How Roomba started a robot revolution

Roomba 是如何开启机器人革命的

If you had a Roomba, especially in the early days of the robot vacuum, it was in many ways a fairly unsophisticated machine. It would just bump around your house, looking for something to suck up, until its battery died or its (way too small) tank filled up. Not that it mattered, though. You probably loved your Roomba. You probably gave it a name. 如果你曾经拥有过一台 Roomba，尤其是在扫地机器人刚问世的早期，你会发现它在很多方面其实是一台相当简陋的机器。它只是在你的房子里到处碰撞，寻找可以吸入的东西，直到电池耗尽或其（小得离谱的）尘盒装满。不过，这并不重要。你可能还是会喜欢你的 Roomba，甚至可能还给它取了名字。

On this episode of Version History, we tell the story of the Roomba, and how it made vacuums lovable. The Verge’s David Pierce and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy are joined by iRobot’s co-founder and former CEO Colin Angle to trace the robovac revolution back to its origins, with a group of engineers trying desperately to build a business out of robots. Any kind of robots. 在本期《Version History》播客中，我们将讲述 Roomba 的故事，以及它是如何让吸尘器变得“讨人喜欢”的。《The Verge》的 David Pierce 和 Jennifer Pattison Tuohy 邀请了 iRobot 的联合创始人兼前首席执行官 Colin Angle，共同追溯扫地机器人革命的起源，回顾一群工程师如何拼命尝试通过机器人——任何种类的机器人——来建立起一番事业。

We explain how iRobot developed Roomba for nearly a decade, all the times it nearly fell apart, and the somewhat surprising reasons the product took off. We also look at the vast market that grew around Roomba, and the ways iRobot failed to keep up. 我们解释了 iRobot 如何花费近十年时间研发 Roomba，讲述了它多次濒临失败的经历，以及该产品最终走红的那些令人惊讶的原因。我们还探讨了围绕 Roomba 形成的庞大市场，以及 iRobot 在后续竞争中未能跟上步伐的原因。

This is the second episode of the fourth season of Version History. If you missed last week’s season premiere, on the Harmony remote, make sure you catch up! 这是《Version History》第四季的第二集。如果你错过了上周关于 Harmony 遥控器的首播集，请务必补上！