iRobot, which has long been a leader in consumer robotics, has acquired Root Robotics, an education tech startup spun out of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. The Bedford-based company will now begin selling Root, a robot that helps kids learn to code.
For iRobot, the acquisition is its latest foray into STEM education. The company has been involved in educational outreach for more than a decade through initiatives like Starter Programs for the Advancement of Robotics Knowledge and National Robotics Week.
“iRobot has long designated STEM education as its community service mission,” said Colin Angle, iRobot’s CEO and chairman. “This was a way for us to take a robot in which many millions of dollars have been invested. Six years of time and energy were invested in architecting, ground-up, a software environment and companion hardware system. We could integrate this into our structure and deliver it to the market.”
Root, the teaching robot, has been commercially available since December. It will now join iRobot’s product line. All Root Robotics employees will remain on board and become iRobot employees, but the structure will remain the same, allowing the Root team to continue operating with relative independence.
Zee Dubrovsky, Root Robotics’ co-founder, will become general manager of Educational Robots at iRobot. It’s a bit of a triumphant return. Between 2003 and 2009, Dubrovsky worked at iRobot, first as a program manager and then as a senior product manager. When he left, after a brief stint at Sonos, he took up a position as head of robotics at the Wyss Institute, where Root Robotics was born as a research project.
Coming back to iRobot was "the path that made the most sense," Dubrovsky said. "For us to grow the infrastructure to tackle this global problem as a startup, it would have taken decades to reach the level of sophistication that iRobot has today. So it made the most sense for the mission, it made the most sense for the impact, and it made the most sense for the business."
The robot is a friendly-looking, two-wheeled hexagon that operates based on commands written in the Root mobile app. Kids use three levels of coding language, from simple blocks for users as young as 4 years old to full-text coding for advanced students, to instruct Root to draw artwork, scan colors, play music, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1m0FYpF6RM
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. iRobot does not expect that Root Robotics’ acquisition will contribute significantly to its bottom line.
With the acquisition, Dubrovsky thinks Root will be able to reach a wider audience than it did as a startup: “drastically increasing the size of our megaphone,” he said. The clout that iRobot has been building since 1990 will allow Root to gain more and more young learners on its platform—like Dubrovsky’s own kids.
“I have three daughters,” Dubrovsky said. “The ability for them to do creative things with the robot, with technology, with code, and then see that come to life is priceless. When you have a robot write your name from the code that you created, and then you have the ability to not only experience that on the foldout whiteboard in your living room, but then the ability to bring it to your classroom, have the robot instantly stick to the magnetic whiteboard in that classroom, and then turn your kid into a superstar? That’s beyond priceless. That’s game-changing—empowering kids to have a different future.”
