iRobot opens brick and mortar store, while Lely cleans up

iRobot has opened its first retail store, possibly hoping to provide an alternative to troubled retailers.

http://www.irobot.com/mall/
Press release

What people really need is a Hello Kitty sticker on their Roomba...

iRobot has also recently announced a $3.5 million dollar order from the Army for 26 PackBot robots




I saw a video once that almost brought me to tears, where a little robot rolled up to an IED and tried to disarm and it ended up kicking the bit bucket. I thought to myself, "that robot saved a human life". In the future I hope our robot overlords will think kindly of me...

If the iRobot Dirt Dog
is not powerful enough to clean up your mess, you may want to check this out.



Somewhat surprisingly, Lely had sales of 273 million euros while iRobot had sales of about 249 million dollars. I was not expecting the market for farming robots to be doing this well, but I guess the labor costs are much lower and the cows seem to be happier with automatic servicing.