this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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iRobot is likely to collapse within 12 months. (www.theregister.com)
submitted 21 hours ago by Tea@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
137 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Troubled robot vacuum-cleaner maker iRobot, abandoned by Amazon after regulators effectively doomed the web giant's takeover offer, has warned investors it may not survive the next 12 months.

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[–] psoul@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Something happened when they moved to the vslam (i.e camera mapping) robots which made the software much harder to hack… you used to be able to use a serial cable to program them.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

They used to encourage people to use a serial cable to program them. I remember when I got my Roomba nearly ten years ago, it came with a little pamphlet advertising their educational platform robot, which was basically a Roomba without the vacuum cleaning stuff. I think they intended it to be sort of the next step up from LEGO Mindstorm or something. But at the bottom of that pamphlet, there was a paragraph that basically said "hey you can get this educational robot, buuuut, the one you just bought has the exact same connections, firmware, and hardware 👀👀👀"