug. 24, 2012.
Photographer: Ann Hermes/Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images
______________________________

SoftBank Group Corp. has taken a stake in Roomba vacuum-cleaner maker IRobot Corp., people familiar with the matter said, as the Japanese company builds its holdings in robotics firms.

SoftBank has built a less than 5 percent stake in IRobot, below the amount that would require a regulatory disclosure in the U.S., the people said, asking not to be identified because the purchase was private. The Bedford, Massachusetts-based technology company has a market value of $2.4 billion.

Shares in IRobot rose 8 percent in late trading in New York to $97.60.

Representatives for SoftBank and IRobot declined to comment.

SoftBank, which has more than $93 billion in commitments so far for its technology-focused Vision Fund, has been snapping up robotics firms this year. In June, SoftBank agreed to buy Boston Dynamics from Alphabet Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Earlier this month, the Vision Fund led a $114 million investment in San Diego-based artificial-intelligence firm Brain Corp., which develops self-driving technology for robots.

It’s unclear whether the IRobot investment will be held by SoftBank or the Vision Fund.

IRobot was founded about 27 years ago by Massachusetts Institute of Technology robotics engineers who pioneered the market for the self-propelled devices that vacuum and wash floors. Last year the company sold its robotic mine-detection and bomb-disposal business to focus on its consumer products, which accounted for 99 percent of 2016 revenue.

The Vision Fund, which is targeting $100 billion in total commitments, is getting contributions from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Apple Inc. and other large, institutional backers and tech companies.

bloomberg.com

[Glenn Petersen] Roomba vacuum maker iRobot betting big on the 'smart' home Jan Wolfe Reuters J...

Glenn Petersen — 7/24/2017 9:54:07 PM

Roomba vacuum maker iRobot betting big on the 'smart' home

Jan Wolfe
Reuters
July 24, 2017

iRobot CEO Colin Angle is pictured at iRobot Shanghai office in Shanghai, China, May 16, 2017. Picture taken on May 16, 2017. Courtesy iRobot/Handout via REUTERS
________________________________

(Reuters) - The Roomba robotic vacuum has been whizzing across floors for years, but its future may lie more in collecting data than dirt.

That data is of the spatial variety: the dimensions of a room as well as distances between sofas, tables, lamps and other home furnishings. To a tech industry eager to push "smart" homes controlled by a variety of Internet-enabled devices, that space is the next frontier. (Graphic: Rise of the robots - here)

Smart home lighting, thermostats and security cameras are already on the market, but Colin Angle, chief executive of Roomba maker iRobot Corp ( IRBT.O), says they are still dumb when it comes to understanding their physical environment. He thinks the mapping technology currently guiding top-end Roomba models could change that and is basing the company's strategy on it.

"There's an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared," said Angle.

That vision has its fans, from investors to the likes of Amazon.com Inc ( AMZN.O), Apple Inc ( AAPL.O) and Alphabet ( GOOGL.O) who are all pushing artificially intelligent voice assistants as smart home interfaces. According to financial research firm IHS Markit, the market for smart home devices was worth $9.8 billion in 2016 and is projected to grow 60 percent this year.

Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant in March, could reach a deal to sell its maps to one or more of the Big Three in the next couple of years.

Amazon declined to comment, and Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

So far investors have cheered Angle's plans, sending iRobot stock soaring to $102 in mid-June from $35 a year ago, giving it a market value of nearly $2.5 billion on 2016 revenue of $660 million.

But there are headwinds for iRobot's approach, ranging from privacy concerns to a rising group of mostly cheaper competitors - such as the $300 Bissell SmartClean and the $270 Hoover Quest 600 - which are threatening to turn a once-futuristic product into a commoditized home appliance.

Low-cost Roomba rivals were the subject of a report by short-seller Ben Axler of Spruce Point Capital Management, which sent the stock down 20 percent to $84 at the end of June.

The company's smart home vision has helped bring around some former critics. Willem Mesdag, managing partner of hedge fund Red Mountain Capital - who led an unsuccessful proxy fight against Angle last year and wound up selling his iRobot shares - is now largely supportive of the company's direction.

“I think they have a tremendous first-mover advantage," said Mesdag, who thinks iRobot would be a great acquisition for one of the Big Three. "The competition is focused on making cleaning products, not a mapping robot.”

Military Roots

Founded in 1990, iRobot saw early success building bomb disposal robots for the U.S. Army before launching the world's first "robovac" in 2002. The company sold off its military unit last year to focus on the consumer sector, and says the Roomba - which ranges in price from $375 to $899 - still has 88 percent of the U.S. robovac market.

iRobot headquarters is seen in Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S. in this recent photo released July 20, 2017. Courtesy iRobot/Handout via REUTERS
____________________________

All robovacs use short-range infrared or laser sensors to detect and avoid obstacles, but iRobot in 2015 added a camera, new sensors and software to its flagship 900-series Roomba that gave it the ability to build a map while keeping track of their own location within it.

So-called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technology right now enables Roomba, and other higher-end Robovacs made by Dyson and other rivals, to do things like stop vacuuming, head back to its dock to recharge and then return to the same spot to finish the job.

Guy Hoffman, a robotics professor at Cornell University, said detailed spatial mapping technology would be a "major breakthrough" for the smart home.

Right now, smart home devices operate "like a tourist in New York who never leaves the subway," said Hoffman. "There is some information about the city, but the tourist is missing a lot of context for what's happening outside of the stations."

An iRobot Roomba 980 is seen in this undated handout photo. Courtesy iRobot/Handout via REUTERS
_________________________________

With regularly updated maps, Hoffman said, sound systems could match home acoustics, air conditioners could schedule airflow by room and smart lighting could adjust according to the position of windows and time of day.

Companies like Amazon, Google and Apple could also use the data to recommend home goods for customers to buy, said Hoffman.

One potential downside is that selling data about users' homes raises clear privacy issues, said Ben Rose, an analyst who covers iRobot for Battle Road Research. Customers could find it "sort of a scary thing," he said.

Angle said iRobot would not sell data without its customers' permission, but he expressed confidence most would give their consent in order to access the smart home functions.

Another Roomba risk is that cheaper cleaning products are what consumers really want. In May, the New York Times' Sweethome blog dethroned the $375 Roomba 690 as its most-recommended robovac in favor of the $220 Eufy RoboVac 11, saying the connectivity and other advanced features of the former would not justify the greater cost for most users.

Short-seller Axler's June report caused a stir mostly with its prediction that value-priced appliance maker SharkNinja Operating LLC could launch a robovac by year's end. SharkNinja declined to comment.

One potential iRobot bulwark against these new competitors: a portfolio of 1,000 patents worldwide covering the very concept of a self-navigating household robot vacuum as well as basic technologies like object avoidance.

A handful of those patents are now being tested in a series of patent infringement lawsuits iRobot filed in April against Bissell, Stanley Black & Decker ( SWK.N), Hoover Inc, Chinese outsourced manufacturers and other robovac makers. The litigation is the most significant in iRobot's history.

A lawyer for Hoover declined to comment. Lawyers for Bissell and Black & Decker did not respond to requests for comment.

The patents are a "huge part of our competitive moat,” Angle said. “It is getting really hard not to step on our intellectual property.”

Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Anthony Lin and Edward Tobin

reuters.com

[deeno] Its a rare stock that I own that skyrockets and I don't have a clue why. Anyone...

deeno — 5/5/2017 11:43:56 AM

Its a rare stock that I own that skyrockets and I don't have a clue why. Anyone have thoughts out there?

[richieb] Stock declining. Fine, Ill buy more: bullish column here on IRobot. richmakesyo...

richieb — 5/20/2012 5:25:15 PM

Stock declining. Fine, Ill buy more:
bullish column here on IRobot.
richmakesyourich.com

Robotics will be huge. :)

[deeno] ouch, may be time to look at this one again. Think they are doing ANYTHING on t...

deeno — 2/8/2012 6:03:21 PM

ouch, may be time to look at this one again. Think they are doing ANYTHING on the consumer side?