One Million Roomba brand vacs an Inflection Point

From HiddenWires:

"In a major milestone for the consumer technology industry, iRobot has now sold more than 1 million Roomba(R) Robotic Floorvacs. A burgeoning number of robotics innovators have been inspired by the success of Roomba to move beyond the primarily theoretical applications to which robots had previously been consigned and are now beginning to create robots to help people do real tasks in the home.

'The $200 mobile robotic vacuum cleaners and other such devices that are making their way into the consumer world, signal the beginnings of the development of a new industry focused on cost-effective mobile devices that can assist and entertain us in a variety of ways,' said Strategy Analytics' Neena Buck, whose report 'Mobile Service Robots: Entering the Commercial World,' was included in the 2004 World Robotics study created by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. "