Colin Angle: iRobot CEO | Lex Fridman Podcast #39

The following is a conversation with Colin Angle. He's the CEO and co-founder of iRobot, a robotics company that for 29 years has been creating robots that operate successfully in the real world, not as a demo or on a scale of dozens, but on a scale of thousands and millions. As of this year, iRobot has sold more than 25 million robots to consumers, including the Roomba vacuum cleaning robot, the Braava floor mopping robot, and soon, the Terra lawn mowing robot. 29 million robots successfully operating autonomously in real people's homes, to me, is an incredible accomplishment of science, engineering, logistics, and all kinds of general entrepreneurial innovation. Most robotics companies fail. iRobot has survived and succeeded for 29 years. I spent all day at iRobot, including a long tour and conversation with Colin about the history of iRobot, and then sat down for this podcast conversation that would have been much longer if I didn't spend all day learning about and playing with the various robots in the company's history. I'll release the video of the tour separately. Colin, iRobot, its founding team, its current team, and its mission has been and continues to be an inspiration to me and thousands of engineers who are working hard to create AI systems that help real people. This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on iTunes, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter, @lexfridman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N. And now, here's my conversation with Colin Angle. In his 1942 short story, Runaround, from his iRobot collection, Isaac Asimov proposed the three laws of robotics, in order: don't harm humans, obey orders, protect yourself. So two questions. First, does the Roomba follow these three laws? And also, more seriously, what role do you hope to see robots take in modern society and in the future world?

So the three laws are very thought-provoking and require such a profound understanding of the world a robot lives in, the ramifications of its action and its own sense of self that, uh, it's not a relevant bar. At least it won't be a relevant bar for decades to come. And so, uh, if Roomba follows the three laws, and I- I believe it does. Uh, you know, it is designed to help humans, not hurt them. It's designed to be inherently safe, and, uh, we designed it to last a long time. It's not through any AI or intent on the robot's part. Uh, it's because following the three laws is aligned with being a good robot product. So, um, so I guess it does-

(laughs) It does.

... but not by, uh, not by explicit design.

So then the bigger picture, what- what role do you hope to see robotics, robots take in our, what's currently mostly a world of humans?

We need robots to help us continue to improve our standard of living. We need robots because the average age of humanity is increasing very quickly. And simply the number of people young enough and spry enough to care for the elder growing demographic is inadequate. And so what is the role of robots? Today the role is to make our lives a little easier, uh, a little cleaner, maybe a little healthier. But in time, robots are going to be the difference between real gut-wrenching declines in our ability to live independently, uh, and maintain our standard of living and a future that is the bright one, where we have more control over our lives, can spend more of our time focused on, uh, activities we choose. And, um, I'm so honored and excited to be playing a role in that journey.