iRobot 2014 Annual Report Download - page 77

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• We significantly expanded the distribution of our Roomba 800 series robot, featuring our new AeroForce
Performance Cleaning System. Significant revenue and margin contribution, along with high customer ratings have
made the Roomba 800 launch one of our most successful to date.
• We continued to increase our investment in marketing programs in our home robots business, which resulted in
greater brand awareness and revenue growth. Our strategy in 2015 will be similar with continued focus on brand
awareness and customer conversion.
• We announced the uPoint Multi-Robot Control (MRC) system, a universal control system for our line of defense
and security robots. The uPoint MRC system, which is our first multi-robot tablet controller, provides precise and
reliable control through an intuitive interface for any of our unmanned ground vehicles.
• We launched the Ava 500 Video Collaboration robot which blends our autonomous navigation capabilities with
Cisco’s TelePresence, to enable people working off-site to participate in meetings, presentations and events where
movement and location spontaneity are important.
• We continued our successful Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) outreach program with the launch
of Create 2, a preassembled robot platform that gives educators, students and developers firsthand robotic
programming experience.
• We have seen significant growth in sales into China due to strong demand for our products, and this region will
continue to be a focus of our Company.
Strategy
We are a technology company with the goal of designing and marketing innovative robots that empower people to do
more. Every robot is created with a person in mind. We strive to drive innovation, serve as an industry catalyst and change the
world by fueling the era of robots. We intend to increase the penetration of our products in existing markets, expand existing
products into new markets, and develop and launch new products into current and adjacent markets. Our strategy is to maintain
a leadership position by delivering robotic technology-based remote presence and automated home maintenance solutions that
delight our customers and anticipate their needs, while extending our technical leadership in the areas of autonomous
navigation, manipulation and cloud connectivity and services. With increasing levels of autonomy, continued mobility
improvements, more sophisticated sensor suites and advanced human interfaces, remote presence systems will expand in
effectiveness and efficiency and reduce the requirements for actual physical operator presence and control. In the area of
automated home maintenance, we seek to improve the quality of life with robotic solutions requiring as little human physical
intervention as possible. Key elements of our strategy include:
Talent: Investing in our people and our culture. To develop and integrate the best technology and to be the most
innovative robotics company, we must attract the most talented people across our functional areas. Our success is directly
related to the talents and abilities of our workforce, and to a culture, work environment and leadership that supports its
development and growth. Our strategy focuses on transforming our company into one of the most attractive workplaces for
those seeking to participate in the robotics field.
Technology: Investing in robotic technology and products to build better robots. A better robot lives in our world by
moving around its environment more intelligently, by cooperating with the people it serves more compellingly, and by
physically interacting with its surroundings more effectively. We strive to achieve and sustain world leadership with best-in-
class technology in the areas of autonomy, navigation, cloud robotics and manipulation. Our superiority in user experience
comes from leveraging the powerful capabilities of the connected world combined with thoughtful, intuitive design. We are
committed to developing, maturing and integrating these technologies to support our business and make these a reality in our
products. We implement these technologies with strict cost requirements to support our high-margin, profitable business
model.
Tempo: Investing to improve our agility, speed and operational efficiency. We strive to increase our pace of innovation
and bring compelling products to market more quickly in a cost-effective and highly reliable form. We are committed to
refining our innovation and product development culture and processes to deliver results faster by increasing the pace of
development, gaining efficiencies through designing and leveraging modular architecture and reusable hardware and software
components across products, and utilizing remote software updates and cloud computing to provide rapid cycles for release of
new features in the installed base of our products.
Brand. We invest in building a company with a vision, that strives to solve difficult problems, and empowers people to
do more. We strive to achieve this image by designing high-quality robots with a recognizable look and feel and a streamlined
ease of use, by employing impactful marketing, and by continuing to give back to the community. We invest in building and
advertising one unified, global brand across all of our business units.
Form 10-K