Hospital Robot Gets FDA Approval

By the makers of the Roomba

iRobot shares are trading sharply higher Thursday after the company announced that its RP-VITA Remote Presence Robot has received FDA clearance for use in hospitals.

The company, best known for making the Roomba vacuum cleaner robot and for military battlefield robots, said that the RP-VITA, jointly developed with InTouch Health, "combines the latest in autonomous navigation and mobility technologies developed by iRobot with state-of-the-art telemedicine and electronic health record integration developed by InTouch Health."