When we built Roomba, we explicitly designed it to not have a face. We didn't want to think it was cute, we wanted people to take it seriously so we gave it more of an industrial look. People personified their Roomba anyway. Over 80 percent of people name their robot. We did nothing to encourage people to do that but they do it anyway.

Hollywood likes to imagine robots as mechanical copies of ourselves - which is a terrible idea.

Its going to be interesting to see how society deals with artificial intelligence, but it will definitely be cool.

In the beginning of Roomba, we all took turns answering the support line. Once, a woman called and explained that her robot had a defective motor. I said, 'Send it back. We'll send you a new one.' She said, 'No - I'm not sending you Rosie.'

My very clear vision for the ideal Roomba is one you never see and you never touch. Our research priorities are explicitly focused on the Roomba of the future that will deliver on the promise of automatically cleaning your floor.

In the end, robots do things that people can do. So there is a cost above which you can hire somebody to do it, and that bounds the opportunity.

That's exciting because to create new value in the robot space quickly, you need to stand on the shoulders of other technological developments.