The gentle rise of the machines

摘要

Who would have thought that a Frisbee shaped contraption that extracts dust from carpets would be the state of the art in household robots at the dawn of the 21st century? In the past year, Roomba, a circular automatic vacuum cleaner made by a firm called iRobot, has swept up millions of dollars from over 200,000 buyers-and was a must-have at Christmas, among geeks at least. Rival firms such as Electrolux and Karcher sell similar but pricier sweepers. Robot vacuum cleaners, it seems, are catching on. Are these mere playthings, or the beginning of a new trend? Roomba is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Helen Greiner, co-founder of iRobot, which also sells industrial and military robots. Dan Kara of Robotics Trends, a consultancy, agrees. "The tipping point might be Roomba," he says.