@LARGE
Ready to run withr-Business
Are we ready to interact with remote-controlled robots in our homes and offices? The team developing the iRobot-LE is banking on it. And, before this week is out, they may have the buzz to back them up.
By Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe Staff, 11/13/2000
Colin Angle isn't a boastful or Barnum-esque guy by nature. Which makes it pretty surprising when he says that his company's newest product, debuting this week at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas, is going to do for the consumer robotics industry what the Apple II did for personal computing, and what the Palm did for hand-held computing.
''We think this is perhaps the most disruptive and important step in the introduction of robotics,'' says Angle, the CEO of iRobot in Somerville. ''Just as we've had e-businesses in the last few years that couldn't have existed without the Internet, we think we'll see r-businesses start to emerge - robot-enabled businesses.''
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The product that iRobot is unveiling this week is the iRobot-LE, a $4,995 device that looks like the spawn of a suitcase and a giraffe, as imagined by George Lucas. It has eight cog-like wheels that are maneuverable enough to allow the iRobot to climb stairs, a long neck that can be raised and lowered, and a bulbous head packed with sonar, speakers, a microphone, and a video camera.
The iRobot, pictured at left, is entirely wireless, and it can be controlled over the Internet. From any Net-connected computer in the world, you can see what the iRobot sees, talk to and listen to people who are in the room with the iRobot, and maneuver around.
Some of the initial uses for the iRobot are slightly creepy: keeping an eye on the housekeeper while you're at work, or reading a bedtime story to the kids when you're on the road. (There's a red light on the iRobot that informs those in the room when they're being watched.)
Others sound useful but a bit cold: Angle suggested that my interview with him and my tour of iRobot's offices could have been conducted by robot, without my having to leave my desk. He said that when iRobot employees have attended meetings ''as'' robots, they've felt like more active participants than if they'd just checked in by speakerphone: people turn to face you when they address you, and you can indicate who you're listening to by turning the robot's head.
Angle compares the iRobot to the Apple II because he believes it will be the first successful robot to find a place in the home. It's like the Palm in that it's very friendly to outside hardware and software developers. The iRobot's open-source operating system will enable anyone to write new software for it. Plenty of ports will enable third-party developers to create hardware that plugs into the iRobot, like a vacuum cleaner or a display screen.
''We want to get other people's creativity involved in this project, as well as our own,'' explains Helen Greiner, iRobot's president. She's standing in a mock-up of a living room that iRobot built in its offices as a proving ground for its latest product. ''They'll come up with all kinds of applications we haven't thought of.''
''Someone will be able to write an application that detects unusual sounds or motion and then e-mails you or pages you,'' says Jim Allard, iRobot's chief software engineer. ''I have two daughters, and I know they'd love for the iRobot to be able to play hide-and-seek. Someone else will write an application that turns it into a videographer for parties. It's always a little clumsy to walk in with a camera and start recording.''
Things get really interesting, though, when you think about having service providers ''possess'' the iRobot (that's Angle's term) to deliver services from far away. What if the iRobot were operated by a professional videographer who didn't have to leave his home or bring his own equipment to chronicle your party? What if a plumber in Alabama could double his hourly rate by remotely fixing a leaky sink in Manhattan, but the repair would only cost the customer half as much as he'd pay locally?
Just as mental labor has been exported throughout the rest of the world with the Internet - doctors in India already transcribe dictation from US doctors accurately and inexpensively - physical labor could get globalized, eventually, with r-business. Your furnace repairman could work from Finland. The iRobot-LE is a first step in that direction.
How soon will that future arrive? There's not always a big difference in timing between being a successful first mover and being the first to get mowed down by the rough realities of the market. The company could find that it doesn't have the depth of consumer marketing talent to turn the iRobot-LE into a must-have product. (Executives acknowledge that they're outgunned by a company like Sony, which launched a major global marketing campaign to sell 45,000 of its Aibo robotic dogs at $2,500 a pop.)
Or they could find they have a hit on their hands but aren't able to manufacture enough units to meet demand. As it is now, Angle says the first batch of iRobot-LEs, scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 2001, will number only 300. But he says he ''would be disappointed if we didn't sell several thousand of these next year.''
The company has been around for 10 years now, profitably building research robots for university robotics labs and reconnaissance bots for the military. The company was founded by Greiner and Angle, both of whom received master's degrees from the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, along with their mentor, Rodney Brooks, who now directs the lab and serves as iRobot's chairman and chief technology officer. (You may remember Brooks from the 1997 Errol Morris documentary ''Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control,'' the title of which came from a paper Brooks wrote.) Angle says iRobot's 75 full-time robotics researchers represent the largest group of researchers in the world working on consumer robotics.
A product development partnership with Hasbro yielded iRobot's first toy, My Real Baby, which hit the shelves earlier this month. An infusion of capital from First Albany and Acer Computer helped iRobot fund the development of the iRobot-LE, the first product it has developed on its own - without an outside client or a development partner like Hasbro.
So does Angle have the next Palm on his hands, or the next Newton? I think it's about six months too early to tell, but I do expect that the iRobot-LE will have attained a pretty high buzz factor after Comdex and the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Greiner predicts that in a decade or so, robots will be as common in American homes as the PC is today. If that trend is, in fact, beginning - and it has had plenty of false starts - then iRobot is in a great position to be an important player.
Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Wired and Fast Company magazines.