Automation Alley, a Troy, MI-based business association, has opened a defense office at the Macomb-Oakland University INCubator, in Sterling Heights, MI, the group announced today. The office will provide assistance local companies that are looking to work with the military. One  project includes creating an industrial capabilities database to identify new military suppliers. Companies interested in being added to the database can visit www.dmsms-tardec-army.com.

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Bruce Legge is on a mission to infiltrate the Detroit area’s defense industry and report back to his iRobot overlords in Bedford, MA. For a lone flesh-and-blood vanguard of a future invasion of metallic warriors, he’s not doing too badly.

Legge is a card-carrying member of the Michigan Homeland Security Consortium and is planning events for the Great Lakes chapter of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). It’s all part of a “hearts-and-minds” strategy for iRobot  (NASDAQ:IRBT), which wants to become an integral part of the already established robotics landscape in Southeast Michigan.

But right now, Legge is still an army of one.

When I first spoke with Legge in July 2009, he had just established the Troy, MI, office of iRobot and was getting ready to ink some military contracts and start hiring employees. As of today, none of that has happened. Why? Well, when we talked again in late February, he started to tell me why, and then stopped himself.

I asked whether it was one of those situations where he’d have to shoot me if he told me.

No, nothing that “top secret,” the retired U.S. Navy submarine officer says. The company is simply waiting for some government funding to come through. Later, Legge indicated that the funding might come from the Recovery Act.

Meanwhile, there is still a great deal of ground-preparing for iRobot to do in the Detroit area. In a region where once-thriving industrial robotics companies are either changing or dying, iRobot practically stands alone as one that has experience in both the mass consumer and defense markets. That makes it one to watch, and perhaps emulate.

Robotics companies that once counted solely on the auto industry are learning, like many other auto suppliers, to diversify or die. iRobot comes to Detroit already diversified. We’ve all heard of the Roomba, the company’s robotic vacuum cleaner, which recently topped 5 million units sold. For the consumer product, Massachusetts is as fine a home as any. But for its “government robot,” Legge says, the Detroit area “is where the customer is.”

In 2007, when the University of Michigan launched its Ground Robotics Reliability Center, Legge “could really sense that the center of gravity was coming to this area for unmanned vehicles.” More recently the Robotic Systems Joint Progress Office (RSJPO) moved from Huntsville, AL, to the U.S. Army Tank-automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM) in Warren, MI, leaving little doubt that … Next Page »

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Science Applications International Corporation (NYSE: SAI) said today it recently got a contract to help the U.S. Army counter booby traps known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Under the contract, which could be worth as much as $41 million, SAIC will provide information and analysis used to help counter IEDs in war zones.

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For most of the “clean energy” startups Xconomy covers, the big question is whether the company’s prototype—be it a wind turbine, a wood-chips-to-ethanol reactor, or an anaerobic cow-manure digester—will still work efficiently when scaled up to industrial proportions. But for IST Energy in Waltham, MA, the question was how to scale down a waste gasification plant until it fit inside a standard cargo container, a space roughly 30 feet by 8 feet by 8.5 feet.

That’s exactly what the startup, a new subsidiary of engineering and defense contractor InfoSciTex, has now accomplished. Tomorrow the company is expected to launch its “Green Energy Machine” or GEM waste-to-energy conversion system, a unit that fits on the back of a truck and can shred three tons of trash per day—including paper, plastic, wood, food, and agricultural waste—and turn it into a synthetic gas mixture which can then be used to fuel electric generators or building heating systems.

In essence, it’s a mobile version of the factory-sized gasification pilot plant that Boston cleantech startup Ze-gen has built in New Bedford, MA (see my August 2007 story)—except that IST Energy uses a different kind of vessel to gasify waste, a “stratified downdraft gasifier,” in place of Ze-gen’s giant vat of molten iron. The unit takes up as much space as about three cars, and can be backed up to a building’s loading dock, or wherever its dumpsters are stowed.

The company built the Green Energy Machine in response to a request from the U.S. Army, which wants to cut down on the volume of trash, mostly from field kitchens, that it has to convoy across Iraq and Afghanistan. And IST Energy CEO and president Stu Haber says he expects the military to become one the prime customers for the machines, which will be ready for delivery this summer. But he says the GEM is also ideal for commercial and municipal facilities such as industrial plants, hospitals, universities, prisons, sports stadiums, and city waste transfer stations—”really, anybody who generates at least two tons of waste a day, which covers a huge market.” (For comparison, the town of Lincoln, MA, generates 6 tons of solid waste per day, and the Prudential Center development in downtown Boston generates 11 tons, according to Haber.)

While the machine isn’t cheap—IST will charge $850,000 per unit—its major selling point is that it can greatly reduce customers’ waste disposal and energy costs. About 95 percent of the material fed into the GEM is converted into gas, leaving an ash residue that is much cheaper to transport and takes up much less landfill space. (It also won’t emit methane and other greenhouse gases, as most landfilled materials do.) And not only does the machine power itself, but the extra gas produced can run a 120-kilowatt electrical generator or a 240-kilowatt-equivalent gas furnace. (For comparison, a typical standby home generator produces 12 kilowatts, while commercial emergency generators have outputs of 20 to 150 kilowatts.)

InfoSciTex didn’t start out in the clean energy or waste-disposal business. The company is working on an eclectic range of engineering and R&D projects in health, aerospace, software, energy, and defense, including an advanced insect repellent, a feeding bottle for pre-term infants, and an air-activated blanket for hypothermia victims. Many of its projects are a legacy of its 2005 acquisition of engineering staff and federally funded Small Business Innovation Research programs from Waltham’s Foster-Miller (which retained its robotics, advanced materials, and some other divisions and became a subsidiary of defense contractor QinetiQ).

Foster-Miller had been working on a small-scale gasification scheme, and in early 2005 it responded to an Army request for proposals for waste-management solutions for its overseas operations. “We not only outlined a solution but told them we could also provide electricity and gas heat,” says Haber. The Army accepted that proposal and several others, and the project—which became the core of IST Energy—won DoD funding to the tune of $2.5 million.

The company used the money to develop a lab prototype, then raised another $2 million in angel funding to build the first production unit, which is now parked outside the InfoSciTex building on Waltham’s Bear Hill Road (see photo).

I got a look at the unit last week. From watching a technician wriggle around the equipment inside the container, it seemed clear that one the biggest challenges for the company was … Next Page »

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Bedford, MA-based iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT), which makes small robots for home and military applications, announced today that it has secured six grants totaling $4.4 million under the Pentagon’s Small Business Innovative Research program. The grants, which are aimed at making iRobot’s Packbot and small unmanned ground vehicle (SUGV) robots easier to use and at developing ways to coordinate ground robots and unmanned aerial vehicles, are coming from the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Army Research Office.

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Lexington, MA-based defense and aerospace giant BAE Systems said today that the U.S. Army has placed a $66 million order for thermal weapon sights used on rifles, machine guns, and mounted weapons. BAE’s thermal sights include sophisticated electronic infrared sensors that allow soldiers to spot targets even if they’re obscured by darkness, foliage, or camouflage. Part of a five-year indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, the order increases BAE Systems’ total thermal weapon sight contracts to more than $400 million.

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Bedford, MA-based iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT) said today that the U.S. Army’s Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) will pay the company $3.75 million to build and deliver two “Warrior 700″ robots (pictured here.)

The Warrior, which has been under development for more than two years, is designed to serve as the big brother of iRobot’s popular Packbot device, which is already widely used for bomb-sniffing and other hazardous situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. With a longer chassis and a much greater payload capacity, the Warrior will be capable of explosives disposal, firefighting, clearing buildings, and even extracting casualties from the battlefield, the company says. Special “payload positioning” software allows the robot to rotate its four treads and change its center of gravity to carry loads across difficult terrain.

“We are confident that the iRobot Warrior will secure a strong foothold within infantry, first responders and combat engineers,” Joe Dyer, president of iRobot’s government and industrial robots division, said in a statement. The company plans to start selling production units of the Warrior in 2009.

TARDEC, at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren, MI, is the Army’s laboratory for advanced military automotive technology. It develops manned and unmanned ground systems for combat support.

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The orders keep rolling in for iRobot. The Bedford, MA-based robot maker announced today that it has received two more orders from the U.S. Army involving its PackBot 510. The first is a $5.8 million order for spare parts and accessories for the robot, which soldiers use to detect roadside bombs and other hazards. The second is a $13.3 million order to deliver 165 additional PackBots to the Army by the end of next April. The orders are part of the existing $286 million “xBot” contract awarded to iRobot last fall during a dramatic court battle with rival Robotic FX, which we covered extensively.

The announcement comes on the heels of iRobot’s recent entry into the underwater robot market, and the news that co-founder Rod Brooks (an MIT roboticist and Xconomist) has stepped down as chief technology officer. Earlier this month, we also reported that iRobot has won a separate five-year, $200 million Army contract to deliver PackBots and other robots, spare parts, training, and repair services.

iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT) has delivered more than 1,800 PackBots to date—and it shows no signs of slowing. “The U.S. Army continues to show its support for our PackBot line of robots and the immediate need for unmanned ground vehicles to assist soldiers,” said Joe Dyer, president of iRobot’s government and industrial robots division, in a statement.

Dyer added that iRobot is now capable of delivering 100 PackBots per month to the U.S. Armed Forces. Now if it could just invent a robot that could stop us from going to war in the first place…

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Bedford, MA-based iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT) said today that the U.S. Army has awarded it a contract for military robots, spare parts, training, and repair services that could bring the company up to $200 million over the next 5 years and give the Army more flexibility to order robots for new missions.

The Army uses iRobot’s Packbot robots in Iraq to remotely investigate hazardous situations and environments. It obtains those robots under two separate contracts: the $286 million “Xbot” contract, which was awarded to iRobot last fall after a dramatic legal battle with now-defunct rival Robotic FX, and another so-called “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity” contract that ran out in May 2008. The new contract, issued by the Army’s Robotic Systems Joint Project Office, replaces the expired one, but is even more indefinite, covering Packbots and other types of robot products and services that the Army may require in the future.

According to iRobot chairman Helen Greiner, that could include next-generation “small unmanned ground vehicles” or SUGVs, miniature surveillance bots that iRobot is developing in partnership with the Army’s Future Combat Systems program.

“What distinguishes the two contracts is that the Xbot contract was for a specific user community, the infantry, who wanted to remove ordnance more quickly and came up with specific requirements for that,” Greiner says. “Whereas this is more of an omnibus contract that leaves room open for different types of robots from iRobot. There is an ongoing war effort, and there are new applications coming up for robots in the field. This leaves it open so that if the military needs items for different user communities, we can expand our product offerings under this contract as the Army requires.”

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NSF Grant Supports Study of Next Generation Internet

A project to re-think the Internet from the ground up has received $12 million in funding from the National Science Foundation. The Associated Press reports that the money will go toward developing prototypes for the Global Environment for Network Innovations, a testbed to try out new networking ideas. Actual construction of GENI would cost about $350 million.

Social Networking May Stimulate Science

A new social network site, Labmeeting, is designed to let scientists easily upload their papers and lab notes to be shared with other members of their research team. TechCrunch tells us the site was started by Harvard graduate Mark Kaganovich with $500,000 in seed funding and opened last week to anyone with a college email account. His hope is to spur researchers to talk with each other more.

California Sues EPA Over Greenhouse Gases

The state of California is suing the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming the EPA has ignored its duty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from ships, aircraft, and construction and agricultural machinery. Reuters reports that state Attorney General Jerry Brown says he tried to work with the EPA but was met with only weak responses.

Is the FCC Ignoring Metered Broadband?

The Federal Communications Commission has been cracking down on Comcast for slowing down connections of customers using peer-to-peer networks to share files. But a columnist at GigaOm argues that that’s just a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from the lack of FCC action on proposals to charge extra to customers who use more than a certain amount of broadband each month. Om Malik worries such a policy will reduce use of services from YouTube to Facebook.

British Hacker to Face Trial in U.S.

A British computer hacker who rummaged through military computer systems looking for evidence of space aliens will be extradited to the United States to stand trial. Gary McKinnon is charged with accessing computer networks at the Pentagon, the Army, the Navy, and NASA in 2001 and 2002, New Scientist reports. If found guilty, he could face up to 70 years in prison.

California Sticking to Paper Ballots, Hand Counting

Given the fears about possible flaws and abuses with electronic voting machines, the California Secretary of State has announced the state will be relying on paper ballots that can be optically scanned and recounted by hand this election season. Debra Bowen says she opted for the paper ballots because they preserve the original vote, CNET News reports. Bowen commissioned a study last year that showed that electronic voting can be tampered with or have programming mistakes that alter results.

Air Force Developing Anti-Laser Protections

Anticipating a day when enemy combatants will be armed with lasers capable of melting holes in its equipment and weapons, the U.S. Air Force is looking for technology that will protect its weapons. Among the possibilities listed in a request for proposals is a spray-on coating to deflect laser energy or a broadband reflector that can be embedded in a weapon’s skin, Wired tells us. Such technologies, the Air Force suggests, could also protect commercial airliners from terrorists with lasers.

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Smaller Carbon Bootprint Could Save Soldiers’ Lives, Says Army

The Army is looking for ways to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, with a goal of reducing them by 30 percent by 2015. Reuters reports that steps to reduce the so-called “carbon bootprint” would not only reduce the Army’s contribution to global warming, it might also reduce risks to soldiers. Soldiers are at risk from roadside bombs and other attacks while they’re escorting supply trucks through the countryside; reducing the number of trucks transporting fuel means cutting the number of soldiers at risk.

Scientists Worry that Back-and-Forth Confuses Public About Warming

Some climatologists are concerned that the natural progress of science, in which studies report new results, then are challenged by even newer studies, could be confusing the public about global warming. Part of the problem, according to the New York Times, is that it’s difficult to clearly communicate scientific uncertainty through the media. Some experts say scientists have to be more careful about what they say to the public.

Interest Groups Oppose Smut-free Network

A plan by the Federal Communications Commission to create a free, national wireless broadband service is being criticized by 22 groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Booksellers Association, and People for the American Way. Ars Technica reports that the groups are opposed to the FCC’s plan to filter from this network images and text that could be construed as pornographic or obscene. The groups contend the filtering plan is too broad and would violate the First Amendment.

Cheaper Batteries Could Boost Hybrids

A researcher at the University of Texas at Austin has come up with a cheaper way to manufacture lithium iron phosphate batteries. Because iron is less expensive than the cobalt used in standard lithium ion batteries, such devices have the potential to be cheaper, which is important to makers of hybrid vehicles. Technology Review tells us that Arumugam Manthiram figured out he could produce lithium iron phosphate more quickly and at lower temperatures by using microwaves, potentially cutting the manufacturing costs of such batteries.

Internet Can Be Upgraded Privately, FCC Member Says

The Federal Communications Commission has been looking for ways to deal with the problem of peer-to-peer file sharing eating up much of the Internet’s bandwidth. But Robert McDowell, a member of the FCC, argues in an essay in the Washington Post that the government should leave the issue to unregulated groups of engineers. Those groups, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force, have done a good job of solving previous issues that threatened the viability of the Net, he says.

Brooking Institution Calls for Infrastructure Strategy

The United States needs a national strategy for promoting infrastructure, whether that means bridges or broadband, says a group formed by the Brookings Institution. The Institution has released six policy papers covering the group’s findings. Among their discussions: making better use of the wireless spectrum, bringing broadband to underserved communities, and coping with traffic congestion on the roads.

Startup Offers Home Energy Monitoring

A Boulder, CO, company, Tendril Networks, is developing a system to tell homeowners how much energy they are using. CNET News says the devices work with utilities’ usage monitoring systems and will eventually be able to network to other devices in the home. The aim is to not only tell consumers how much energy they are using in real-time, but how they can make adjustments to save money.

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iRobot, based in Bedford, MA, announced it has received orders totaling some $22 million from the U.S. Army. The orders are from two separate contracts. The first ($16 million) calls for iRobot to deliver more than 200 robots to the infantry by October 31, while the second ($6.3 million) is for another set of military bots to be delivered by the end of September.

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Mine-detecting robots, Delorean-driving trade-secret-swiping engineers, dumpster-diving detectives. Ring any bells? When last we wrote about the iRobot-Robotic FX case, just before Christmas, Burlington, MA-based iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT) was riding off into the sunset with a $286 million Army contract, a bunch of assets handed over by its vanquished Alsip, IL-based rival, and a promise that the firm’s founder, Jameel Ahed, wouldn’t set foot in the industry for five years.

We had been following the twists and turns of the case—and believe me, there were many—ever since last August, when iRobot filed suit against Robotic FX in two separate courts charging, essentially, that the Illinois firm’s Negotiator robot was a knock-off of iRobot’s PackBot and that Ahed—a former iRobot employee—had stolen key elements of the military robot’s design. To be perfectly honest, by the time the cases were settled in iRobot’s favor by consent decree, Bob, Wade, and I were all ready for a break from the espionage and legal wrangling—and the thousands of pages of court filings we had to pore through to piece together a story about which, understandably, few sources were willing to talk on the record.

But just because we had our fill of the story doesn’t mean it’s not still a page-turner. And for those of you looking to turn a more manageable number of pages than we did, the latest issue of Wired has a recap that’s well worth a gander. (And I’m not just saying that because its writer, Noah Shachtman, graciously credits the daily reporters who covered the story at the time, including Bob and Wade.)

Many of the details are familiar (and I’m not just saying that because in his gracious mention of Xconomy Shachtman included the guys but not me), but entertaining nonetheless. Shachtman recounts, for example, how Ahed was going head-to-head with his former employer in the “xBot” competition—the prize for which was the biggest-ever Army robot contract—while at the same time shredding evidence and playing laptop hide-and-seeks with the U.S. marshals sent to help enforce a temporary restraining order. (Despite the pending litigation, the Army would go on to initially award the contract to Robotic FX, which had bid just $6.1 million less than iRobot in the reverse-auction phase of the xBot process.)

Shachtman also sheds new light on a couple of the questions that nagged at us throughout the case: Why the Army was putting so many of its eggs in such a small, sketchy-seeming basket (Robotic FX was really just a handful of people working out of a basement under Ahed’s dad’s dental practice), and why Ahed thought he’d get away with appropriating iRobot designs and trashing evidence.

Shachtman explains that some military officials, including Ed Ward, the Marine colonel who oversaw the xBot competition, had long been fans of the Negotiator—particularly because it cost only a fraction of what iRobot was charging for the PackBot. He writes: “In meetings with robot makers, military officials liked to bring up the Negotiator—and its price. ‘They absolutely used it as a club against us,’ a former iRobot employee says. When the xBot competition came along, that club turned into a sledgehammer. The xBot specs essentially asked for a smaller, lighter, stripped-down PackBot—in other words, a Negotiator. The reverse auction put a premium on low cost. It was as if the specs had been written for Ahed.”

And Shachtman was able to track down (though not name) the defense contractor that had promised to buy Robotic FX and manufacture the thousands of robots it would take to fulfill the xBot contract if Ahed’s firm won it. (The firm teamed up with Robotic FX after what from Shachtman’s description sounds like were some less-than-subtle hints from Ward.) Though the contractor knew that iRobot would accuse Robotic FX of patent infringement, “We were prepared to spend hundreds of thousands to defend ourselves,” an executive for the firm told Shachtman.

As the dust was settling, iRobot said it spent some $2.9 million to litigate and settle its cases against Robotic FX. So in the end, it seems, smaller price tags lost all around.

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All the fuss over iRobot’s Packbot military robot over the past year, including the company’s successful patent-infringement and misappropriation-of-trade-secrets actions against Packbot-clone-maker Robotic FX, may have left you with the impression that the Packbot is iRobot’s key product for the defense community. In fact, the U.S. Army is just as excited, if not more enthused, about the Packbot’s little brother, called SUGV (for Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle).

As part of its Future Combat Systems program, the Army has a $51 million contract with iRobot to develop the robot, with field delivery originally expected around 2012. But SUGV testing has been going so well, according to various defense publications, that the Army has reportedly been considering accelerating the program, in the hope of getting the 30-pound, ruggedized, semi-autonomous, camera-wielding, backpackable robot into the field by 2010.

And now that’s official. IRobot announced yesterday that the Army has accelerated its testing schedule and wants the company to deliver 25 SUGV test units by April, with evaluation to begin the following month. Lighter, more agile, and more maneuverable than the Packbot, SUGV has proved popular among soldiers testing prototypes because it can venture into tight or dark spaces to search for explosives, among other talents.

IRobot said it expects the Army to decide on whether to authorize large-scale production of the SUGV by September.

“We continue to receive a tremendous amount of positive feedback from soldiers in theater that iRobot PackBot is an essential tool for ensuring mission readiness and improving situational awareness to keep soldiers out of harm’s way,” Joseph Dyer, president of iRobot’s government and industrial robots division and a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral, said in the company’s announcement. “We see this acceleration as clear evidence of the U.S. Army’s recognition of the critical role robots play in arming soldiers with the best intelligence and combat options to provide clear advantage on the battlefield.”

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Never let it be said that Xconomy doesn’t look out for its readers. Yesterday you asked us to look into an intriguing posting on a government website about what looked to be a new $200 million contract for iRobot—marked with a date suspiciously close to when the Army set aside the $279.9 million “xBot” contract that had been awarded to rival Robotic FX in September. Today, we have the skinny.

A spokesperson for Burlington, MA-based iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT), Nancy Dussault Smith, says that the new contract is totally unrelated to the xBot contract, and to the ongoing legal battle between iRobot and Robotic FX. (For the latest on that case, check out this and this.) What’s more, Smith was quick to point out, the new $200 million contract has not been issued yet.

Indeed, what the government posted is actually a noticed of its intent to issue a contract worth up to $200 million for spare parts, repair services, training, replacement systems, and so forth relating to iRobot technology that’s already being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that contract will not be issued until an existing contract hits its ceiling of roughly $64 million, Smith says. Some $19 million is left on that contract, which was originally awarded in June, 2006.

IRobot opened up 5.4 percent today, at $15.52, perhaps on chatter about the new contract.

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The Defense Department’s Small Business Technology Transfer program has awarded $750,000 to Watertown-based Boston Micromachines to create portable optical communications devices from deformable micromirrors, according to an article today in Laser Focus World. The company, working with partners at Boston University, hopes to build small, low-power devices that soldiers can use in open air to communicate covertly and avoid friendly-fire incidents.

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