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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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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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If you want to make a serious, rugged, reliable robot, you can start with the Create platform and just build stuff on top of it.
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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.
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In the end, robots do things that people can do. So there is a cost above which you can hire somebody to do it, and that bounds the opportunity.
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When my daughter was 3, she was eating Cheerios and spilled some on the table. So she swiped them onto the floor. I said, 'Darcy, what are you doing?' She said: 'Don't worry, Daddy, the robot will get it.' I didn't know whether to be horrified or proud. It was this idea that homes take care of themselves and robots are part of that.
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We will not have humanoid androids. It's interesting: when you start trying to make robots look more human, you end up making them look more grotesque. It takes very little to go from super-attractive robot to hideous robot.
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You're not going to talk to your vacuum cleaning robot: in fact, you may never see your vacuum cleaning robot because, ideally, you come home every day and your floors are freshly vacuumed.
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People are fascinated by robots because they're machines that can mimic life.
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I thought boxes were the best toy. When my parents got a new car, I ran to my mother and said, 'Did it come in a box?'
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Building a robot that has legs and walks around is a very expensive proposition. Mother Nature has created many wonderful things, but one thing we do have that nature doesn't is the wheel, a continuous rotating joint, and tracks, so we need to make use of inventions to make things simpler.
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Did Google need to make robot cars in order to make Streetview work? Absolutely not. It's the equivalent of saying you need a walking robot in order to push an upright vacuum cleaner. It's gratuitous robotics!
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My Roomba's name is Roswell. There is the moment when you are sitting on the couch and Roomba turns itself on and goes out and starts working. You really appreciate it because it works hard for you, and it deserves some kind of recognition.
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It's hard not to love Roomba. Roomba had such an amazing impact on the field. When we launched, we asked people, 'Is it a robot?' and got an overwhelming no - 'robots' have arms and legs; they command data. There was a very strong perception that robots had to look like people.
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What did everyone think robot vacuuming was going to be? Well, they think Rosie the Robot from 'The Jetsons,' a human robot that pushed a vacuum. That was never going to happen.
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The name iRobot comes from 'Internet-connected robot.'
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In the original 'Star Wars' movie, there is a small toaster-sized and shaped robot on the Death Star that guides Stormtroopers to where they need to go. I always liked that robot because I could imagine how to build it - and it served a real purpose.