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.
Catastrophe because we gave up the broom and mop. Oh no.
I hope they open source it before dying (if they do end up going under)
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.
Mine shan’t have a camera
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.
solution: get the cheapest one that doesn’t have a camera
Yeah… because the US hasn’t spied on anyone in recent history…
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.
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 😅
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…)
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.
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.
Customers shouldn’t need to be concerned because the company going down should not brick your PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
And yet, here we are
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 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.
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 robot) that could be rooted. Outside of that - super easy.
Is this a COA for irobot Roombas?
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.
Truly the Kodak of this generation
Kodak said “we don’t believe digital photography will take over” and iRobot is like “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”
They fucked up by making their robots last seemingly forever, due to the fact they spy on you and get stuck every 15 mins so you never want to turn them on.
The entire problem is that automobiles have become an accepted housing option, and Roombas don’t operate well in a vehicular environment, thus drastically cutting into their sale.
Do people genuinely rely on these or are they really just a novelty?
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.
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
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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
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.
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.
Pressing a physical button to stop it. So you gotta chase your roomba down before it eats your chinchilla. Sounds fun.
It would be easy enough to force vendors to make the URL the device connects to, configurable and to publish the API the device is using. Two minuscule changes that can prolong the life of devices by decades.
That would make the husk of the company truly worthless, and I’m not sure private equity will allow that.
To be fair, many roombas have a mini DIN connector somewhere, which opens up the possibility for external control - what I plan to do when mine stops working due to server shutdown. However, getting replacement parts will get more and more tricky as time goes by.
I just had to through out a mostly functional airfryer because the drawer rail disintegrated and the replacement part is no longer manufactured. The oldest one I could get was a “new” version with more plastic and a slightly bigger size, so it didn’t fit by about 5%.
It really should be illegal, there is no logical reason for 500 slightly different models and inoperability of basic functions (drawers, APIs, …) aside from malignant greed and planet destruction.
Gods, I fucking hate this so much. I’ve got a ninja blender that the lid seal is broken, and the lid alone is like 50-70% of the cost of a whole new unit. It’s ridiculous how impossible it is to find replacement parts for simple things anymore.
This is why I have a 3D printer. I make all kinds of seals, gaskets, o-rings, usually better than original.
Do you use a special filament for that?
How do you 3d print a rubber gasket/seal?
TPU works fairly well depending on the application.
I wouldn’t rely on it for high temperature (above 150C) or high pressure/vacuum applications, but for most household applications it’ll hold up fine.
