The parent company of robot vacuum maker Neato Robotics, Germany’s Vorwerk Group, announced late last week that a broad restructuring of its robotics division will result in the closure of Neato and the end of the Neato product line. Vorwerk is promising five years of parts and service availability, along with enough software support to keep current cloud services operational and secure, but it’s the end of an era for a seriously cool family of home robots that were (for a while) ahead of their time. I’ve had a soft spot for Neato Robotics ever since I met their first robot at CES 2010. At the time, iRobot was dominant in the robot vacuum market (and still is), and Neato sought to challenge that by making a robot that could affordably do what Roombas could not: Map their environment to ensure that they could reliably vacuum your floor in one Continue reading Neato Robotics, a Robotic Vacuum Pioneer, Shuts Down→