Advertisement

iRobot unveils new Roomba vacuum that avoids solid pet waste

iRobot co-founder and CEO Colin Angle joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the company's new Roomba j7+ Robot vacuum.

Video transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. The newest Roomba from iRobot has one primary goal, stop pet poop spread in your house. Some call this, when it happens, the poop-- poopocalypse. Yes, we aren't kidding here. Let's check in with iRobot Co-founder and CEO Colin Angle and talk a little more about the business. Colin, so your-- Colin, good to see you again. Your newest Roomba is certainly garnering a lot of attention. Take us through its development, what doesn't it do, what does it do.

COLIN ANGLE: So as people increase their reliance on the robots to clean their home, really what we're seeing is that the robots need to be more intelligent to get the job done, to keep you from feeling like you have to clean up before the robot cleans up. The robot needs to be smarter, able to avoid cords, charging cable, power cables on the floor. That's probably the most common hazard that gets the robot caught up. Probably the most dramatic is that rare occasion when maybe Fluffy has left a little present for the robot, and that can be an unfortunate get together.

And so we've deployed really state-of-the-art machine learning and visual object recognition technologies into the robot to make them smarter, able to recognize these kinds of obstacles, and simply avoid them. So this is our Genius 3.0 robot intelligent system that is really driving a new level of intelligence, all in pursuit of just making the robot a better partner for you in cleaning your home.

BRIAN SOZZI: Colin, is that one of the biggest complaints when it comes to a Roomba, whether it's running over their presents, as you would say, or I've seen YouTube videos where the Roomba is interacting with the pet, usually because the pet chases down the Roomba? Is that one of the biggest things you hear from customers and would be customers?

COLIN ANGLE: You know, it's a rare but catastrophic event and certainly something that we've been working on recognizing and avoiding for actually a number of years now. So it's a big deal. But so is the overall intelligence of the robot. So it can respect things like nap time and, as it moves through the house, move quietly, as it's trying to get to the place it's supposed to clean. The J7 robot really is a huge leap forward in robot intelligence.

The poop-tastrophe avoidance and the fact that iRobot is so confident that we're backing it up with a warranty, that if your robot hits poop, we'll will replace it, is probably the funnest thing to talk about. Yes, iRobot will be number one in number two.

JULIE HYMAN: It's definitely fun to talk about. There's no question there, Colin. I want to ask you something about perhaps more boring but more important for you guys, and that's pricing. Because I know that you talked about, in your most recent earnings, that you guys are working on improving the supply chain. Everybody's having these challenges now. You expect to be able to do that early next year. But we're also seeing a lot of companies, as they have those kinds of shortages, raise prices. What are you all doing?

COLIN ANGLE: You know, so you're not going to see a blanket price increase. You will see iRobot doing a lot of things to make sure that the supply is supported by the right amount of media spending and demand generation spending. So you might see us be less promotional. You might see us on some models, in some markets look at price. But we're doing our best to try to ensure that products like the J7 can continue to drive the very strong momentum of growth in the robot industry, which has been certainly accelerated by our growing tendency to work from home and desire to keep that home space clean, despite the fact home is being used for more things, more frequently than ever.

JULIE HYMAN: You know, let's talk robots a little bit more broadly now. Because the Roomba is pretty unique still, even in this year 2021, in terms of robots in the home, right. And I know you've talked in the past about maybe putting arms on it at some point in the future, making it functional for other uses as well. Where do you think we are in the robot adoption cycle, which sounds like a funny phrase as I say it out loud, but is obviously a real thing given the Roomba and other types of devices? Where do you think we are in that journey? And what do you think is the next breakthrough?

COLIN ANGLE: You know, if the robot industry was a baseball game, we would be just about at the first pitch in the first inning. Certainly, the role robots will play in our home is going to continue to grow over the next decades, and I think largely driven by our desire to have our homes maintain themselves, operate more efficiently, and really deliver a more healthy environment to live in and raise our children and ultimately grow old in.

We have a huge challenge facing us as society. What do we do with the changing demographics, and how do we support the elder desire to live independently longer? In my mind, that's going to be the most important application of robotics over time. And this journey is going to go on for decades. Robots vacuum your floor, great, still underpenetrated but the first pitch of the first inning.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, that's a really interesting idea in terms of elder care and people being able to stay independent longer. It's something that I hadn't thought so much about. To get back to the arms question for just a moment, I know this is something you talked about, what, early in 2020 that was in development. Where are you guys on that? What would the arms do? And how soon would consumers have access to that?

COLIN ANGLE: Well, the enabling technology that stands in front of a robot getting arms is really understanding where anything is. It's no point having an arm if I don't know where the kitchen is and I don't know where the refrigerator is, so that I can't possibly grab a beer and bring it to you, which, of course, would be a great thing. So with the J7 and the Genius technology we're launching right now, the ability of the robot to understand its environment and start understanding where things are is enabling for the next steps where we might actually want to help clean up the home before we vacuum, which would be a great use of manipulation. Or other great ideas for robot arms are helping with dishes or folding the laundry.

So I think that what we're seeing today is the foundational intelligence making a huge leap forward, which will enable robots to do more as we go in the future. 5, 10 years, you'll see robots with arms.

JULIE HYMAN: Very cool stuff Colin, Thanks for being here. Some advances here in helping the Roomba avoid pet waste, still probably might scare the pets. But I'm not sure what can be done about that one. Colin Angles, iRobot CEO and Co-Founder. Thanks, Colin, appreciate it.