Joe Jones

Joe Jones is a robotics engineer and inventor best known as the principal inventor of the Roomba, the autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner that became one of the most commercially successful consumer robots ever built. Jones spent years at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory before joining iRobot, which was founded by Rodney Brooks, Helen Greiner, and Colin Angle in 1990. At iRobot, Jones's engineering work on sensing and navigation systems formed the technical foundation for the Roomba's 2002 launch. His career represents the translation of decades of academic robotics research in the Boston area into products that entered millions of homes worldwide, fundamentally changing public perception of what robots could be and do.