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.
Seaglider
(Credit: University of Washington)iRobot has secured exclusive commercial rights to develop an unmanned sea-faring robot from a group at the University of Washington.
The Bedford, Mass.-based company made the announcement Tuesday at the annual symposium for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI).
Specifically, the agreement is to commercialize an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) called the Seaglider.
The Seaglider was developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory and the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in conjunction with the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, which funded the initial project.
iRobot believes the Seaglider has military application potential. The company's Government & Industrial Robots division, the same side of the company that developed its military PackBot, has been put in charge of developing the Seaglider, according to two iRobot sources.
A public statement from co-founder and Chairman Helen Greiner also indicated the company has military use in mind.
"We have a strong track record for transferring new technology from research initiatives into products that support military missions...licensing the Seaglider from the University of Washington will help our robots conquer new underwater frontiers," Greiner said.
As part of the deal, the University of Washington will retain the rights to continue to develop and build Seaglider robots for its own research use, according to iRobot.
iRobot is best known for its vacuum-cleaning Roomba and it's military Packbot, but the company does already sell one underwater robot in its commercial line. The Verro pool-cleaning robot crawls along the floor and walls of a swimming pool to clean it.
While not as glamorous to the general public as walking and talking robots or robots that drive, AUVs have been getting a lot of attention in recent years within the robotics community.
There's an AUV equivalent to the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge, the annual "race" of robot cars. The Office of Naval Research and AUVSI sponsor the annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition. The AUVs are judged on things like computer control, power management, and navigation. This year's competition will be held in July at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. The competition even has its own Facebook group.
(Credit:
iRobot)
The military sees a need for a flying robot that can swoop into an enemy position, transition to wheel or track mode, and then get busy icing bad guys--something along the lines of the Griffon UGV/UAV Air Mobility System.
While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can wing in quickly to reconnoiter or attack enemy positions, they can't follow a target into a cave or a building. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), on the other hand, can enter structures, search for targets, and examine them at close range, but they're slower than UAVs, have less range, and are limited by rough terrain.
Awhile back, the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command and the Armaments Research, Development, and Engineering Center funded an iRobot team led by Brian Yamauchi and Pavlo Rudakevych to develop a solution. They came up with the Griffon (PDF), an iRobot PackBot prototype strapped to a gasoline-powered, propeller-driven, radio-controlled, steerable parafoil system. The UVG hangs from a superstructure on which is mounted a 32cc Fuji engine behind an 18- by 8-inch propeller.
For the parafoil, the team considered a wide range of extreme sport kite surfing and traction wings but settled on the 11-meter Ozone Razor. This parafoil is attached by two hang points on the sides, with two arms to control the wing surface and a quick release to jettison the whole contraption on touchdown.The PackBot's on-board computer does the driving and controls the gas. Video, audio, and autonomous ground GPS navigation is also a standard PackBot feature.
The kit is designed to be man-packable and could be used by civilian teams for search-and-rescue in hazardous terrain in addition to military recon and strike missions in urban environments, according to the researchers.
A prototype was tested a few years age and apparently worked well, although it wasn't much to look at. It took off, soared up to 200 feet, landed, and then moved out at speeds of more than 20mph, all under remote control--a first, according to the inventors Yamauchi and Rudakevych. Unfortunately, that's the last it was heard of. The concept deserves another look; it has the makings of a great DARPA challenge.
LAS VEGAS--Back in the '90s, iRobot worked on a robot that could help drill for oil.
Then oil dropped from $30 to $20 a barrel, and interest among potential customers dropped too, said iRobot CEO Colin Angle during a meeting at this week's Consumer Electronics Show here. With oil bouncing around $100 a barrel now, that chucked idea may make a comeback, he said.
iRobot CEO Colin Angle
(Credit: iRobot)Drilling for oil is sort of misnomer, Angle noted. The ground doesn't consist of hidden lakes of liquid petrochemicals. Instead, oil is encased in porous rock, Angle said. To get at it, oil drillers dig deep holes into the ground and then encase them in metal. Subsequently, a charge is fired to break through the metal to get at the rock. After oil is extracted, drillers move on to make new holes and seal up the old ones.
But such holes can upset geological formations. A robot could, in theory, repair the holes without upsetting the geological balance, Angle said. Conceivably, the robots could also allow drillers to extract more oil out of deposits. Now, drillers only harvest part of it.
He further outlined why robots are going to become part of our lives: the inevitability of old age and war.
Angle tends to focus on disasters and crises, which is sort of a nice change at CES.
People are living longer in Western Europe and America. We can't take care of them all, and they don't want to go to rest homes. Hence, he said, robots will be the ones to clean the house and check on their health.
"There is an inevitability with robots that is frightening and exciting and (a) great driver," he said. "For developed nations, this is a force of nature that we are not going to stop. We can't do it with nurses either. The average age of nurses is over 50."
CES 2008 is here
the massive electronics show.
Robots will be drafted into the military, too. A robot with a stun gun or a goop gun can be more effective than a soldier with a gun. That's because a soldier must always shoot first if he or she is facing an armed enemy.
"A robot has the ability to shoot second," Angle said. It may sound counterintuitive, he said, but that's a good thing. When soldiers enter a hairy situation, they often must shoot before they can fully assess the conditions. This often results in creating more enemies. (I think I heard about this happening in Iraq.).
The U.S. also must fight more asymmetrical wars that will involve combatants who are part of crowds.
"We need to find a new way to conduct combat," Angle said. "A robot gives you a presence on the ground that is dispensable, inexpensive, and can exert a zone of control."
So there is your cheery, sober analysis of our world today.
(Credit:
Metal Storm)
After years of development, a new class of weapon that uses computer-controlled electronic ignition instead of primers to fire projectiles may be finally taking its much coveted place in the U.S. military inventory.
Brisbane, Australia-based Metal Storm has delivered a four-barrel weapon to the Naval Surface Warfare Center for testing that uses a small electrical current instead a conventional firing pin to deliver stacked rounds at an astounding rate.
How astounding? Try 1 million rounds per minute. That's the rate, by the way, not the volume; still, there's no way you want to be anywhere near the wrong end of one of these puppies.
One version, the Redback, features a remotely operated 40mm that can automatically track targets by slewing around at almost 2 complete revolutions per second, according to the company. "The employment of Metal Storm's stacked round technology for a U.S. military weapon system is a huge step for us," Metal Storm CEO Lee Finniear said in the company's press release.
Electronically fired weapons and the general concept have been around for awhile--Austrian company Voere offers an electric, bolt-action hunting rifle--but nothing has approached Metal Storm (PDF). Metal Storm weapons use multiple, "lightweight, economical barrels" mounted in pods on a variety of platforms that can fire a wide selection of munitions.
The projectiles are stacked in-line in the barrel--nose to tail--so there are no magazines, no shell casings, and no mechanical components. This makes them ideal for unattended area denial or picket duty. They are also easily adapted to light vehicles and robot platforms. In fact, the company just signed an MOU with iRobot Government & Industrial Robots to combine its robot platforms with Metal Storm's scalable systems.
"Together with Metal Storm, we aim to develop a superior next-generation weapons platform that ensures absolute safety and always places a human in the decision loop," iRobot's Joe Dyer promised in announcing the agreement. "When you are talking about weaponizing robots, there is no margin for error."
Especially at a million rounds per minute.
The U.S. District Court of Massachusetts has granted iRobot its requested injunction against Robotic FX's Negotiator robot.
iRobot has alleged that the Negotiator robot built by Robotic FX infringes on two of its patents for the PackBot military robot.
iRobot is also suing Robotic FX's president, Jameel Ahed, as an individual. The company has accused the former iRobot employee of misappropriating confidential PackBot information he had access to while working at iRobot and using it in his company's Negotiator robot.
"The precise terms of the injunction follow in a separate Order, which shall be issued under seal because it narrowly specifies the trade secrets not to be infringed," U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said in her order of November 2.
That separate order was filed by Judge Gertner on November 5, according to the U.S. District Court's official electronic document filing system.
The court held a sealed hearing on the matter over four days before coming to its decision. A pretrial conference is set for March 2008, with a trial to start no later than April 7, 2008, according to court documents.
"We are pleased with the court's decision," Colin Angle, iRobot's chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Robotic FX was not immediately available for comment.
Ahed and Robotic FX have said that they are not in violation.
(Credit:
Danh Trinh/iRobot/Instructables)
The winner of iRobot's amateur robot-building contest is a multi-functional home robot designed by Danh Trinh of Towson, Md., the company announced Tuesday.
Trinh's winning robot, called simply "Personal Home Robot," is a teleoperational robot controlled from a laptop using Microsoft NetMeeting. It's capable of doing things like watering plants, controlling appliances, giving out reminders, dancing, and acting as a media center.
Trinh won $5,000 for his invention.
Personal Home Robot can suck up water through a straw into an onboard reservoir and then deposit the water at another location, such as a dog bowl. It can detect the relative position and distance of objects, such as a household plant, and can be used as a remote control for your television and house lights.
Videos of these and other actions performed by Personal Home Robot have been posted to YouTube and can also be seen on the Instructables Web site, according to iRobot.
Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot, announced the start of the robotics contest at the Robo Business 2007 conference in Boston in May. Its only requirement was that the roboticist use iRobot's Create programmable robot as a starting point.
The contest, which was also co-sponsored by Tom's Hardware and Instructables, judged entries on aesthetics, intelligence, utility, entertainment value, completeness, and originality, according to iRobot.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The Boston area has become a leading robotics hub, with a larger cluster of related companies than any other area in the U.S., according to a group of panelists assembled for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum on Robotics Wednesday night.
The Stata Center, where the MIT Enterprise Forum on Robotics was held Wednesday night, houses MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
(Credit: Candace Lombardi/CNET News.com)The group, which consisted of executives from ABB Robotics, Brooks Automation, iRobot, Kiva Systems, North End Technologies and Vecna Technologies, said robotics companies are drawn to the university-rich New England area because of their unique need for highly educated employees from a multitude of disciplines.
While there are some great robots, the panelists said, they are not yet user-friendly enough to be viable as consumer products. Part of that is due to a lack of quality designed interfaces, something that will come from hiring people in disciplines other than just software and engineering.
"Here's a little thing for you engineers out there. Engineers make the suckiest interfaces ever," said Rod Brooks, the director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and the chief technology officer of iRobot.
After field soldiers had trouble figuring out how to control the PackBots iRobot initially made for the military, one iRobot engineer suggested that the robots needed better trained people to work them, not 19-year-old soldiers, according to Brooks.
"Now we ship (PackBots) with a game controller and have instant usage. Know your market user," he said.
iRobot's PackBot with a video game style-controller.
(Credit: iRobot)Robotics is an interdisciplinary industry, but also one that's wide open to new methods and business models, according to Debra Theobald, chief executive officer of Vecna Instustries, the maker of the BEAR (Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot).
Some robotics companies, like Vecna, are beginning to follow the software company model and sell services as well as products. Vecna , for example, customizes and implements the open-source JAUS robotic platform to fit the specific needs of customers. (Note: We've fixed that JAUS reference from an earlier misspelling.)
Since robotics is such an interdisciplinary field, its enhancement will largely be dependent on the breakthroughs in other tech industries. Specifically, the panelists said, it comes down to better sensors, renewable or rechargeable power sources and better real-time computational power.
Storage is no longer an issue, as the iPod has shown. Improved computational power will come as software developers learn to better capitalize on quad-core chips through parallel computing. Sensors are a technology that will have to come down in cost, as well as improve in performance in order for robots to improve.
"I was at DARPA. I saw Stanley. While that's very exciting what they don't tell you is that they made sure it would win," said Tom Ryden, CEO of North End Industries, who is also a former iRobot employee.
"It was a beautiful sunny day and there was no wind. What would have happened if it was raining? That car wouldn't have made it ten feet. Sensors are really the area that need a lot of improvement...We need sensors that can provide instant feedback and at an affordable cost," he said.
The BEAR (Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot) from Vecna Technologies.
(Credit: Candace Lombardi/CNET News.com)Nintendo is one example of a non-robotic company helping the robotic industry with its technology developments. Accelerometers such as those used in the Wii game controller have come down in price since their introduction into such a high volume product.
"We just need to be the benefactors of other industries that are going out and pushing the limits," said Theobald.
"Power is an issue, whether it's making renewable or rechargeable, that will be driven by other technologies. We see battery power improving in our computers and communication devices," she said.
With these improvements already on the way, and an anticipated need for more automation in manufacturing, robotics will go through a revolution similar to the one that took place with software, communications and the Internet. And it will happen just as the world begins to need more robots.
With Chinese wages growing by as much as 35 percent per year within the last few years in some regions and an expected growth in its older population, China will not be the cheap labor haven it is right now for U.S. companies 50 years from now, said Brooks.
"People think it may jump to Africa, but there are a lot of structural needs there, so I think it's going to go to robotics," he said.
iRobot will miss its third-quarter earnings goal, but overall 2007 financial expectations remain on track, the company said Wednesday.
The company expects to announce revenue of between $63 million and $64 million, resulting in a pretax loss of $1 million to $1.5 million in the third quarter, CEO Colin Angle said in a statement.
Part of the blame for the disappointing quarter was placed on delayed production of iRobot's new Roomba 500 vacuum series.
"... the production ramp up by our new contract manufacturer was slower than our initial targeted projections and consequently, revenue from delayed shipments will be recognized in the fourth quarter," he said.
Angle also attributed the loss to unanticipated legal expenses related to iRobot's lawsuits against former employee Jameel Ahed and his company Robotic FX. iRobot is suing Robotic FX and Ahed, individually, for alleged patent infringement and misappropriation of privileged information regarding iRobot's PackBot military robot.
iRobot plans to officially announce its third-quarter results on October 24.
