https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/11/home-star-trucker/

Once I was recovered from the initial surrealism of Amazon launching its own home robot, I immediately thought about iRobot. The company cornered the home robotics market a decade ago, and while there are now countless robot vacuums, they’re all more or less riffs on the Roomba.

The issue with having a big hit is the same across industries and mediums — which is to say, everyone immediately starts asking what’s next. Subsequent attempts at home robots have failed to capture that lightning in a bottle — remember the pool cleaning Mirra and gutter clearing Looj? The mopping Scooba line appeared to be a moderate success, though the company ultimately shelved it in favor of the Braava brand it acquired in 2012.