Founded in 1990 by a trio of MIT alums, iRobot’s first big break came in 1998 with a DARPA grant that lead to the development of their now-famous PackBot. The automatic vacuuming robot Roomba, the company’s flagship civilian product, was launched in 2002 and has become a resounding commercial success, with more than six million units sold to date.
And it’s not just because the Android and Makeys mas-bots were apparently separated at birth.
And yes, we know Android is technically an operating system, and Android-compatible phones are really an entire class of gadgets. But in one sense, that’s the whole point. Gadget-lovers will debate the pros and cons of particular handsets endlessly, and there are significant other players in the smartphone market, but increasingly the most informative demographic among smartphone users these days is “Android or iPhone?”
It is my great pleasure to kick off the first ever MAKE Magazine Industry Maker Award season with a nomination that will probably raise a few eyebrows: Microsoft Corporation, for the”Most Hackable Gadget,” the Kinect, their gestural and natural-language video game controller.
