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Welcome to another post by Tech Me Think. Here in this post, we will provide you guys with the full insight about iRobot new device Roomba and what are features of Roomba and Why Amazon wants to buy Roomba.
The robot vacuums zoom around the house, sucking up dust and dirt. The little robots look like simple circles and for many people they have turned vacuuming from an annoying chore to something fun. Remember having to haul that bulky vacuum cleaner around the house and squeeze the hose into corners? Now you don’t have to do any work and you can watch as the Roomba tackles it and provides an opportunity for mischief. Roomba is more than a curiosity. iRobot is one of the fastest-growing companies in this sector.
Amazon Intended to Buy iRobot
On August 5th, Amazon announced that it intended to buy Roomba’s parent company, iRobot for a hefty sum of 1.7 billion dollars. That’s an impressive number and while the deal has to be approved by the Federal Trade Commission, it’s expected to go through. But are Robot vacuums really worth that much? What would Amazon actually want from this product? It turns out iRobot does a lot more than just Roomba.
What is iRobot?
iRobot was founded in 1990 by three people working in MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, who worked on designing robots for the defence department and space program. They were far ahead of much of the competition in robot development and in addition to Roomba they sell a number of other products for the home market. They include a floor-mopping robot closely related to the Roomba, as well as robots for kids and adults to learn about coding and robot design. They are much more niche products than the Roomba, but they increase the company’s value.
But that’s not its biggest appeal. iRobot also has a robot lawnmower called Terra in development, which would be its first product designed for outdoor use on the home market. To make that, they are likely calling back to some of their most successful innovations robots designed for the military that are used for hard labor and sensitive tasks.
For much of their history, the majority of the public has never see most of the robots that iRobot designed, with most staying in the prototype phase but some, like the heavy duty PackBot are essential in exploring and clearing dangerous areas like the Fukushima Nuclear Plant.
So is Amazon getting into AI market?
These tools could be a major asset, but they are not the main appeal for Amazon. That’s definitely the Roomba which has a simple appearance, but holds a lot of secrets. Because the Roomba isn’t just a simple robot vacuum cleaner. Did you ever wonder how it seems to know where you are going? How it seems to be able to navigate your house so smoothly and quickly learn to avoid obstacles? Depending on how you feel about it, the Roomba is either like having a strange circular pet or a creepy little robot that’s secretly following you and judging you.
History of Roomba
The Roomba keeps evolving and with every model it gets smarter. The first model in 2002 had a simple interface and was used in stable environments like workshops. As future models debuted, they got faster, the suction got better, the brushes got better at avoiding tangles and the software got much smarter. Eventually, the updated technology made it so the Roomba could be connected to an app and it would learn from every path around your house. With each run, it would build a map of your house to help it clean more effectively. While it didn’t keep the maps between runs for privacy purposes, it did incorporate a new system called PrecisionVision that could even avoid temporary obstacles like power cords as it worked.
How Big is Amazon?
For one thing, Amazon’s really big! For those concerned with the potential for a monopoly, Amazon’s size has been worrying them for a long time. The powerhouse tech company started as a convenient online bookseller and now runs an empire that hosts the most convenient place to buy…well, everything! In addition to their massive online marketplace, they now have a thriving TV streaming service with near bottomless investments, a huge online grocery-delivery service in Instacart and they recently purchased the internet’s only major digital comic book retailer comiXology. They sell so many goods that every state across America is now dotted with Amazon warehouses and they are quickly becoming one of the largest employers around. But there’s one sector of sales where they might have even more influence.
Alexa, pull up every detail you have on…Amazon! The digital assistant revolutionised the concept of smart speakers by integrating them into countless parts of your daily routine. These all-in-one towers would play music, issue reminders of appointments, answer questions and provide morning wake-up calls, all in the same soothing voice that soon started to seem like a member of the household. They run on voice recognition, which meant that all you had to do was yell “Alexa.
It would be Amazon’s first brush with artificial intelligence but it wouldn’t be the last. Other digital assistants from competitors made their debut, but none reached the success level of Alexa. In 2018, they acquired Ring LLC, a Smart Doorbell company that replaced the traditional lock and deadbolt with a computerised security system. Some people loved it for its added security, others pointed out that these homes now had surveillance technology on them at all times and the company regularly shared footage with law enforcement when needed. Civil rights advocacy groups were concerned but Ring kept growing and Amazon was now one of the most powerful players in the Smart Home boom.
But is Roomba a bridge too far and why?
It turns out that Roomba actually merges nicely with one of Amazon’s growing priorities. While Alexa is a highly advanced digital assistant, it’s also largely stationary. It exists in a tower at your home, in your phone or in your car’s dashboard and can be called on as needed. But when you combine that with Roomba’s mobile technology, it’s now possible for the company to create a fast-moving robot that can follow you through your home and respond to your commands as soon as they are issued. At first thought, that sounds pretty cool. It’s like having your own robot butler. Maybe you will name it Jarvis. But Amazon has far bigger plans for your robot companion. While Roomba is the dominant name in the robot vacuum marketplace. There are competitors from just about every major electronics company like LG and Shark. Many of them are cheaper than the Roomba too. Although none have the reputation for quality. However, the Amazon merger means that Roomba and Amazon would have access to each other’s AI technology which means the Roomba would be able to evolve faster than any competitor, putting them at a massive advantage for a large share of the market. And it may be a larger investment in the company’s future. Amazon’s robotic development has been spotty at best, with the company rolling out their first stand-alone model called the Amazon Astro in 2021. It looks cute, kind of like something out of a Pixar movie, but there was just one problem: no one was really sure what it was for! It comes with Alexa built in and seems to be able to complete simple functions like turning off machines and retrieving items but the $1000 bot is only available through invitations and there are reportedly a lot of kinks to work out.
Benefit of Amazon Acquiring iRobot
By acquiring iRobot, Amazon gains access to all their decades of artificial intelligence research and would be able to incorporate those innovations into their new products with little lead time. However, their biggest motivator may be less about the technology and more about boosting their overall market strength. While Amazon still makes an enormous amount of money from direct one-time sales, they are increasingly pivoting to a subscription model. Amazon Prime, which provides free shipping, access to their streaming service and other perks, reportedly has over two hundred million subscribers worldwide. There are many add-on services that can be attached to your Prime subscription and it’s likely one for the Roomba’s many digital services would be added. And that brings Amazon one step closer to global domination!
Well, not really. Probably. But Jeff Bezos and his successors at Amazon do seem to want to dominate the retail market in any way they can and the more products and services they bundle into Amazon and its associated Prime services, the more people they will have in the Amazon family. Once you join the Amazon Roomba plan, you will start hearing about other Amazon services. Then it’s just easier to join Prime and get it as a package deal. Then you’re adding on other channels because they have shows you want. Then you might as well take advantage of that free shipping.
Effect on Market
The purchase of an AI vacuum company might not seem bad at first, but privacy advocates are calling it the most dangerous acquisition in the company’s history. The Roomba would allow Amazon to do this on a much bigger scale. While Alexa is mostly stationary and dependent on input, the Roomba freely wanders around your home collecting data and while it deletes the maps after each run, there is no guarantee that would continue under Amazon. This could mean that it observes what you don’t have in your home, feeding that information to your Alexa who will start to make recommendations for purchases based on that or it could also mean it collects inside information on activity within your home that it could pass on to the authorities when a government request is filed. Privacy activists say the risk of this technology being abused is way too high.
But there’s another concern too. iRobot and the Roomba brand are very different from Amazon’s last major tech acquisition Ring because Ring was a start-up. iRobot is a publicly traded company that has been building its value for over fifteen years and it already has millions of people subscribing to its Roomba digital services. Amazon would pick up that entire catalog of buyers, adding another huge subscriber base to its massive portfolio and bringing it closer and closer to total control of the market.
Would Roomba Amazon merger bring the monopoly in digital vacuum space?
Many people are asking why hasn’t the government busted up Amazon like it did to companies such as Standard Oil a century ago? Even Microsoft was hit with an antitrust filing, forcing them to make concessions and payments to avoid being broken up in the 1990s. But an antitrust ruling against Amazon or other major tech companies is much trickier for a number of reasons. The majority of antitrust filings were against companies that controlled the flow of a single good or service be it oil or computers. They control the market, eliminate the competition and can set their prices for maximum profit.
However, today the biggest companies like Amazon and other tech giants invented their own service. Amazon doesn’t seem to want to fully control one sector, they just want to be the biggest player in almost every sector. And that is a lot harder to mark as a monopoly despite what many politicians say.
So is the merger likely to be approved?
Amazon has declined to respond to any early concerns about privacy with this acquisition, but it’s likely to answer them in front of the commission eventually. But right now, all they are saying is that all data will only be for internal use and they will respect the privacy of their customers. It won’t be enough to calm the fears of privacy advocates but it might be enough for the FTC to approve the merger. Just don’t be surprised when your Roomba suddenly starts talking in Alexa’s voice and suggesting new carpet patterns to you.
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