The iRobot museum is located in the main building of its Bedford, Massachusetts headquarters. It\u2019s more of a hallway, really, tucked behind a security door just off the building\u2019s lobby, that sports the words\u00a0\u201cCool Stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first stop for tour groups and field trips, laying out the company\u2019s 27-year history along conveniently stocked shelves.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a history lined with breakthroughs and misfires, and, in the case of he loosely fitting skin of 2000\u2019s Hasbro collaboration, a nightmarish descent into the uncanny valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe founded the business to go change the availability and role of robots in our lives,\u201d says Colin Angle, who co-founded the company in 1990 with fellow MIT grads Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner, who have since moved onto jobs as heads of Rethink Robotics<\/a> and CyPhy Works<\/a>, respectively. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a product in mind, we just had the cool technology, and gee, it ought to work. Not exactly the best strategy for starting a company.\u201d<\/p>\n The museum, it seems, is modest by design, charting the slow and deliberate rise of a company which, by Angle\u2019s own admission took a dozen years to really find its footing. It\u2019s simultaneously inspiring and disheartening in an industry that doesn\u2019t always warm to late-bloomers.<\/p>\n \u201cOur first business model was to build a low-cost Mars rover and fund it by selling the movie rights,\u201d Angle explains with a smile. The company\u2019s first robot, Genghis, was created a year after its founding. An adorable little insect of a bot, with six rigid legs that are designed to help it traverse the rocky terrain of the red planet \u2014 or, in the case of an early prototype with matchstick-like legs, a small paperback book.<\/p>\n