Colin Angle Quotes
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My very clear vision for the ideal Roomba is one you never see and you never touch. Our research priorities are explicitly focused on the Roomba of the future that will deliver on the promise of automatically cleaning your floor.
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I grew up mostly in Schenectady, N.Y. From an early age, building and creating things was a real passion for me.
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It is clear as you look at the team why Data Point Capital has so quickly become one of the premier venture capital firms. I look forward to adding to the firm's very bright future.
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Robotics has been around forever, and it's been the next big thing forever, and it is so exciting and compelling that it's easy to get carried away. People almost always do, and that's one of the things that has held back the industry.
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At MIT, in Professor Rodney Brooks' lab, I was involved in a project, led by Anita Flynn, to build robots using techniques similar to those used in building silicon chips. We got some silicon micro-machined motors to move a bit, but this didn't lead to an actual product.
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The reason it has taken so long for the robotics industry to move forward is because people keep trying to make something that is cool but difficult to achieve rather than trying to find solutions to actual human problems. Technology can be extremely expensive if you don't focus.
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In the beginning of Roomba, we all took turns answering the support line. Once, a woman called and explained that her robot had a defective motor. I said, 'Send it back. We'll send you a new one.' She said, 'No - I'm not sending you Rosie.'
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One of the big things coming out of healthcare reform is a thing called the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act (CLASS) which is a mechanism to reimburse people staying at home for technology and services that allow them to stay at home.
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When we built Roomba, we explicitly designed it to not have a face. We didn't want to think it was cute; we wanted people to take it seriously, so we gave it more of an industrial look. People personified their Roomba anyway. Over 80 percent of people name their robot. We did nothing to encourage people to do that, but they do it anyway.
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At the World Cup, there is a constant risk that you might find a bag or some object that has been left behind, and no one is quite sure what it is. To bring in a full bomb-disposal team for each item can be very time-consuming. The PackBot can go over rough terrain, climb stairs, pick things up, and also be operated from a safe distance.
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Robotic toys can be very interesting, but it is important that the toy not 'dictate' how the child should play with it. Rather, it should take its cues from the child and enhance, teach, and enrich the play experience. We incorporated some of these features into a robotic baby doll we built for Hasbro in 1999.
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Starting out, iRobot was not an economic rocket ship. It took six and a half years before we had enough money in the bank at the beginning of each month to make payroll. We always made it - we paid salaries at the end of the month, and I always had four weeks to figure things out.
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The ideal vacuum cleaner would be one you never see. It needs to not just be a cool gadget, but a product that cleans your floor correctly. I can imagine people having a cupboard full of robots that only come out when you need them to fulfil a specific purpose.
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Our 2015 financial performance will continue to be driven by our Home Robot business. Home Robot revenue is expected to grow 10% to 12% in 2015 and comprise 90% of total company revenue.
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I was focused on building things from an early age. When I was about 3, our toilet broke, and my mother was ready to call the plumber. I told her I would fix it and asked her to get my Richard Scarry book 'How Things Work in Busytown.' Between the picture of a toilet and the text she read to me explaining how the parts worked, I fixed it.
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There are so many opportunities to make a bad decision in building a robot company on top of all the normal ways that entrepreneurs screw up that it is incredibly difficult to truly create value because it is so cost-sensitive.
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It's going to be interesting to see how society deals with artificial intelligence, but it will definitely be cool.
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In the smart home of the future, there should be a robot designed to talk to you. With enough display technology, connectivity, and voice recognition, this human-interface robot or head-of-household robot will serve as a portal to the digital domain. It becomes your interface to your robot-enabled home.
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Building robot versions of people is very expensive.
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I believe one day nano-robots will play an important role in medicine.
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I learned to canoe at summer camp and thought I'd pursue Olympic whitewater canoeing. In my senior year of high school, I instead decided to attend M.I.T. I like to say I've had only two jobs in my life: whitewater canoeing instructor and wilderness guide in college, and C.E.O. of iRobot.
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The idea that a robot will become more aware of its environment, that telling it to 'go to the kitchen' means something - navigation and understanding of the environment is a robot problem. Those are the technological frontiers of the robotics industry.
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The way that the robotics market is going to grow, at least in the home, is that we'll have a number of different special purpose robots.
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When I was building robots in the early 1990s, the problems of voice recognition, image understanding, VOIP, even touchscreen technologies - these were robotics problems.