Imagine : you are sitting with friends , one day in the distant future , in a space-age house , while robot servants cook dinner , fold laundry and mow the lawn . Inevitably the question arises : `` What was your first robot ? '' For many -- 10 million , in fact -- the answer will be Roomba . The mini vacuum cleaning robot , launched in 2002 , has become an everyday fixture in homes across the world -- earning pet-names from affectionate owners and a unique place among the internet 's viral cat videos . Colin Angle , who co-founded manufacturers iRobot in 1990 with fellow MIT alums Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner , hails Roomba as `` the world 's first practical home robot . '' The company is now hoping to infiltrate the boardroom with its wandering `` AVA '' telepresence robot , and the battlefield with its line of defense machines . Angle sat down with CNN 's Nick Glass to talk about making the sci-fi world of robots a reality . CNN : What got you into robotics ? Angle : I had grown up with Hollywood concepts of robots , and the labs that Dr Brooks and I worked in were focused on trying to make it real . In fact , our first business model was to send a robot to the moon and sell the movie rights . We actually got quite far . It did n't ultimately succeed but it did get us going , and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers were impacted by the work we 'd done . It was very cool but not a great business . How did you go against the movies ' concepts of robots ? Hollywood likes to imagine robots as mechanical copies of ourselves -- which is a terrible idea . What did everyone think robot vacuuming was going to be ? Well , they think Rosie the Robot from `` The Jetsons , '' a human robot that pushed a vacuum . That was never going to happen . We know that robot vacuuming was top-of-mind in how robots were going to help our lives . Our challenge was that we knew how to make the intelligence inexpensive -- but we did n't know how to vacuum . How did you learn to make Roomba ? We entered the toy industry : we partnered with Hasbro building robot baby dolls and robot dinosaurs . They taught us how to manufacture very complicated electric mechanical things at a low price . We partnered with Johnson Wax , the guys that make the industrial cleaning machines , and we built giant robot cleaning machines . We were also building robots for the Pentagon to clear minefields . Using that intelligence technology actually gave us the algorithms which Roomba uses to make sure [ your home ] is thoroughly vacuumed . How did you name your machine ? Naming is something not necessarily best left to an engineering organization . We had a contest inside iRobot to figure out what we should name the robot and the best we brilliant engineers could come up with was the `` Cyber Suck . '' What 's the future ? If you think about what robots are supposed to do in our future , we 're just about half of the way there . They can vacuum , they can scrub your floors -- but what about my laundry ? What about all these other things that robots are supposed to do ? What 's the next big need ? Well , I think it has to do with extending independent living : allowing our ageing demographic to live independently in their homes for longer . What will the robot home of the future look like ? You may have a menagerie of robots that move around and do things : you may want a robot to bring you a beverage . You 're not going to talk to your vacuum cleaning robot : in fact you may never see your vacuum cleaning robot because ideally you come home every day and your floors are freshly vacuumed . You may have this robot whose mission in life is to interact with you : it can be a security guard , it can be a robot that a doctor could beam-in and control ... [ to ] see your daughter who has scraped her knee . There 's this human interface robot which ultimately will be at the epicenter of this robot enabled home . Watch the video above for more from Colin Angle about iRobot .
Roomba and iRobot reveal how they learned from robotic ##s . The algorithm that powers Dot 's movements was developed for clearing minefields . Co - creator Colin Angle says he originally planned to go to the moon . The characters : a ` ` group of robots '' -- some friendly , some invisible ...