Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too.
This is a good article to describe the viewpoint of Chinese iRobot competitor https://kr-asia.com/at-usd-90-per-unit-seauto-is-quietly-swe...
Too bad our American leaders sold us out.
Roborock and Eufy (and other competitors) clearly either stole or reverse-engineered the tech.
If the IP had enough value then I’m sure Vorwerk would’ve pursued it in court.
But here we are.
Also, I recall Neato was often purchased and cannibalized by researchers for its lidar.
This was all cutting edge 10+ years ago. Even today, the features it supported offline then is just matched at best today in 2025/2026.
Not exceeded; and often crippled when offline.
Meanwhile cheap roborocks had no arbitrary limitations and more honest marketing.
I miss the optimism that this company used to have, but I won't miss the entity that they became.
Biggest issue has been the flood of cheap chinese units on the market - like GoPro, they had nowhere to go, and got beat on price once feature parity was achieved (which didn't take that long).
Roomba was living off of name recognition for most of that period and was far behind in adopting any of it.
As I understand the only countries where one could barely pull that off would be Korea or Japan, and the local makers are mostly giving up as they lose too much on cost.
> Earnings began to decline since 2021 due to supply chain headwinds and increased competition.
I know that there's a slight difference between Chinese-state owned enterprises and Amazon, but isn't a sale to either one worrying?
China might at least make some products out of this purchase. Most of these US companies would just sit on it.
The real problem for me has been that I want something to straighten out my living spaces, not to vacuum the floors. Vacuuming is quick and a good vacuum cleaner (old school bagged kind, not a silly filter one), will do a far better job than a little battery powered gizmo anyways. But a robot capable of picking up the toys my kids like to leave out, or bringing abandoned coffee mugs to the sink (can you tell I live with multiple adults and children?) would be worth quite a bit to me. A robot capable of washing my dishes and putting away my laundry would be worth more. One capable of preparing meals would be worth more to me than a car.
Of course they would have to be 100% open source with easily replaceable and repairable components, which is where I think most of these types of projects go wrong. I remember seeing the Chefee demo and it was very cool but the main problem is that you aren’t buying a product, you are investing in the idea that the company behind it won’t go belly up in two years and brick your $60,000 chef/cabinet/fridge thing and that it won’t sell itself to e.g. Google which will cram it full of ads and spyware.
I also agree it’d be worth more to me than my car, and I’d hope much like modern cars such an expensive consumer purchase will end up with similar warranty protections and eventually a third party market for replacement parts.
Much like cars, I’m guessing it’ll be a better idea to go with a large company that’ll be able to honor that warranty without being financially ruined. The first few generations will see lots of experimentation and thus be more risky for the consumer before the market settles out with a few big winners (as is often the case).
This cracked me up, as it implies the cat had thoroughly planned her skirmish :)
Despite this i still used roomba everywhere I lived.
latest roomba model actually has "poop detection".
> Under the restructuring, vacuum cleaner maker Shenzhen PICEA will receive the entire equity stake in the reorganized company. The company’s common stock will be wiped out under the proposed Chapter 11 plan.
Hopefully they keep the lights on.
I think the lights have been off for some time already.
Binocular vision ought to be good enough for a vacuum. It's short range compared to the inter-camera distance. Vehicle object ranging at distance is much tougher and can be fooled.
> At Matic, we believe your data should stay within your home.
> Matic's intelligence is localized on the device, and it never sends any of your data to the cloud for processing. That means no user information is ever sold, shared, or even collected in the first place.
[1] https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
It's shocking to me how good Roborock mop-vacuums are for example, Eufy vacuums are nice as well. They still run into unavoidable issues, but they're: much quieter even at their highest setting; show you how they map out the space; allow you to easily customize routes or focus on specific rooms; do a shockingly good job at self-emptying; and best of all you don't have to rescue them from the exact same sliding door track every single time you run them.
I have a 2-level house. Even after some house work, one room that probably still has too high a transition. A lot of different surfaces (And I'm not religious with cords and the like.) I'm guessing that my house is a lot more typical of a lot of houses of any size that would justify an iRobot type of device.
Decided a few years ago that a broom vac just made a lot more sense.
I never understood why the US objected to this. Amazon was not in that business.
But you see acquisitions like Paramount that will eventually turn US media into a near monopoly with probably 2 or 3 players. Now we have a fight over who will pick up WB, I am sure who ever wins the fight will have the merger approved. But Amazon, denied.
FWIW, I have no love for Amazon, but they were not trying to buy a company like Walmart which will be far worse they buying iRobot.
If you were happy with your Roomba you could keep it running for many many years. You only needed to buy a new Roomba if you wanted new features.
Sprotch•2h ago