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Deus ex machina
On the battlefield and in the living room, Burlington’s iRobot is revolutionizing robotics and positioning itself at the forefront of a new and potentially lucrative industry
BY MIKE MILIARD

In the lobby of Burlington’s iRobot, amid the sort of pretty but prosaic wall hangings that typify the sterile decorative sense of the modern American corporation, there’s one objet d’art that stands out. A riot of remnants — jagged shards of metal, tangled wires, obliterated circuit boards — lies framed and under glass, arranged with a precision that suggests an abstract sculptor’s compositional brio. Beneath the organized chaos hangs a placard:

PACKBOT #129

DIED IN THE LINE OF DUTY

IRAQ — APRIL 8, 2004

The robot’s remains are enshrined with such reverence because its valorous service — defusing an explosive device on a dusty roadside — almost certainly saved an American soldier’s life. "Getting a robot back, blown up, is one of the more powerful experiences I’ve lived through," says iRobot co-founder and CEO Colin Angle. "Nothing could make it so clear that we have just saved lives. Somebody’s son is still alive. Some parent didn’t just get a call."

Sacrificing themselves in combat hot zones isn’t all these bantam, mechanized grunts have been doing over the past several years. Just 55 pounds of tire treads and cameras and grasping claws, the remote-operated PackBots are responsive workers. They’re sturdy, too, and smart — their strong but lightweight chassis protect delicate circuitry carrying complex algorithms that approximate neural processes. After September 11, one traversed the hulking rubble at Ground Zero, looking in vain for survivors. In 2002, dozens were deployed to eastern Afghanistan, where they trundled their way around rough terrain, scouting darkened caves in search of weaponry. In Iraq, their mission includes reconnaissance, payload delivery, and ordnance disposal. And the scores of PackBots scouring the sands of the Middle East and Central Asia are only the forward guard of what promises to be a sea change in the way robots are used on the battlefield — indeed, in the way wars are fought.

Meanwhile, PackBot’s cheaper, meeker cousin, the plucky Roomba, is changing the way houses are cleaned. Available to the masses at stores like Sears and Home Depot, these autonomous, disk-shaped vacuum cleaners have made housework painless. They’ll scour a room or a whole floor for dust and dirt until it’s spotless — and you don’t even need to be at home.

Different as they are, both machines are emblematic of a new way of thinking about robots. iRobot’s two seemingly disparate divisions, Government & Industrial and Consumer, actually exist symbiotically, feeding off each other both technologically and economically. And this synergy has propelled the company to the forefront of an emerging new industry — one that’s finding some of its greatest early successes right here in Massachusetts. This 160-person organization is revolutionizing robots, taking them out of the labs and putting them into real-life situations. On the battlefield and in the living room, iRobot is building the future.

The iRobot office is a sprawling expanse of cubicles, labyrinthine hallways, and cluttered desks. (A testament to the robot-industry boom, the place is about to expand, swallowing the space of the business next door.) Dry-erase boards line the walls, every inch covered over with explosive scrawl. The conference room doubles as a robot show room, each wall lined with fanciful mechanized creatures. Every so often, a PackBot rolls down the hall.

iRobot was founded in 1990 by MIT graduates Angle (whose undergraduate thesis is now housed at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum) and Helen Greiner, plus MIT professor Rodney Brooks, who directs the university’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. "After my master’s thesis, Rod was thinking about starting a company," says Angle. "I had minored in business and was really hoping for some kind of entrepreneurial something. So I jumped at the chance." He was barely into his 20s at the time. "This is the only job I’ve done besides being a summer-camp counselor."

At that time, founding a robotics company was an unusual business move. Theretofore, robots existed primarily for research purposes — or merely for their public-relations value, their "wow" factor. As an example of the latter, Angle cites Asimo, Honda’s one-of-a-kind, perambulating humanoid robot, which has been in constant development for almost 20 years. "It really is marvelous," he says. "But it’s wildly impractical. It exists to show the world how cool and how strong the Honda engineering capacity is. But it’s not particularly relevant to the robotics industry, because it’s not a robot that’s going to cost less than the value it directly delivers. There will only ever be a few of these robots. And that’s true of humanoid robots in general. They’re great for academia; they’re great hobby projects. They’re amazingly cool. But they’re nearly useless for everything else except entertainment."

But Angle had a feeling that robots, if made simpler, cheaper, and more practical, could sell — and could even be lucrative. Fifteen years on, he seems to be proving himself right: between government contracts and sales of the Roomba, last year iRobot brought in around $50 million in revenue. "Our mission statement is [to] build cool stuff, deliver great product, have fun, make money, and change the world," he says. "It’s about making perhaps mundane but wildly useful robots whose value far exceeds the cost."

Five years into the 21st century, other companies are following iRobot’s lead — and the Boston area is quietly becoming something of an epicenter of the nascent robotics industry. Waltham’s Foster-Miller, for instance, is about to ship 18 of its TALON robots — which can be outfitted with machine guns or 50-caliber rifles — off to Iraq. (iRobot has not weaponized the PackBot — at least, not yet.)

The Boston area is the perfect place to flourish. "MIT is a fantastic incubator for high-tech," says Angle. "Foster-Miller and iRobot are both MIT spin-off companies. With the types of high-tech resources that are in the Boston area, coupled with MIT to provide us with fantastic students, you’ve got the makings of something. But the industry is still very young, and I think there’s going to be a lot of growth. The game is still going on, but, gee, it’s good to be in Boston."

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