The Roomba Turns 15

It’s amazing that the year 2002 was 15 years ago, it feels like the Sydney Olympics was only yesterday. It’s equally insane that the first iRobot Roomba roaming living rooms 15 years ago, it sometimes still feels like they’re new to the world.

2002 was a big year, The Osbournes started appearing on our TV, we were introduced to Monster energy drinks, Brazil won the World Cup and the Euro was introduced as currency. We also met the Roomba.

15 years is a long time in the tech game and after such a long period you can provide some numbers to reminisce on…

• 20 million robots sold in 15 years!
• iRobot has over 1000 patents worldwide
• Friday is vacuuming day as most of these 20 million robots work hard for TGIF
• 9am is the normal time we get our robots to work, perhaps after we’ve left for work too!

• Roomba saves people 110 hours of cleaning each year or 4.5 days
• The most popular Roomba names defined by you include; Dusty, R2D2, Rosie, Hazel and Roomba (creatives!).
• Japan, Australia and the USA prefer to run their Roomba in the morning
• Netherlands, Great Britain and Taiwan want their Roomba working at night

The next 15 years is set to be even bigger according to Colin Angle, CEO and founder of iRobot, “Looking ahead to the next 15 years, robots will be the centrepiece of the smart home, helping people to accomplish even more in their daily lives.”

We’ll be sure to report on all the movements in our homes by robots on EFTM…