When iRobot designed the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, they made it round, so it wouldn’t get stuck in corners. They made it low, so it could scoot under beds and sofas. They did not think about making it cute. “It wasn’t designed with cuteness in mind,” says Charlie Vaida, a senior manager at the Massachusetts firm, “but with the realization that it would need to move about an ever-changing home environment.” But cute it is, for a 3.8 kg self-moving disc. Its plaintive chirp for help when it gets stuck behind a sofa leg, and the tentative way it bangs…
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