Ceilidh

Michael Zey
futurist3000@aol.com

This new breed of worker is a robot that goes about its tasks, well, automatically. And, for hundreds of thousands of U.S. consumers who own the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, the centuries-old-vision of automating what was once back-breaking labor has become real, and even a bit fun.

Roomba, the saucer-shaped, ankle-high machine that circles the floor, bounces off walls and slips easily under furniture, is the most consumer-friendly manifestation of iRobot, the emerging market leader in the field of low-cost robotics.

"We are no longer selling to early adopters. We are selling to people who want to get their vacuuming done," says iRobot founder and president, Helen Greiner, an engineer-turned-robotics-entrepreneur. "Besides being robot geeks, we are very practical people."

The age of automatic appliances is at hand, said 36-year-old Greiner, who started iRobot with a fellow student just out of college at age 22.

We are entering a time when robots are made responsible for a myriad no-hassle maintenance functions. The era of robotic personal assistants is upon us.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg in where we are going with this technology," Greiner said in an interview at the sidelines of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in San Diego this week.

Far from home, iRobot's PackBot has been put to work by the U.S. Army for battlefield reconnaissance and search-and-destroy missions involving explosives or ordnance disposal in the military theaters of Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq (news - web sites).

The rugged PackBot is built to operate in adverse conditions such as navigating steep terrain, exploring mountain caves, falling off cliffs and fording streams. It functions as a miniature transport vehicle that carries cameras and other detection equipment, keeping the soldiers who control them out of harm's way.

Several dozen of the robots are in active service, Greiner said, but she declined comment on how many may have been wounded or killed in action.


LOVE AT FIRST COMMAND

Greiner, a mechanical and computer engineering undergraduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites), says she has been obsessed with building robots since age 11, when she fell in love with R2-D2, the "Star Wars" film character.
Similarly, many owners of the Roomba vacuum initially want it for its cleaning features, but eventually form a deeper attachment. Some see them as pets and give them names, with the most popular being "Rosie," Greiner says.

She looks forward to the day when users can order their vacuums to clean a specific room, or to shut themselves off.

"Hey Roomba, go clean up that mess!" she says during a demonstration of the current model that relies on a TV-like-remote control. "Bad robot," she envisions being able to shout at her Roomba, just as if she were scolding a pet.

Roomba's success has inspired a host of competitors from traditional cleaning appliance makers such as Electrolux of Sweden and Karcher of Germany. These vacuums rely on more costly sonar and laser technologies and start at $1,200 to $1,800 and up, but are still not as well rated for cleaning as Roomba's infrared models, which cost between $200 and $300. Samsung Electronics of Korea is looking to ship its own rival.

The low-cost robotics that power the Roomba have made the vacuum popular with hackers and academic researchers who break open the case in order to tinker with its inner-workings. In effect, the Roomba has become a development platform for hobbyists looking to create new robotics applications.

IRobot boasts making 80 percent of the robots ever built in the United States. Other popular examples of robots include human-like action figures from Honda and Sony in Japan, and the Seqway, a personal transport vehicle with robotic features.
"There will be multibillion-dollar companies in the robotics space. I believe we can become one of them. I also believe we are going to be the leading one," Greiner said.

She offers few specifics about the finances of iRobot, a privately held company ripe for a public stock offering.

"We did over $50 million in business last year," made up mostly of the "hundreds of thousands of units" of Roomba, plus sales of robots for academic research and the U.S. military, Greiner says.

Founded in 1990, the Burlington, Massachusetts-based iRobot financed itself through custom projects until 1998, when it began taking outside investment. It has received $28 million in such financing to date. Greiner declined to comment about the timing of any possible public stock offering.