Massachusetts-based iRobot Corp. turned the heads of investors and consumers alike in 2005 with its line of self-operating household robots. The company's robotic cleaning appliances scored major press kudos when Time magazine declared the Scooba Floor Washing Robot among the "Most Amazing Inventions of 2005." The iRobot PackBot bomb-defusing machine garnered press attention, too, when it became the first robot in history to ring the NASDAQ stock market opening bell.

Designed to relieve consumers of backbreaking jobs, iRobot's space-age machines perform a variety of cleaning tasks around the home and office. The company's robotic vacuum cleaner, the Roomba, is the first mobile robot to handle the task of cleaning floors without a human operator. The follow-up Scooba robot preps, washes, and dries a variety of hard floors--all at the touch of a button. Each robot self-navigates around obstacles, and the machines' cliff sensors prevent tumbles off ledges and stairs.

While iRobot's entry into the marketplace sparks the imagination and calls to mind useful fictional robots from "Star Wars" or "The Jetsons," it remains to be seen whether the age of robots has finally dawned. Roomba vacuum cleaning robots currently hover their way around only one percent of American households, and reports suggest that iRobot's military-division robots may sell faster than their consumer-market counterparts.

Regardless of whether or not the market is ready for iRobot's products, Chief Executive Colin Angle insists that his company's robots are serious household appliances, not merely "gadgets for the digerati." With press momentum building and a new advertising campaign underway, iRobot's ingenious machines are prepared to make a clean sweep in 2006.