Crave

BERLIN--In the midst of America's raging debate on the future of health insurance, one man says he has a solution to out-of-control health care costs: more robots.

A prototype robotic telepresence "nurse."

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)

Of course, this is coming from Colin Angle, a roboticist and CEO of iRobot, the company that makes both robotic vacuum cleaners and bomb-defusing gadgets currently in use by the U.S. military. At IFA here on Friday, he said that robotic telepresence devices, which would act like nurses in a person's home, could reduce the $2.2 trillion, or 17 percent of the U.S. GDP, currently spent on health care every year.

Angle insisted that when it comes to elderly people staying at home instead of moving to a nursing home, or a sick patients that don't need care such as surgery, "all of the things over time can be done with robots."

He's not talking about the kind of robot that the average person might think of, like Rosie from "The Jetsons" or Honda's Asimo. (In fact, Angle says those anthropomorphic style bots are "a technological marvel, but nearly, utterly useless.") Rather, the robotic nurses he has in mind look more like a machine than a man; more similar to the Roomba and Scooba household robots that Angle helped invent.

Instead of patients with chronic illnesses constantly going to a hospital for even minor treatments and checkups, a telepresence device could act as a proxy for the doctor to check in on them. The robot could examine, diagnose, and make sure a prescription is administered on the right schedule. The patient, in other words, wouldn't have to set foot in a hospital unless he or she needs care that is only available there.

The same model would cut the cost of nursing homes for aging people with a diminished ability to perform normal household tasks. In the future, robots are expected to be able to handle tasks such as daily medical reminders, cleaning the house, preparing food, and transportation.

The Roomba, from iRobot.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)

While robots aren't cheap, neither are hospital visits. And Angle says he's encouraged by the money that people are already spending on home automation systems and devices. He says that half a million people in the U.S. last year spent between $2,000 and $3,000 each on equipment such as security monitoring services, and that in the next three years, that number will jump to over 7 million. In other words, the idea of spending money to keep an eye on things in your home isn't a totally foreign concept.

Skeptical about robot "nurses"? Angle says he's heard that reaction before. "Our biggest problem is that nobody believes robots work. It's like science fiction," he said.

The sales of Roombas and Scoobas, and the $35 million order that iRobot took from the U.S. Army earlier this week certainly aren't fictional, but there's quite a ways to go before robots can actually do all the things he has in mind. The company's first product, the Roomba vacuum cleaner, took 10 years to develop, while its iConnectr telepresence robot is limited compared to what he envisions for the future.

"That's a start," he said. "I admit we've only taken the first few steps."

The Roomba 416 comes with 2 beacons for controlling where it vacuums, but does not offer the onboard scheduling feature of the higher-end Roomba models.

(Credit: iRobot)

Many CNET readers have been complaining that they're not seeing the major deals they thought the economy would encourage in electronics.

I agree. I haven't seen them yet, either. But here's one: iRobot is having a one-day sale on Friday until midnight on its Roomba 416 for $200, with a free upgrade kit for handling pet hair.

The Roomba 416 comes with two beacons for controlling where the Roomba roams, and it can clean up to two rooms before needing to be recharged, according to iRobot. It does not offer the onboard scheduling feature of the higher-end models.

It is, however, a favored model among Roomba hackers, as you can see from our Maker Faire 2007 interview at the bottom of this post.

They are a number of other Web specials, and an offer for free shipping on all orders more than $150, but the Roomba 416 sale is the major deal there today.

More robot deals are on their way. iRobot announced it will be holding two more one-day sales. One sale will be held on November 28 (Black Friday) and the other on December 1.

So far, the company has been mum on which products will be discounted on those days. Once I find out, I'll update this post.

iRobot's Roomba, Scooba, and Dirt Dog are selling bundled for $900.

(Credit: iRobot)

iRobot is offering deep discounts on its home products if you buy directly from its Web site.

We're wondering why, and it comes down to two possibilities, really.

One, they have newer, brighter, shinier models in the pipeline and need to unload old stock. Or, two, they're simply trying to get a head start on the holiday-season discounts expected from retailers, given the state of the economy.

Most recently, iRobot sent an e-mail letting people know it's offering $50 off its Scooba 380 model if you buy it before October 24. It normally sells for $450. That discount is presumably in preparation for the new Scooba 385 that it promises is "coming soon" on its European Web site.

iRobot is also offering $25 to $100 off its Roomba models when you buy two.

But if you have a lot of cash lying around, you could save even more. The company has a series of value packs in which they'll give you three robots for the price of two.

If you buy a Roomba 570 vacuuming robot and Scooba 380 floor-cleaning robot for $900 directly from the company Web site, for example, iRobot will throw in its Dirt Dog shop vacuum for free. They also offer combos that include the Looj gutter-cleaning robot.

Considering that averages out to $300 per robot, it's really not a bad deal.

Nekton Research's Ranger UUV.

(Credit: Nekton Research)

iRobot plans to acquire an underwater robotics company for $10 million, the company announced Monday.

The announcement comes one week after iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks said he will step down as iRobot's chief technology officer to pursue a new venture. While Brooks will remain on iRobot's board, his move has left some people questioning what's next for the growing robotics company.

Here's one answer the company seems keen to make known.

"We believe that the underwater market is the next frontier for robots. This acquisition positions us for leadership in robot solutions on both the land and sea," Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot, said in a statement.

iRobot predicts that the purchase of Nekton Research will garner it up to $8 million in product and contract revenue for 2009. The deal also expands iRobot's client list to include several agencies in the U.S. Navy.

Nekton Research's Transphibian robot aka Madeline is used for clearing underwater landmines.

(Credit: Nekton Research)

Nekton's products, according to iRobot, will dovetail with the Seaglider, an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) iRobot purchased the commercial rights to develop from the University of Washington in June.

Nekton Research, based in Durham, N.C., was founded by a group of faculty from Duke University. It makes about five types of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and related robotics technology.

The Ranger is for search and underwater surveying with a faster version called the Nekton High Speed UUV. Nekton has several different fin-equipped UUVs when specific maneuverability is an issue, as with its Transphibian robot for clearing underwater landmines.

The BioBay is the sea equivalent of a chemical detection robot and can also take water samples. It's currently being used by the EPA in several areas where contaminated water is a concern, according to Nekton Research. Nekton Research is also developing a team of tiny swarming underwater robots called MicroHunters. They can be sent en masse for scoping out large areas of water.

Rodney Brooks, co-founder of iRobot

(Credit: iRobot)

iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks is leaving his post as chief technology officer to concentrate on a new robotics company.

"I want to effect a powerful evolution in the world's labor markets, and my current focus is to develop low-cost robots that will empower American workers," Brooks said in a statement on his Web site.

Brooks' new robotics venture is a Cambridge, Mass.-based company called Heartland Robotics, which will focus on industrial worker robots. The two companies will not compete directly, iRobot said Tuesday in a statement.

iRobot will begin looking for Brooks' replacement in 2009. Brooks will remain on iRobot's board of directors. He will also be chairman of a newly formed technical advisory board for the company, according to iRobot.

Brooks, a leading authority in the field of robotics, was the director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1997 to 2007. He is still a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department at MIT.

Brooks co-founded iRobot in 1990 with two of his students, Helen Greiner, now chairman of iRobot, and Colin Angle, now iRobot's chief executive officer.

"Rod has been an integral part of iRobot over the years, playing a large role in the company's success. We are fortunate that he will continue to be a part of the company, lending his expertise and knowledge to our roadmap forward," Angle said in a statement.

The company's first product was the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, of which Brooks was a principle architect. Since then, then company has sold more than 3 million robots for the home and has supplied about 1,700 robots to the U.S. military, according to company statistics. On Monday, iRobot announced had it signed a contract to supply the U.S. Army with robots, parts, and services worth up to $200 million.

Brooks at his MIT office in 2007.

(Credit: Candace Lombardi/CNET Networks)

The U.S. Army plans to spend up to $200 million on iRobot products over the next five years, iRobot announced Tuesday.

The contract iRobot previously had with the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation expired in May 2008 and was limited to the purchase of PackBots.

iRobot's PackBot with RedOwl Sniper Detection Kit.

(Credit: iRobot)

The new contract gives the U.S. Army the freedom to purchase parts, training, and maintenance services from iRobot, as well as any robots from the company's industrial or consumer lines over the next five years, according to iRobot.

However, the $200 million five-year contract that was awarded is a "ceiling priced Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract," iRobot said in a statement.

That means the U.S. Army may or may not spend the full $200 million in products promised.

IDIQ contracts are common between vendors and U.S. government agencies because they are flexible and unrestricted.

According to Federal Acquisition Regulation on IDIQ contracts, the U.S. government does not have to spend the full dollar amount to fulfill its contractual obligations with the vendor. It also allows the government to use the money designated for that vendor on any products and services as needed over a designated period of time, rather than restrict it to purchasing a specific list and quantity of items.

While vendors are not guaranteed that the full contract amount will be realized, it does give them the opportunity to offer new products as they become available. Whether or not this type of flexibility is advantageous to vendors is up for debate.

It's clear why the U.S. Army would want the option to purchase parts and maintenance from iRobot. About 1,700 PackBots have now been sold to the U.S. military, according to iRobot's latest figures. The Department of Defense has ordered that the older models be kept in use in some capacity if possible. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Army announced it had found a way to recycle old PackBots for new uses.

iRobot also announced in June that it won a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office to develop a "ChemBot." The new type of robot will be made of flexible material and be able to squeeze into tight spaces.

The LandShark UGV robot.

(Credit: Black-I Robotics)

A robotics company founded by a father who lost his son to the Iraq war has garnered an $800,000 contract with the U.S. military.

Black-I Robotics makes an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) called the LandShark that can be used as a platform to disable bombs, provide reconnaissance, and carry wounded soldiers from the battlefield. The LandShark robot can also be used at home in the U.S. as an aid to first responders for search-and-rescue, firefighting, Hazmat, and SWAT efforts, and even in agriculture, according to a company statement.

"We believe UGV chassis should be thought of as Jeeps which can then be modified for specific missions," the company said in a statement.

The Technical Support Working Group (TSWG) , a group funded mostly by the Department of Defense, awarded a contract to Black-I Robotics on July 1 to provide two working versions of the robot to be tested out by the military and one version to be used in a Homeland Security capacity at Logan Airport in Boston, according to a report from the Associated Press.

The Tyngsboro, Mass.-based company was founded in 2006 by Brian Hart, whose son, John Daniel Hart, was killed in an unarmored Humvee near Taza, Iraq, in 2003.

The tragedy catalyzed Hart to speak out publicly about the lack of proper body armor and other defensive equipment available to military men and women in Iraq. Since 2005, Hart has also maintained a blog chronicling the failures and successes of the Iraq war, as well as injustices going on elsewhere in the world.

But he took his concern one step further by trying to develop a robust robot that can be made cheaply and thus be provided to more soldiers for protection.

To that end, Black-I Robotics uses some open-source software and off-the-shelf hardware in conjunction with its own proprietary technology. The different modules that customers can have added to the LandShark platform include plows, radios, arms, and trailers (demonstrated in this company video).

In addition to an expected increase in sales to the U.S. military, iRobot says it will see growth in its unmanned robot platforms from foreign buyers.

iRobot's Warrior robot can be modified to support chemical sensor devices or functioning weapons.

(Credit: Candace Lombardi/CNET News.com)

The "Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032," a report put out by the Department of Defense last year, outlined a strategy to increase spending in unmanned technology for the air, sea, and ground.

iRobot, which has already been supplying the U.S. military with unmanned robots for use in ground reconnaissance and combat, has repeatedly said it will benefit from the military's increased need.

But the company now says that as its robots have proven themselves useful in Iraq and Afghanistan, interest from foreign armed forces has also increased.

iRobot has sold robots from its line of unmanned military drones internationally to 13 allied countries, including Australia, Gemany, Israel, and the United Kingdom, since 2006, Joe Dyer, president of iRobot's Government & Industrial Robots division, told reporters in a Web conference Wednesday.

The international market consisted of only a handful of robots sold in 2006, but about 8 percent or 9 percent of iRobot's total revenue for unmanned robots in 2007. This year, iRobot estimates that its foreign market will increase to about 15 percent of its total revenues for its government and industrial division, according to Dyer.

But how do export license approvals work when a company is a supplier of dual-use technology to the U.S. military? Admittedly, iRobot's unmanned platforms are just as suited to benign first-responder search-and-rescue functions as they are to lethal combat. But either way you look at it, iRobot is still selling hardware with high-tech military capability to foreign entities.

"It's on a country-by-country basis. If country X desires to purchase iRobot robots, we take it to (the State Department) for approval. If we receive it, we proceed," Dyer said.

iRobot has secured a multimillion-dollar R&D contract for a new type of soft, flexible robot for the military, the company announced Tuesday.

The "ChemBot" project was awarded to iRobot from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office.

iRobot did not release any preliminary diagrams or details on what the ChemBot might look like. But some ideas on what a ChemBot might be like can be gleaned from a request for proposals DARPA put out in March 2007. The robot DARPA wants to see must be a soft, flexible, mobile robot that can squeeze into hard-to-reach places. The goal is to make a robot that would be "soft enough to squeeze or traverse through small openings, yet large enough to carry an operationally meaningful payload," according to DARPA's request. The robot will also need to change in size and shape to fit a given situation's needs.

The ChemBot project led by iRobot will include team members from iRobot, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with expertise in chemistry and material science, as well as those versed in the expected actuator, electronics, sensor, and computer technologies.

The ChemBot will be used for reconnaissance and search-and-rescue type missions, according to iRobot.

Small and nimble seems to be the latest robo-interest.

SRI International released footage of its sticky wall-climbing robots in April. BAE Systems announced in early May it secured a $38 million contract with the U.S. military for its spider-like intelligence-gathering robots. Finally, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle announced earlier this month that they are developing "robofish" for gathering information at sea and that the military is interested in a school of its own.