iRobot
Assembly Line
iRobot CEO: Why Voice is the Future of Robot Control
The reason why this kind of voice control is important is because Roombas are getting very, very sophisticated. The latest models know more about our homes than ever before, with maps and object recognition and all kinds of complex and intelligent behaviors and scheduling options. iRobot has an app that does its best to simplify the process of getting your Roomba to do exactly what you want it to do, but you still have to be comfortable poking around in the app on a regular basis. This poses a bit of a problem for iRobot, which is now having to square all these really cool new capabilities with their original concept for the robot that I still remember as being best encapsulated by having just one single button that you could push, labeled “Clean” in nice big letters.