Go back to September 2002
iRobot introduced Roomba on September 18, 2002, with a suggested US price of $199.95. Its announcement described a routine of spirals, contact with walls, edge following and straight runs. The aim was useful room coverage without a person steering every movement.
That original price is a historical sticker price. It is not an inflation-adjusted comparison with a modern robot vacuum.
Then came a different kind of memory
In its company history, iRobot dates the Roomba 980’s visual navigation and app connection to 2015. The timeline places the i7+ with a learned floor plan and automatic dirt disposal in 2018, and the j7+ with obstacle recognition in 2021.
Source for the later milestones: https://www.irobot.co.uk/en_GB/irobot-history.html. The illustration is iRobot’s historical timeline, not a lineup of products newly released in 2026.
The better comparison is how often you intervene
The progression changes the question from whether a robot can move around a floor to whether it can clean the intended area and recover without help. Navigation, room knowledge and maintenance each remove a different kind of interruption.
When comparing a current cleaning robot with an older one, count rescues, missed areas and time spent maintaining it. Those observations connect the history to daily use more clearly than treating every new maximum specification as the same kind of progress.
Source published 2002-09-18 / historical review 2026-09-17. Coverage is based on the maker’s announcement and demonstration.