Roomba’s hockey-puck shape was chosen for function, not invisibility.
iRobot’s founders, Rodney Brooks, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, spent years building military and space robots, including the bomb-disposal PackBot. Launching the Roomba in 2002, they made it flat to slide under furniture and round to pivot. In 2022 Amazon agreed to buy iRobot for about $1.7 billion, and in 2024 the deal collapsed under antitrust objections.
Roomba on Brandseum