Is IRobot a Potential Apple Acquisition Target? | Hacker News Reader

Is IRobot a Potential Apple Acquisition Target?

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10 pointsbeambot20 comments

I used to work for iRobot. This post is gibberish. The companies he mentions just aren't that interested in robotics. Microsoft has made some progress in robotics development environments, but that isn't a large priority for them. The market there is incredibly small while there is a small developer ecosystem. Apple most especially wouldn't be interested.

More importantly, you probably don't understand this source as well as I do. This blogger has been posting for years about iRobot's stock. It seems he has remained bullish on iRobot the entire time. This is just the latest post saying how awesome iRobot is. The problem is that few others in the market agree. He mentions that their stock is 3X their 2008 low. That's lovely, but my options are still under water from 2006. It's laughable really.

I do think iRobot will be acquired within a few years, but the most likely buyer is a defense contractor. Foster Miller went through a similar acquisition with Qinetiq. To stay independent, iRobot would need to make new robots - but they have refused to invest internal research & development dollars in any meaningful way. This is why products like the Warrior take so long for development - the dev is trickled in through contracts depending on the whims of DoD and Congress. None of this is private information by the way: as a public company their are very scrutinized about their iR&D spending.

If you read the post, the point is made that a defense contractor is a more likely takeover candidate in the near-term. But five years from now, why wouldn't a forward looking guy like Steve Jobs, or even Bill Gates, turn their attention to home robotics?

Because the business of building robots has nothing to do with building OSes or media players? How about that for a start?

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I see home robotics as the natural progression of computing into the home. A world where your iPad, your phone, your computer, your TV and your home robots are all connected. It's very limiting to think of home robots as just a vacuum cleaner. The vision is for a family of robots taking care of you and your home — doing chores, providing entertainment, doubling as a security guard, keeping an eye on grandma and making sure she's taking her pills. The iPad makes all this so much easier than pre-iPad, because it can be the face and brains of the robot, and you just need a chassis to attach it to. There's so much potential just waiting for somebody with deep pockets and vision to get it done.

The problem is that there are toys and vacuum cleaners and not much else. It will be at least a few years before we have another compelling category of home robot. You should strive to understand the reasons for these short term limitations.

But the net effect is that it is very much only vacuums for at least a few years.

Steve jobs has a tendency to identify technologies which are on the brink of succeeding, and bring them to the mass market. Examples are pixar, the iPhone, the iPad and early exclusions (apple was the first to exclude floppies from their computers, and optical drive with the MacBook air)

In that sense it is only natural for apple to enter the robotic market. And with apple's secrecy, they may already be in it.

It will be very exciting if they will release a general purpose robot, with an app store, of course. I can just imagine paying $4.99 for the back massage app, and $0.99 for the fart app :)

Another positive effect that would happen if apple enters this market, is that all the tech companies will follow, and the technology will enter a rapid development stage, as the smartphones are in today.

Robotics certainly needs somebody to kickstart it. It's hard to do when the biggest consumer robotics company is worth about $500 million. You need real scale. The kind of scale that Apple could instantly provide.

It's really more of a Google thing to do, though. Heck, they're already getting into robotics with the self-driving cars.

Apple's only interest in robotics would be in automating its facilities, and Steve already did that at the NeXT factory.

Apple in the robotics market sure. But there's no way in hell they're buying (what is perceived as) a vacuum cleaner company.

They'd be more likely to buy a car company. Which isn't going to happen either.

Steve Jobs doesn't clean gutters. He has designers find a way to make the gutters go away.

When do you think we'll see the next generation of home robots? Do you guys think iRobot has any revolutionary consumer products in the works?

BTW when will lawn mowing robots be commonplace? It doesn't seem that much of a harder problem than vacuuming.

Lawn moving robots are already around but pricey ($1K+). This blog, Robot Stock News, has a report on iRobot's patents for a robotic lawnmower, Roomba upgrades and more. iRobot also has promised new home robots soon, so we will have to see...

This author doesn't know Apple or the type of companies they acquire. If they wanted to make autonomous vacuums, they could do it 10x better in house within a year, iRobot is not a talent acquisition, and more importantly, they are not going in the cleaning business under Steve Jobs.

List of Apple aquisitions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition... if you don't have novel software or silicon design capability, Steve Jobs very likely doesn't need/want you.

Why not a talent acquisition? iRobot has the best roboticists MIT has to offer, and a growing trove of patents.

Apple isn't in the cleaning business now. But they weren't in the music business 10 years ago.

iRobot has the best roboticists MIT has to offer

Really... they go to iRobot rather than NASA and the Joint propulsion Labratory, Boeing, Honda, Lockheed, DARPA, etc...?

How do you think and iRobot's control system compares to an autonomous predator drone?

Who has the most robots in our soldiers' hands in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who else has developed a robotic vacuum that sells in the millions, or a robotic mop that sells in the hundreds of thousands, or, frankly, any home robot that is not a toy and has sold more than 1 million copies? All of that takes serious engineering talent.

Some of them do, yes. For reference, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a NASA Lab, administered by Caltech. DARPA is a a funding agency and doesn't actually do any research itself. It generally employs only late-career scientists and engineers as program managers that hand out the money to researchers at actual labs at universities and companies.

iRobot was started by Rodney Brooks, at the time the most famous roboticist in North America and Director of CS and AI at MIT, and his students. This team has attracted a lot of good talent over the years. Now the team has broken up and there has been little interesting robot development for a while. But the intelligent robot industry is still very small, and the good grads have to go somewhere. Outside university labs, the hot job recently has been at Willow Garage.

(robot research prof here)

Thanks, I am a mechanical engineer and worked on a DARPA challenge autonomous vehicle in college. These control systems get complicated very quick and I have much respect for the people working to conquer them.

No. AFAIK, irobot makes their money primarily from defense contracts, not primarily from roombas.

It's about 50-50, with slightly more revenue ($200 million plus this year alone) from home robots.

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