[krackers]

It's not just marketing, iRobot basically stopped innovating. For commodity items like robot vacuums or pool cleaners, there is a relentless pressure to innovate. You can't simply coast or else you will soon find yourself left behind.

This is a good article to describe the viewpoint of Chinese iRobot competitor https://kr-asia.com/at-usd-90-per-unit-seauto-is-quietly-swe...

[nobodyandproud]

The best robovac was Neato. Lidar and mapping 13 years ago. No cloud.

Too bad our American leaders sold us out.

[temp0826]

It's pretty crazy just how much better the Neatos were than brand new ones. I wonder if that (German?) company has tried to sell the IP? RIP...

[nobodyandproud]

Vorwerk group. No idea, but it’s pointless imho.

Roborock and Eufy (and other competitors) clearly either stole or reverse-engineered the tech.

If the IP had enough value then I’m sure Vorwerk would’ve pursued it in court.

But here we are.

[darkwater]

Vorwerk makes really good hardware and home appliances. Its only negative part is the almost pyramidal sales style. It's not really pyramidal as in the scam, because you actually buy something and you don't need to become a seller, but it uses "regular housewives" [1] as sellers.

[1] at least 30 years ago, now many of them do also another paid work (not Vorwerk-related) on top of unpaid house chores.

[nobodyandproud]

Any idea why they just sat on the product? Even today, I feel the product is unmatched.

Zero creep factor (ignoring later cloud offering)..

[shellfishgene]

They still make a robot vacuum: https://www.vorwerk.com/de/de/c/home/landingpages/kobold/sta...

[darkwater]

Well, I don't know how much you can innovate in that space, while keeping things reliable for decades like Vorwerk does. I own a (2n hand) TM31 that's probably 15 years old now, and I have friend with the TM21 (I guess?) which is like the first version and it has over 20 years now and it's still perfectly working.

Last versions, with big LC touchscreen, recipes on a cartridge o downloaded from Internet, and now I read that latest one can reach 160C to caramelize things or can do slow cooking.

I mean, I don't feel like they sat on the product, although the other day I saw a cooking robot from some other (japanese?) manufacturer which had 2 bowls in the same machine to cook 2 things at the same time. That seems an interesting feature Thermomix is missing.

[sudosysgen]

There is not much tech to steal here. 2D lidar mapping is something a high schooler could do 10+ years ago, and that was their core tech. The value was in executing earlier and better, and applying existing tech to robovacuums. If they could have sued they likely would, this is a valuable market.

[nobodyandproud]

It’s not just mapping.

Also, I recall Neato was often purchased and cannibalized by researchers for its lidar.

This was all cutting edge 10+ years ago. Even today, the features it supported offline then is just matched at best today in 2025/2026.

Not exceeded; and often crippled when offline.

[sudosysgen]

There is not that much more to it than lidar and 2D slam as far as the core technology. There are a lot more features yes but they are not nearly as valuable. I agree they are better, but that's for reason of execution and non-enshitiffication, not core tech.

[_ea1k]

Yeah, this company went through an amazingly bad period. They quite innovating, and also worked really hard to segment their products in a way that would extract every last $ out of the consumer. "Oh you want it not to run into things? You'll need one more step up for another $100-200" It wasn't really based on the hardware, so much as the intentional limitations of the software.

Meanwhile cheap roborocks had no arbitrary limitations and more honest marketing.

I miss the optimism that this company used to have, but I won't miss the entity that they became.

[lazide]

I haven't seen a useful innovation in a robovacuum for at least a decade. What are you talking about?

Biggest issue has been the flood of cheap chinese units on the market - like GoPro, they had nowhere to go, and got beat on price once feature parity was achieved (which didn't take that long).

[Izkata]

Emptying into the dock instead of having to empty the robot's dustbin weekly and almost everything involving mopping in combined units is within that time range. Lidar mapping was also pretty rare a decade ago, Neato was the first and it took a while before others did it too, then there was apps for controlling no-go zones using those maps instead of variations of virtual walls, if they had anything like that at all.

Roomba was living off of name recognition for most of that period and was far behind in adopting any of it.

[dzhiurgis]

There are ones that integrate into your furniture, a bit like a dishwasher - plumbing included.

Robot arms are obvious next step. Tidying up kids toys would be god sent, but unless speed improves my kids will DDOS it in seconds.

[krackers]

Roborock has a model with robot arms. Quite pricy at the moment though.

[dzhiurgis]

Poor reviews so far. Needs iteration or two to perfect it.

[tguvot]

I got roomba with self emptying dock back in 2018 or so (i think the only one who had it before was ecovacs). same model also came with virtual walls.

[aschobel]

The roller mop vacuum are getting incredibly good; that is in the last year also.

Just got a Mova z60, it's shocking how much progress has been made even in the last 5 years compared to my old lidar Roborock. The z60 can even hurdle over small barriers.