Roomba was the first commercially successful robotic vacuum cleaner, introduced by iRobot in 2002. Its autonomous operation used sensors and programmed behavior to clean floors without continuous human control.
The original Roomba was designed around a compact, disc-shaped body and could detect obstacles, avoid falling from ledges, and return to a charging area in later versions. Rather than building a detailed map of a home, early models generally used reactive movement patterns to cover floor areas.
Roomba is sometimes described as an artificial-intelligence robot in everyday language, although its earliest behavior relied heavily on sensors, algorithms, and robotics engineering rather than modern machine-learning models. iRobot later expanded the family with mapping, smartphone control, and mopping products. The name became a common shorthand for autonomous home-cleaning robots.