Robots That Fill an Emotional Vacuum

This week, however, the cinematic moments occur in homes. Visit new Roomba owners and the scene is like those old war movies where you can hear the sounds of conflict, but all you can see are the faces of onlookers, cringing and turning away. The thumps and bumps under the bed finally end and suddenly these faces break into rapture as the Roomba emerges -- covered with dust, but victorious.

You can just envision tomorrow's movie pitch. A vacuuming Roomba falls in love with a Scooba -- the model that is designed to wash floors. They have a child. It is raised to know its place, as a lawn mower. But you know these kids. They have dreams. Real robots roam. It yearns to meander around Mars.

No less an authority than Bill Gates announces in the current issue of Scientific American that 2007 is the year the robotics industry will take off the way the personal computer industry did 30 years ago. "Some of the world's best minds are trying to solve the toughest problems of robotics," he writes. "And they are succeeding."

"We could have made the Roomba cuter," says Colin Angle, the chief executive officer of iRobot, the Massachusetts firm that makes the Roomba and Scooba as well as a host of military robots. "But we wanted to make sure this product was taken seriously. Rather than put a little bunny on top, we hit the efficacy message over and over again, because it appeals to the busy homemaker who has the job that needs to get done.

"And then she decides it's cute. The epiphany is when adults start talking about it as a helpful member of the family. You get them saying 'I do this and Rosie does that' or 'We can't imagine Rosie not helping us.' "

Indeed, the vast majority of Roombas get named, according to Angle. Kids name 40 percent of them when they're barely out of the box. The naming decision leads to questions of whether a Roomba is male or female. Rosie is the most common name, says Angle, after the robotic maid of "The Jetsons."

But the Roomba does seem kind of male, in an eager-to-please fifth-grader way. Adding to its Y-chromosome cred is that you wish it had a little more memory, and that its meanderings weren't so random. There's even a group on Amazon discussing why so many people view Roombas as male, although one contributor says, "Our Roomba is named Rhonda" and accordingly now sports "ponytail stickers and googly eyes on it to give it more personality." You see, the robot used to freak out the owner's toddler daughter. But after they converted it "into Rhonda -- she fell in love with 'her.' "

So, a note to future historians: Not only are our helpful robots no longer the preserve mainly of gear-heads and toy-freaks. This is the year for a lot of mainstream American families that our robots emotionally became one of us.