MALMESBURY, England — When Michael Aldred joined the British home electronics maker Dyson two decades ago, he had a simple goal: to quickly build a robotic vacuum cleaner.

But Mr. Aldred and his team kept running into roadblocks.

Their first attempt, unveiled in 2001, was too clunky for James Dyson, the company’s founder. The next prototype involved creating a computer vision system that would allow the machine to skirt independently around furniture; it took more than a decade to perfect.

As smartphones became everyday tools, Dyson’s robotics team again had to rethink the vacuum cleaner, adding internet connectivity so the machine could send notifications — with a heat map of where it had cleaned — to a mobile device. After a nearly 20-year odyssey, the robot cleaner, priced at an eye-watering $1,000, finally hit stores worldwide last year.

“At times, I really asked myself what I had signed up for,” Mr. Aldred said in an interview at Dyson’s rural headquarters near the border with Wales. “But James Dyson always told us to focus on the product. Everything else would follow.”