iRobot unveils Roomba Duo with deployable second vacuum — SkimNews
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- iRobot unveiled the Roomba Duo concept at the IFA tech show in Berlin, combining a heavy-duty floor-washing robot with a smaller, slimmer Roomba that works in tandem.
- The Roomba Plus 757 rides on top of the main unit and is lowered by a mechanical arm to clean tight spaces like under tables and in corners.
- The main vacuum, described by iRobot's Adam Pope as the company's most powerful ever, applies 46 newtons of downward pressure to steam-mop and can suck up solid messes like pasta from carpet.
- The Duo doubles as an autonomous mobile dock with clean and dirty water tanks and a dust bag onboard, using lidar and camera-based navigation to map homes, navigate, and detect dirt.
- New CEO Hao Li, from parent company Picea, presented the device; Picea purchased iRobot out of bankruptcy earlier this year.
- The Roomba Duo is currently a concept with no price or release date, required two people to carry during demos, and the reporter flagged long-term durability concerns about the mechanical arm.
Why it matters: iRobot, freshly emerged from bankruptcy under new owner Picea and a new CEO from the parent company, is signaling it intends to out-innovate rather than retreat in a floor-care market where it now competes against its own buyers' stick vacs and carpet cleaners. The two-robots-in-one design is the company's bid to consolidate four cleaning devices into one — but the concept's unresolved durability questions and the absence of pricing or a ship date leave the bet unproven.
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