iRobot CEO talks about the Market, the Competition and the Future
Robot vacuuming is becoming globally “mainstream,” says Colin Angle, Co-Founder and CEO of iRobot, the maker of the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba. It’s been 8 years since the product was first introduced into the market, and this year sales have taken off outside the U.S. The annual worldwide market for vacuum cleaners that cost more than $ 200 is 4 billion dollars and iRobot plans to capture about 5% of that market in 2010.
So what’s next and what about the competition? GetRobo interviewed the CEO on the phone to talk about what he thinks. (This interview was conducted originally for a column on the Wall Street Journal Japan.The following is an edited transcription of the conversation.)
Q. You have sold over 200,000 Roombas in Japan and I hear that it's gaining even more momentum there. What’s happening on the Home Robot front ?
A. This is an emerging market place. The home robot industry is still a relatively new industry and we’re enjoying a period of time when people are starting to understand that this is not just science fiction and that robots are actually practical and reliable. I think it’s fair to say there still is this skepticism that people have around the reality of robots in general. But since we launched originally in 2002, we’ve sold about 5 million (units) worldwide and I think we’re really at a point where we’re seeing a “mainstreaming” of robot vacuuming.
Our international strategy has been very successful in getting that message out and Japan is our largest single international customer.
Q. You talk about your IP strategy and your “strong defensible intellectual property portfolio” in your most recent earnings conference call. How are you going to use this portfolio and how do you view the competition right now?
A. We have and we’ll continue to pursue active defense of our intellectual property. It’s not something you do lightly. Typically the way this is done is because of the investment required to take action, you wait for a competing product to demonstrate that it has some staying power in the marketplace. Since we launched the product in 2002 there has been at least 20 or 30 attempts to copy in varying degrees, the functionality, design and methodology that Roomba utilizes. And typically what happens with these products is they fail in the marketplace on their own because frankly building a practical robot that effectively cleans the floor is an extremely difficult thing to do.
And then you get some other companies that have an innovative element to the solution but have not solved enough of the problems to have a viable product. So, here’s a cool feature but it can’t clean.
This is something we track very carefully. We certainly are seeing some products that seem like they have some serious commitment behind them. But we don’t think there is anything in the marketplace that comes close to Roomba in solving the real problem, which is automatically vacuuming your floor. There are a thousand different little things that competing companies need to get right and it will be some time before frankly there is legitimate competition in the space. And when that happens, that’s not necessarily a bad thing either, because certainly the vacuuming industry is quite large and the more quality products that are out there helping people understand that robot vacuuming is the better way of cleaning your floors, the more rapidly we will see more adoption.
Q. So far, have you used your IP portfolio for legal actions in the home robot market?
A. We have. We took action against a company called Koolatron that was importing a product into the U.S. a few years ago that we started to see in the channels that we were at. We took action and got a consent judgment against that company and forced them to cease and desist. We’ve done it before and we’re certainly willing to do it again. We’re tracking this new raft in entries very carefully to make a prudent decision as to timing and the identity of the folks.
Q. How serious is the Neato XV-11 as competition?
A. That would be a product that has some interesting technology but not a complete solution. It has a laser range finder on it which is interesting, but it adds a lot of cost and will treat everything like a wall. So if you had a table cloth on your table or you had a couch that had skirts on it, the robot would never go underneath and that tends to be a place that you want your robot to go. So that’s a limitation. But most importantly I think they put most of their energy into the navigation and not enough energy into the cleaning efficacy. Frankly the navigation is the fun part but the rubber meets the road when you ask if it actually picks up the particular that’s on the floor.
But it’s a good company and what I would hope is that they have enough success with this early version that they can solve more of the problems in their next generation. I’m all for startups in this space and I’m outspoken trying to encourage companies like this to enter. I’d be happier if people were trying to solve any one of the (other) thousands of challenges in areas that robots can help around the home or business and industry today, but if vacuuming is where they want to play, vacuuming is where they are going to play.
Q. There’s a lot of excitement around Kinect. I just saw a YouTube video about Kinect and iRobot Create. Do you feel that this kind of technology can be combined with the Roomba in the future?
A. Absolutely. The type of technology the Kinect sensor uses is a technology that has been used on robots for decades. When I was at MIT we had a point cloud sensor but it was very very expensive. What the Kinect sensor gives us is a low cost way in creating a 3D representation of our environment. That’s something that robots can use to do a more sophisticated job of navigation or identification of what the environment contains.
Or you can simply use some of the software that’s being developed for the Xbox where gesture is translated into meaning and so you can point at a place you might want the robot to clean and let the robot do it. I think it opens up a style of interface which used to be unaffordable in a consumer robot. We actually have gestural interfaces created at the research level for military robots so we are very aware of what can be done. And software and computation are not the limiting factor anymore - thanks to Moore’s Law - it’s having the right sensor. The Kinect sensor is a great one and we’re really excited about its potential.
Q. Does iRobot plan on having some capability for 3D representation of the environment on the Roombas?
Continue reading "iRobot CEO talks about the Market, the Competition and the Future" »
