Comment on iRobot’s revenue has tanked and it’s almost out of cash | "Roomba customers are understandably concerned about the impact these current financial troubles might have on their home cleaning robots."

• B0rax@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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  • psoul@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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…

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    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.

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      • psoul@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        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.

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• socsa@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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