For the Roomba, the target price was chosen first and the design was based on it.

True if accounts of how iRobot developed the Roomba (from iRobot, its founders or reliable histories) show that the target retail price (about $200) was fixed early, before or as a constraint on the design, and the design was built to meet it. Mostly true if the price was an early, binding design constraint but the accounts differ on whether it was strictly the first decision. Mostly false if price mattered but was set alongside or after the key design choices. False if the evidence shows the price was set only after the design was done.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Inside iRobot: How the Roomba Sparked a Revolution in AI Robotics with Rodney Brooks LTSE (The Eric Ries Show podcast transcript) · 31 July 2026 Own record

   “And we set our target, our retail target at 1 99, 99, $200. And so every decision was, does it push you over? Does it push you? Are you staying under?”

2. E2 Inside iRobot: How the Roomba Sparked a Revolution in AI Robotics with Rodney Brooks LTSE (The Eric Ries Show podcast transcript) · 31 July 2026 Own record

   “We had about a 50 cent budget for the processor in the Roomba to make our target and looking at what their low cost processors were and what they could do and evaluating whether they could do enough that we could use them.”

3. E3 Inside iRobot: How the Roomba Sparked a Revolution in AI Robotics with Rodney Brooks LTSE (The Eric Ries Show podcast transcript) · 31 July 2026 Own record

   “And we set our target, our retail target at 1 99, 99, $200. And so every decision was, does it push you over? Does it push you? Are you staying under?”

4. E4 Inside iRobot: How the Roomba Sparked a Revolution in AI Robotics with Rodney Brooks LTSE (The Eric Ries Show podcast transcript) · 31 July 2026 Own record

   “We had about a 50 cent budget for the processor in the Roomba to make our target and looking at what their low cost processors were and what they could do and evaluating whether they could do enough that we could use them.”

5. E5 How Roomba's Focus Group Changed Everything IEEE Spectrum · 15 October 2025

   “We were deep into development, closer to launch than kickoff. All the electrical power our battery could supply was already spoken for.”

6. E6 How Roomba's Focus Group Changed Everything IEEE Spectrum · 15 October 2025

   “The enabling innovation that made the energy budget work, that made Roomba technically and economically feasible, was cleaning with a carpet sweeper rather than a vacuum.”

7. E7 Inside iRobot: How the Roomba Sparked a Revolution in AI Robotics with Rodney Brooks The Eric Ries Show · 5 December 2024 Own record

   “And so every decision was, does it push you over? Does it push you? Are you staying under? So that was just a real discipline and low cost manufacture, which was why it was successful, I believe.”

8. E8 How Roomba invented the home robot — and lost the future The Verge · 15 December 2025

   “It launched in 2002, selling for $200 at Brookstone, The Sharper Image, and Hammacher Schlemmer.”

In podcast interviews (E1–E4, E7), Brooks says iRobot set a retail target of about $200 and checked every design decision, including a roughly 50-cent processor budget, against it. These are his own statements, not official records or independent accounts. The independent sources confirm the $200 launch price in 2002 (E8) and describe an energy budget late in development (E5, E6). None of them says when the price was fixed relative to the core design choices.