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.
This is why IoT isn’t sustainable. If you don’t have total control you’re fucked.
How did they squander being the name in autonomous vacuum devices…? It’s kinda baffling tbh.
Well, Chinese manufactures cloned the design and came in well under price, took the Chinese market, then improved the product and challenged iRobot globally.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
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.
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…
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.
How did they squander being the name in autonomous vacuum devices…?
Letting a picture of a customer using the bathroom leak onto Facebook cannot have helped.
Really? It’s not a mystery. China. For the past 5+ years they have had better and cheaper vacuums. Meanwhile innovation has been at a standstill with irobot for the past decade.
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.
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.
Do you use a special filament for that?
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.
For anyone interested in owning their vacuum robot check out Valetudo
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to support anything from iRobot. I’m hoping that there will be a jailbreak made available before they go bankrupt, but I doubt it.
Not supporting iRobot vacuums isn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering that at the price iRobot is asking for their vacuums, a lot of the other companies in the space offer much nicer models with more features.
Absolutely love Valetudo!
I’ve been eyeballing this, doesn’t seem too difficult for most compatible models either. Might be a little after Christmas project
Idk, the dev seems… hostile. And prevents the project from becoming a community effort. Also:
Feature-parity is a non-goal for Valetudo, and if you’re wondering which features “you might lose”, Valetudo is not for you.
I mean, I do wonder if I will lose features, therefore I guess I should look elsewhere.
It’s all explained here: https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/why-not-valetudo.html
The dev has a specific vision and that’s it. If you don’t like it you can use something else.
Just like the dev of Calibre/Kitty. He does things a certain way because that’s the way he likes it. It’s a stupid and shit way, but Calibre has no real competition so I use it 🙂
The dev has a specific vision and that’s it. If you don’t like it you can use something else.
Yes, that’s what I wrote as well.
And prevents the project from becoming a community effort.
No, I am not doing that, because I cannot do that. That is the whole thing with FOSS code.
If there was a community of builders picking it up and doing something community-driven, I could not do anything about it, nor would I want to.
They would be required to not call it Valetudo + not use the logo, so that they cannot coast off the brand and reputation of course - and that I would absolutely expect from anyone -, but other than that anyone can do whatever.
Why this hasn’t happened yet, I cannot say for certain, but my hypothesis is that no one actually wants to put in the work. Likely both because work is work and work is annoying, but also because what exists now just works so what would you even do other than slap another name on it and feel good about yourself.
But putting that aside, I’d like to ask a different question: Why wouldn’t I want that?
If community is nice, friendly, warm and full of heart, why would I oppose that? I am, after all, just like you. A human that would like to have fun, pleasant and nice interactions with other like-minded humans. I, like everyone else, am a social creature that enjoys being seen as a fellow human and member of a group.
So why would I oppose that?
The answer to that might be, that the mental model of “community project” does not actually in reality and execution fit any of what I described right now.
Of course, I cannot and will not rule out that it is just me and that I am the problem, but even if that is the case, then I still need to exist and need space to exist. “Just be normal” just means “stop being you”
It would be quite weird to not allow me to exist within the space I created from nothing from the ground up, wouldn’t it? If even that isn’t a place I would be allowed to be in, then where is?
Holy crap, didn’t expect the creator of Valetudo to be here. Love your style, keep it up
🫡
Thank you very much for your hard work. I would never have gotten a robot vacuum if Valetudo did not exist.
First off, thank you for all your work.
Why this hasn’t happened yet
You set the bar pretty high for improvement.
The vacuums are expensive. The work requires multiple top-tier skill sets, and the people with those skill sets don’t generally have enough time to contribute to something this heavy
Somebody could just fork you and clone everything you’re doing, but it’s not like any users would chase someone else versus you when you’re the only one getting actual work done.
It’s also kind of poking the bear for these vacuum companies skirting along by selling user data.
Valetudo is not a community is on the website.
If your answer to my comment is: “well, you can create your own community, with blackjack and hookers!”, well… There’d be so much to discuss that I don’t think it’s worth it.
And as for the second paragraph, communities aren’t “nice”. They’re communities, made of people, who are all flawed, just like everyone is, in different ways, but manage to make the puzzle of human interaction fit. If all you want is people communicating and behaving in a specific way that you approve of, that’s not a community.
Nobody’s forcing you out of your space and I’ve never proposed it, I just said that I won’t be using your software, we’re both making our choices, hopefully in respect of each other.
Idk, the dev seems… hostile.
I’ve only ever seen a dev become “hostile” when people simply don’t read the documentation and ask the same questions over and over and over again.
They should have diversified into ass wiping robots when they had the chance.
Oh look, another example of a product that worked fine without internet connectivity and was improved by adding extra bullshit you don’t actually need that then gets worse when those features can’t function properly because their server is offline.
We got a basic roomba 650 (the one that crashes into stuff and randomly cleans) like 10 years ago and it still works fine (well, as well as it ever worked which wasn’t great), you program the time and day of the week with physical buttons, and leave it alone.
If only there was such a thing like bluetooth to connect mobile apps to local devices
Mobile apps bit rot pretty quickly when they stop updating them. A web UI would be better. A server or internet connection is not needed, a web UI can be hosted directly on the device.
What does this even mean?
That means apps tend to stop working if the developers don’t keep updating them. Mobile operating systems much, much worse backwards compatibility than windows. If the device hosts its own website instead of using an app, it will most likely work fine decades from now without any updates.
it means android api changes, google play restrictions and removals
Mobile apps that aren’t supported lose functionality quicker then webUI alternatives (since web standards stick around longer I’d guess)
An accessible documented API would be better. A standardized one for all vacuums would be best.
Yeah. I’ve got an 870 that’s still cleaning. It gets stuck under furniture and needs to be rescued at least once a week, and last week it lost its
assdustbin somehow mid clean, but it’s still kicking.Lmao
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.
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
This vacuuming is brought you by Squarespace…
You can’t set a timer on the thing without internet access?!?
Not a single one of the robot vacuums that I’ve bought in the last 2 years seem to be able to function without internet access.
It’s asinine.
Also they break down so freaking fast. It’s not even funny. Even worse when the part that’s broken is non-replaceable and it’s like a $3 part.
You can’t do shit on those roombas without a connection to the manufacturers servers.
On and off is the most you can do.
In order to make them work again once the servers are down, you need to spoof the dns to a local server that you then need to reverse engineer from the api.
If you are lucky the thing has home assistant integration because some awesome people already did exactly that or the manufacturer was kind enough to give access to the bot api
Wow, what a piece of shit. Dumb engineers.
No fucking way this was decided by an engineer instead of a manager
I can guarantee you it wasn’t the engineers that wanted it this way
Dumb shit like this is never the engineer’s idea.
Do people genuinely rely on these or are they really just a novelty?
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.
My Roborock is genuinely an important cleaning tool for keeping my messy house with three kids clean.
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.
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
-
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.
Customers shouldn’t need to be concerned because the company going down should not brick your PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
And yet, here we are
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.
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.
Maybe we can come up with a decentralized serverless way to control all these vacuums while stealing people’s data for charity?
Hey roomba! I want a second mortgage!
Hey roomba! My bank account is huge I wish a credit card company would just call me!
