iRobot Keynote at ETech

In the consumer space, iRobot has become well-known for its Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. I wanted to ask a question, raced to the microphone, but didn't get there fast enough, and they only took two questions (one of which wasn't even a question). My question to iRobot:

Vacuuming the floor is interesting - but what about the walls and ceiling? what about curtains? I remember the "robotic blimp" that floated around the MIT Media Lab in the 1980s --- so attach a little vacuum "straw" to it, and turn your home into a virtual aquarium, with the "housefish" as a sort of robotic "algae-eater", going around and sucking the walls, the corners, the molding, the ceilings, the curtains --- getting all that dust. I'd like that more than the Roomba, to tell you the truth.

The other thing I noticed is that iRobot doesn't have a stairs solution. Roomba doesn't do stairs. Again: stairs are more of a pain, to me at least, when it comes to vacuuming. There ought to be a RoombaPlus or something that can handle stairs and vacuum them reliably and thoroughly as well.

Roomba right now is at the Pong level of innovation, or maybe Pac-Man. I want it to get to the Doom level. Roomba works only in 2 dimensions. Where's the Z axis? A house is not just a floor.

I'm going to hold off commenting on the government/military implications/applications of iRobot's technology --- suffice to say, it's scary, and Helen did nothing to indicate her company has any concerns or policies in place regarding the inevitable abuse (arming her robots, spying-on/firing-on/bombing civilians, protesters, etc) that's going to come because of these devices.