There’s something painfully American about the arc of iRobot, the company that taught your vacuum to navigate around the furniture. Founded in 1990 in Bedford, Massachusetts by MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks and his former students Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, punctuating a 35-year run that took it from the dreams of AI researchers to your kitchen floor and, finally, to the tender mercies of its Chinese supplier.Brooks, the founding director of MIT’s Co ...