Government demand for rovers capable of performing dangerous military and disaster-relief tasks in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks gave iRobot what Angle proudly describes as a "very important and noble" mission designing robots to keep troops and first responders out of harm's way. It also helped subsidize iRobot's other ambitions. The profits from wartime contracts allowed iRobot to experiment with a variety of other robots, producing some duds and one huge commercial success: the first Roomba, introduced in 2002.