Cutting Edge

For now, it's palm-size, sure, but what if something terrible happens, and it can't stop inflating?

(Credit: YouTube screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)

We're getting a first glimpse of that shape-shifting ChemBot we first told you about last year, and well, it looks like the love child of a beating heart and a wad of Silly Putty.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army Research Office awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to iRobot to create the flexible military bot. The maker of the Roomba and Scooba, along with University of Chicago researchers, showed off the oozy results at the Iros conference (the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) in St. Louis this week.

DARPA envisions the palm-size ChemBot as a mobile robot that can traverse soft terrain and navigate through small openings, such as tiny wall cracks, during reconnaissance and search-and-rescue missions. It gets around by way of a process called "jamming," in which material can transition between semiliquid and solid states with only a slight change in volume.

In ChemBot's case, a flexible silicone skin encapsulates a series of pockets containing a mix of air and loosely packed particles. When air is removed from the compartments, the skin attempts to equalize the pressure differential by constricting the particles, which shift slightly to fill the void left by the evacuated air.

In that way, the weird little blob inflates and deflates parts of its body, changing size and shape--and scaring the living daylights out of us. We don't know exactly when ChemBot will join the Armed Forces, but we can only beg: please, oh please, keep it away from us.

(Via IEEE Spectrum)

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."

(Credit: Mark Rutherford)

FORT HOOD, Texas--Soldiers and civilian contractors braved the heat here this week for the first Robotics Rodeo to view and interact with a long lineup of robot systems and to give feedback on which ones could potentially find a place in the U.S. Army's robo stable.

Despite the hundreds of military robots that show up in concept or as prototypes on company Web sites and corporate reports, humans still do the fighting on the ground and it's likely to stay that way for a while. However, there's a growing niche for "the dirty, the dull, and the dangerous" jobs where robots could take over. In fact, it's the law. The 2001 Senate defense authorization bill mandates that "one third of the operational ground combat vehicles of the armed forces will be unmanned by 2015."

The Army wants robotic researchers, developers, and manufactures, many of whom have collected millions in government seed money and grants over the years, to get off the dime and start delivering (PDF).

"If you're not fielding, you're failing," said Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, Fort Hood commander and co-host of the Robotics Rodeo.

Lynch cites the rapid advancements made in fielding unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

"Most folks are familiar and comfortable with (UAVs), and we've shown over eight years of combat just how critical those systems are to the warfighting effort when properly used and integrated," Lynch said. "There are hundreds of other robotic concepts that could also be useful to our Army and this Robotics Rodeo will showcase some of those--it's a great educational opportunity."

Photos: Robots audition for Army

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The U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and Fort Hood III Corps invited more than 40 vendors to attend the rodeo and show off their wares.

In terms of priorities, clearance of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) tops the general's wish list. Other needs include programmable unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to patrol and make deliveries on planned routes or conduct "persistent stare," i.e. long-term surveillance missions.

"The enemy often places IEDs in the same locations that he has used in the past. A robotic system that can observe these locations for a prolonged period of time and alert us of a significant change would be of great value," Lynch said. One of true tests would be a UGV that acts as a robotic wingman or can assume a role as a member of a squad.

However, most UGVs in service today are limited to detecting and defusing IEDs. Concepts to broaden their uses are many, but it's unclear how practical and feasible they are. In any case, much of the technology on display at the "rodeo" is commercial off-the-shelf--some of it already in use in private industry.

So what's keeping the stuff on display from becoming standard issue? Three letters--ONS--according to vendors.

If there's an urgent need for equipment, a general officer may step forward and submit an ONS, or Operational Needs Statement, to get the ball rolling. No one is willing to do so, vendors complain. For example, the Qinetiq rep says his modular advanced armed robotic system (MAARS) could be ambushing IED-planting bad guys right now, but for the paperwork (PDF).

The true test: be the first to sign off on a M240B machine-gun-mounted UGV.

Qinetiq's Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS).

(Credit: Mark Rutherford)

Best known for its Roomba vacuums, iRobot also counts the U.S. Army as a top customer. And the latest Army deal is the company's single biggest.

iRobot said Tuesday it has received an order from the U.S. Army for $35.3 million for robots equipped to help soldiers safely evaluate dangerous conditions.

The PackBot 510 with FasTac Kit

(Credit: iRobot)

The order, made by the U.S. Army TACOM Contracting Center in Warren, Mich., calls for 486 iRobot PackBot 510 with FasTac Kit robots by March 31, 2010. This single order is part of an overall larger contract worth $286 million, of which $125 million has been earned by iRobot to date.

"This order is truly a significant milestone for iRobot," Joe Dyer, president of iRobot government and industrial robots unit, said in a statement. "Not only is it the single largest order we have ever received from the military, but it also proves that there is strong and continuing support for our PackBot FasTac platform that was introduced just last year."

The PackBot 510 with FasTac Kit lets soldiers view and evaluate dangerous locations from a safe distance, says iRobot. The PackBot can then clear those areas, allowing troops to proceed.

Controlled by a laptop with a game-style controller, the robot can move at up to 5.8 mph and run for up to four hours at a stretch. A compact arm and gripper lets soldiers pick up and examine suspicious objects from a distance.

"One of the robot's strengths is its adaptability," Dyer said. "It is well-suited for use by combat engineers, route clearance companies and infantry brigades. This is important as our troops continue to fight wars on multiple fronts, each possessing its own unique mission types and challenges."

iRobot has been a top supplier of combat-related robots to the military for a couple of years. The Army's current contract, put in place a year ago, allows it to buy equipment, training, and services from iRobot over the next four years.

The PackBot has been a popular model, serving in locations like Iraq to dispose of roadside bombs and other hazards. Another variation of the PackBot can sniff out nerve gas and other dangerous chemicals.

To combat a robot invasion in the movies, the hero may need some sort of high-powered superweapon. To slow one down in real life, a heaping helping of recession should do the trick.

NextGen Research on Tuesday eased back the throttle on hopes for a surge in the number of robots arriving on the home front in the near future. In its new "Personal Robotics 2009" report, the research company forecasts that the global market for personal robots will be worth more than $5 billion in 2015, up from just over $1 billion seen for this year.

Put another way, NextGen sees 9 million units being shipped in 2009, and 25 million in 2015.

Photos: Robots make themselves at home

That's a good rate of growth, to be sure, but the target is well off the $15 billion in 2015 that NextGen had forecast two years ago, in more favorable economic times. The change in the target figure stems mainly from a recession that has spared few, if any, sectors of the economy, but also because the personal robot business hasn't yet built on itself as anticipated.

Personal robots include those focused on specific tasks, such as iRobot's Roomba vacuum cleaner, along with entertainment, education, and telepresence robots. In 2009, most are single-purpose task robots or toys, according to NextGen.

"People don't have the discretionary bucks to spend on a product they already have" in another form, said Larry Fisher, research director at NextGen, based in Oyster Bay, N.Y. "They don't have couple hundred bucks to spend on another vacuum cleaner or floor washer. They're nice-to-haves, not must-haves."

Roombas tend to be priced between about $130 and $550, while iRobot's high-end Verro 500 pool cleaner lists at $999.

Still, task robots like the Roomba are likely the robots best-suited to weather a gloomy economy. "The task market is where the money is being made at this point," Fisher said. For iRobot, it doesn't hurt to also have a division focused on sales to government and industrial buyers, including the Pentagon, which has a soft spot for the company's PackBot and similar devices.

Photos: Rolling robots at RoboBusiness

Robot toys, however fetching they may be, are especially vulnerable when consumers are pinching pennies. For instance, Ugobe, the maker of the much-hyped but pricey robo-dinosaur Pleo, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this spring after a troubled holiday shopping season and a drawn-out development phase. (The intellectual property has since been bought by Ugobe's former manufacturing partner, according to published reports, so the Pleo itself may live on.)

Toymaker WowWee, meanwhile, hasn't gained as much traction as it otherwise might have with its Rovio telepresence robot--basically a Webcam on wheels. "Rovio did OK, but it came out with $300 price tag just as recession came on," Fisher said. A potential competitor from iRobot, the ConnectR, is still on hold.

Telepresence robots will likely take center stage in the next phase of the robot market's evolution--next as in later in the next decade, according to NextGen. Besides letting owners keep tabs on a home while they're at work or on vacation, such devices could help families keep in touch with the grandparents. Indeed, many in the industry see a huge potential for a variety of robotic technologies helping out in assistive care for an aging Baby Boom generation, in areas from communications to entertainment to rehabilitation.

Just don't expect robots to wait on you hand and foot in the near future--that sort of dexterity is well out of the reach of consumer-priced robots, as is PC-level processing power. Through the 2015 cut-off date of the NextGen report, Fisher said, "you won't see task robots with arms and legs which you can put to multiple tasks. In the short term, we don't see many task robots showing up that have arms or manipulators, or have two legs."

Corrections were made to this interview. See below for details.

The PackBot robot has made a name for itself in dangerous places like Iraq, but the future may belong to both its bigger and smaller siblings.

U.S. military forces have long made use of the PackBot to discover and disarm roadside bombs, keeping flesh-and-blood soldiers out of harm's way. Now its maker, iRobot, is looking to make inroads with two variations on the design.

iRobot CEO Colin Angle

(Credit: Jonathan Skillings/CNET)

The SUGV (short for small unmanned ground vehicle) may be one of the technologies that emerges in good shape from the Army's massively expensive Future Combat Systems program, which seems likely to be significantly deflated as the Pentagon shapes its budget for the coming year. Lighter and thus more portable than the PackBot, it seems in good position to be spun out from FCS evaluation teams to other units.

Meanwhile, iRobot is beta-testing the much larger Warrior, which will be capable of carrying bigger payloads. As upbeat as folks at the company are about the PackBot and the SUGV, iRobot CEO Colin Angle describes the Warrior with unabashed enthusiasm: "That robot is going to change the world, and change the perception of what practical robots are all about. We're pretty passionate about that."

The Bedford, Mass., company has its more domestic side, of course. Where it's sold 2,000-plus PackBots worldwide, it has sold more than 3 million of its Roomba floor-cleaning robots. It's got a range of household bots, from the gutter-scouring Looj to the pool-scrubbing Verro.

Angle met with CNET News on Monday at the company's headquarters, ahead of this week's RoboBusiness conference in Boston, to talk about how iRobot--which had $307 million in sales in 2008--is weathering the recession, how robots are changing battlefield habits, and why iRobot isn't building a humanoid bot.

How is the recession affecting iRobot?
Angle: There's no doubt the recession is having an impact. We first started to see the impact of the recession in October of last year, so we were able to say, OK, the rules have changed on consumer spending, and we were able to adjust our guidance for 2009. So we hopefully have done the right thing, but domestic sales certainly are negatively impacted.

The good news is that internationally our sales remain very, very strong. And perhaps because we were operating off a relatively small base, relative to the potential opportunity, we continued some momentum. So the guidance that we were able to give year to year had domestic down and international up on the home side. And then on the military side we had a different set of non-economy-related factors slowing down growth temporarily.

With the international growth, how widely dispersed around the globe is that? How many countries are you selling into for both (home) and military?
Angle: On the home side, we are relatively broadly distributed throughout Europe, Korea, Japan, Australia, most major developed markets we're in at this point. On the military side, we have sold, we have presences in about (13) countries, so we continue to build on all fronts. It is a fairly significant number. The utility of these types of robots, in particular the PackBot, has been recognized globally.

The PackBot seems to be a very flexible platform, there are a lot of different things that have been put onto it--IED detection, sniper detection--no weapons so far...
Angle: True. You know, it is a platform, and explicitly designed to be one, with common interfaces. We have the Aware 2.0 robot intelligence system, or software platform that has open APIs so that third parties can develop different payloads for the robot. We have a developer conference every year; last year over 80 companies attended to learn how to build and interface their products to our platform.

And the PackBot is, right now, the most numerically successful, plus the oldest platform. We have two new platforms that are starting to come online -- the SUGV, the small unmanned ground vehicle, which is a 30-, 35-pound platform. At 50-60 pounds, you have the PackBot, and then at 250 pounds, 300 pounds, you've got the Warrior, which is the larger size that is now going into beta testing and starting to get into the combat exercises to look at how it can effectively be deployed.

The vision is, iRobot will be the central point of portable ground robots, and depending on how big a thing you want to put on the robot, you'll work with us to deliver that capability, deliver it to the soldiers. The more these products are used, the more soldiers say, here's an opportunity to perform a mission more safely, to perform a mission more quickly. We'll see a lot more missions starting to be taken on.

The PackBot's not the only robot platform that size that the U.S. government uses. There's the Talon from Foster-Miller.
Angle: The Talon is heavier than the PackBot, so that's fine if you're getting to where you need to use it in a vehicle, but as soon as you start having to carry it, it's less so. Both the PackBot and the Talon are used extensively for this roadside bomb threat in Iraq.

I know from what I've read that the soldiers are very happy to have those devices.
Angle: You can imagine, because -- if you're in Iraq and there's a bomb over there and you know there's some way of detonating the bomb, you haven't quite figured it out and someone may be watching, and his entire goal is to explode it at a time when it can do the most damage to you, and your job is to defuse it, that's just a bad situation. This is giving a new lease on life to these guys. I've spoken to many of them and they all credit their own lives with our nation's ability to procure and build these types of systems. It's a godsend.

And now we're starting to see with the SUGV, and the robot's getting into the hands not just of the explosive ordinance disposal guys but the regular infantry, whose missions include things like, go clear that building. And many times of day as you're trying to clear building after building, you're faced with, OK, there might be something bad beyond this door. I can throw a grenade in and maybe kill someone, an innocent person, or I can jump in the door and get shot. Wouldn't it be nice to have the better option to have the robot go in first and evaluate what's going on, and improve the outcome?

The proposed DOD budget looks like it's favorable to things like the SUGV. From what I've seen, the Future Combat Systems--a lot of that probably will fall away, the bigger vehicles, the common chassis. But Secretary Gates and others seem to want to have more of the robots.
Angle: Well, this is something that's far from played out, but certainly from what has been said, the SpinOut 1 technologies, in particular the robots, have a place and could come out of the (budget) actions, in fact, enhanced, and find more resources associated with them. Anytime there's change, there's risk. But from what's being said, and the type of combat the United States finds itself in these days, the robots are on the rise as far as being an important part of the new enabled technology to keep our soldiers with that advantage.

Some people, including (author) P.W. Singer, have raised the issue of battlefield ethics, the laws of war, and how robots might change that. How do you see the use of robots reshaping combat?
Angle: There is always going to be, at least for a long time to come, a human in the loop, as far as trying to decide when a robot should employ lethal force. You know, AI is not to the point where a machine should be making a life-or-death decision, and I wouldn't even be able to tell you when I thought that might actually come to pass.

Photos: The robot designs of iRobot

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But what a robot does give a soldier is the ability to shoot second--which is, again, incredibly empowering and important. Let the robot be the thing on the point, let someone attack it, and by doing so reveal his position and reveal the intent of what they're doing there. This is a big, big concept--robots let the soldiers shoot second. Additionally, a robot can carry nonlethal technologies, where a soldier is much, much less willing to do so. If a bad guy's over there with an AK-47, I want my M-16, I want my machine gun.

(Robot technology) is something that you need to be very careful of. It also offers some of the best hope for humanely dealing with this new type of bad guy that we're faced with.

And the old types, too.
Angle: The old types, too. But we're not going to have tank battles in the fields of Eastern Europe where everybody lines up and you know what side everyone's on. That's just not going to happen anymore. So we find ourselves in a situation where it's much more difficult just to understand what you're supposed to do, much less do it, and that requires either a lot more soldiers, in which case we're putting a lot more American lives at risk, or some kind of new technology can go in and serve the function that those soldiers served. And that's where, I believe, robots come in.

It seems to me, too, that popular perception gets ahead of itself in thinking about robots which, in movies, are very autonomous. Most of the robots that are used in battlefields--the PackBot, the Predator--they're still mostly, if not entirely, remote-controlled. Somebody is still driving that machine, and it's not working on its own.
Angle: There's a man in the loop, and even if you could tell the robot with the GPS, go that way, there would still need to be a person in the loop to decide what to do once the robot got there. There's going to be more capabilities built into the robot, so that a soldier doesn't have to his head down looking at a video screen all the time while someone sneaks around and can mess with him, and in that way we'll allow robots to be more effective. But there needs to be a person in the loop, because AI is just not that good.

Hollywood loves to portray the Terminator, or loves to say, here's the future, and have the little boy knock on the door and "Hello, I'm a robot." It's just not going to happen. Maybe one day, but by the time that happens, the world is going to be a far weirder place. But people don't understand that before we have a robot human, people are going to be doing things like incorporating robot technology into their own bodies. And the ethical challenge for the field of robotics is going to be answering questions around what happens when you can have a neural interface to the future of the Wikipedia, and so if you have this capability (built into your body), which probably would cost money to do, you'd have a huge advantage over someone who didn't--now there's an ethical question.

Right. It's sort of, cheat notes writ large.
Angle: Right. Everyone unplug their neural implant before they take the test. Right now there's medical procedures to help the deaf with cochlear implants, and there's some artificial eyes that are starting to allow blind people to see some amount of image, differences between light and dark, and it's getting better all the time. But what happens when that becomes elective surgery? Do you want to have an iPod embedded in your ear? Do you want to have your computer screen--you know, remove a good eye and put in something else? I mean, these questions are going to be fascinating and causing us to really dig deep as to what is right and wrong, far before we have to worry about true, artificially intelligent robots beating us on the battlefield or in society.

And both those (scenarios) are a long way off--robots powered by very smart AI, and humans having reached some sort of cyborg threshold.
Angle: Well, I think that the second is far sooner than the first. We are already doing surgery where we're implanting machinery into our bodies. Dean Kamen has developed a fantastically successful prosthesis, with a neural interface. They've figured how to attach it to your nerve bundles so you can think and the robot's arm can move with very little training. I mean, you talk about what's going to happen sooner, well, we're already seeing some of these cyborg-esque futures becoming more and more real. I think it's going to be a fascinating place, but I think that the typical concerns about what happens when you weaponize robots and what happens when we have robot people hanging out amongst us are kind of the easy but wrong questions.

On the home front, the Roomba is still the center of focus for iRobot?
Angle: The Roomba is certainly the largest revenue driver at this point. It has a head start, it was the first thing that we did, and while the brand iRobot entrusts that the products we make are truly practical--they're not gimmicks and actually work-- that helps the subsequent products come up quicker. The Roomba still has a relatively tiny penetration--we've sold over 3 million of these robots. It sounds like a big number, and it is, but compared to the number of households in America, it's a tiny number.

Our users are very passionate about the product, they tell their friends and so forth. We'll continue to see, just driven by our installed base, more people, more success, driving more Roomba sales, and then with sales of the other products moving along nicely, but still in the shadow.

We keep at it. We're not done. The mission of the division is to keep working at robots that will help tackle the dull, the dirty, and the dangerous--the routine maintenance tasks that we're faced with, and once we're done with that, trying to turn our focus to the people who live in the homes and with this notion of helping people live more easily, more independently. It's early days. You know, we can vacuum. We can vacuum well, and scrubbing is coming along and so forth. But there's so much more a robot could do as far as helping you come home to a house that is exactly the way you want it, with no need for you to go and do these maintenance types of tasks.

What would be the next thing to tackle?
Angle: Well, we don't actually talk about what we're doing next. It's sort of, in the future here's the body of things.

Still no lawn mower.
Angle: There's the lawn mower, there's cooking, there's windows, there's more stuff going on in the bathroom with your tub, and doing laundry, folding laundry, putting stuff away. Once we get manipulation on the robots at consumer price points, those are all very real, very doable sorts of things. Shoveling the driveway.

What about areas like robotic surgery, robots for NASA, something farther afield like that?
Angle: I think that robots for surgery is a great application for robotics. The Da Vinci system from Intuitive Surgical has really shown that robots can augment regular doctors, not just for tele-surgery, but in the same room, give that doctor more arms and do more precise movements. This is fantastic. It's not an iRobot area of expertise but it's certainly a real driver for the industry.

Industrial cleaning is going to be an industry robots take by storm once the right product comes along. The exploration of the solar system has already largely been given over to robots to take on--the Spirit and Opportunity on Mars, the probes we keep sending out. These are demonstrating that if--ultimately you're going to want to send people because it's more fun and interesting to go start a colony on Mars. But the prep work in making it viable and feasible to know what to do, that's the work of robots.

What about a humanoid robot?
Angle: Why would you want to make a humanoid robot? I mean, I guess for making movies they're good. If you want to have a robot companion, maybe it should be humanoid. But other than that, most tasks are best tackled by designs that are not constrained by trying to look like a person. I mean, balance and walking are incredibly hard things to do. If you look at some of the Japanese walking robots, because they're very focused on solving this problem, and then compare it to Warrior, our large, dual-track system, and say, OK, which one makes more sense?

The Asimo (from Honda) requires a team of 10 or 15 people to maintain it, it can walk about, maybe, half a meter per second and in some situations climb stairs over the course of a few minutes, and if it ever falls down, it's a paperweight. I think it has something like 40 or 50 motors in order to make it work. Then take the Warrior, and the Warrior can take a 10-foot drop onto concrete, drive (10 miles an hour), drive up stairs without stopping at full speed, carry (150 pounds) of payload and has, maybe, five motors. So it's stronger, it's faster, it's more durable, it has more efficiency, and it can go nearly everywhere a human can. So you look at these things and say, which one of these is a robot human? The answer is, Warrior. Warrior is designed to operate in environments that we have designed for ourselves, as efficiently and capably...

Roadways, buildings...
Angle: Right, so if a person can do it, chances are Warrior can do it. And we're developing arms and all sorts of payloads to allow it to take on some of the most dangerous tasks that we currently are forced to give to ourselves to perform. That robot is going to change the world, and change the perception of what practical robots are all about. We're pretty passionate about that.

Obviously there's a lot of in-house R&D that you guys do. But where do you look for new ideas--there are a lot of robotics labs, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, other places.
Angle: You're answering your own question. I mean, we have a technology road map as to where we want to bring the technology, but we also take very seriously our academic ties--Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, MIT are three of the leading places that we make sure we know what's going on, because they're a fountain of good ideas. We go visit campus, and hire students. It's a community that likes to get together, talk about what they're up to. Building robots is extremely difficult and trying to just go off and do it alone is (daunting). You have to be humble in this industry.

Helen Greiner and Rod Brooks both left the company last year, they were two of the three co-founders. How are things different nowadays without them here day to day. I know they're on the board...
Angle: They're on the board, and that's the key thing. Rod, when he was at the company, was playing a role that is helping to network, helping to keep us aware of what's going on in the industry, and that's something he can do, maybe a little less formally, but certainly very effectively, from a position on the board. Certainly Helen leaving the company--she's a very talented individual and we miss her, but she's still intimately tied into the business. What she's doing is synergistic with where we're going with our military division.

I wish them well and success. It's difficult to predict exactly what's going to happen, but it's a boon to the industry. And iRobot still gets to tap into the association with these two pioneers. So it's a little bit different, but it's not like they're gone, and we've been able to continue to grow and thrive and things are still very, very exciting. We've been able to attract a lot of new, brilliant roboticists to be at the company where we are making it happen and putting actual robots in the hands of soldiers and customers around the world.

Correction, April 16, 11:19 a.m. PT: This interview initially misstated the number of countries into which the PackBot has been sold, along with the speed and payload for the Warrior.

iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner has resigned from her position as chairman of iRobot, effective October 24, the company announced Wednesday evening.

iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner

(Credit: iRobot)

Chief Executive Colin Angle, also a co-founder, was voted unanimously by iRobot's board to take Greiner's place. Angle will also remain the company's CEO, according to a company statement.

iRobot was not immediately available for comment.

The company is now down two major company leaders. Greiner's sudden departure closely follows a September announcement that iRobot co-founder and famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology roboticist Rodney Brooks was leaving his position as iRobot's chief technology officer.

Brooks is working at another robotics company, Heartland Robotics. iRobot said in September that it would not begin looking for Brooks' replacement until early 2009.

Like Brooks, Greiner plans to remain on iRobot's board and stay involved as a member of the robotics community.

"I am excited about where the robot industry is going and how I can help shape the future through individual endeavors, work with the Robotics Technology Consortium, Massachusetts Robotics Cluster, and the various boards on which I serve," Greiner said in a statement, which, like the company statement gave no explanation for her resignation.

"Since co-founding iRobot in 1990, Helen has been an integral part of the company and played a large role in our success. We are fortunate that she will maintain a position on our board of directors as she continues to drive the robot industry forward," Angle said.

While both Greiner and iRobot have said the decision was mutual, some are speculating as to the reason behind her step-down.

"Greiner didn't go into detail about why she's stepping down as chairman, and it's hard not to speculate that it was at least partially involuntary--but at the same time, it's easy to imagine that she has simply had enough of the grind and has decided to move on," said Robert Buderi in an article on Xconomy, the only news outlet Greiner appears to have spoken to directly since the announcement.

Perhaps a speech Greiner gave when she was honored in June by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology as its 2008 Women of Vision Award Winner for Innovation (see video on right) is an indication of her next challenge.

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.