There's a chapter in Trade-Off by Kevin Maney where he describes how iRobot's Roombas came to be and why they became such a success. It offers the thesis that there is a “trade-off between the fidelity of an experience and its convenience and it's more like the invention of a feature that gives an edge to an age-old product.”
Change, circumstance and ego all worked to build and then unwind America's first robot manufacturer is described in a soon to be published book: Pity the Pioneer: The Rise and Fall of Unimation. An excerpt is in Sept/Oct issue of Robot Magazine.
Is America now sitting out the race for the future of robotics? Read BusinessWeek's remarks about the clean energy sector and see the similarities.
Tell Us What You Think!