# Roooomba!

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2005-05-28T13:22:58Z


The day before yesterday, I sat next to Colin Angle the co-founder and CEO of iRobot at dinner. I've had been looking for a way to get a Roomba and I asked him how I could get one in Japan. He told me that they are in fact selling them in Japan with a somewhat limited distribution and asked me for my thoughts. I said I'd have to try using one before I could give him good feedback. Japanese houses are a bit different from the US. He said he happened to have a Roomba with him that he could give me. Yay! I happily received the Roomba and today I FedEx'ed it to my house in Japan.

I'll write more about it when I actually get it working. I'm curious about how my dogs will react. I've been fascinated with the Roomba ever since I met Helen Greiner the co-founder and Chairman of the Board of iRobot. I first met her at the World Economic Forum as fellow Global Leader for Tomorrow. Later I watched a presentation she gave at ETech. She talked about military robot applications and it freaked out some of the tree-hugging hacker types there, unfortunately. Apparently, Colin is in charge of robots that scrub floors and she's in charge of robots that blow things up.

Roombas have been out in the US for awhile now and I have many friends who have them, but this doesn't make me any less excited to see one in action in my house. Thanks Colin!

UPDATE: Someone privately noted to me that it sounded like I might have pressured Colin into giving me a Roomba. I think anyone there can assure you that I didn't apply pressure. I didn't even know Colin had one with him. I was sincerely trying to find out where I could get one. I posted this note mainly because it's likely that I will be writing about my Roomba in the future and I wanted to disclose that I got it for free and in what context.





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