Working on next generation of robot warriors

BURLINGTON -- Thomas Ryden hoisted a 42-pound PackBot reconnaissance robot over his shoulder and hurled it down a slope on the lawn of iRobot Corp. headquarters yesterday afternoon. The tank-like chassis flipped over twice, bounced high off the ground, and landed on its rubber treads. Then it continued rolling forward.

Ryden, director of sales and marketing for iRobot's government and industrial robotics division, was demonstrating the durability of the company's Army robot. Over the past two and a half years, the remote-controlled PackBot has been deployed to search for survivors in the World Trade Center wreckage, for live ammunition in Afghanistan caves, and for explosives under abandoned vehicles in Iraq.

But those missions may be only the beginning for Army robotics, and for a company with roots at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- if they can reduce the robot's weight.

iRobot yesterday signed a $32 million contract to develop a follow-on to the PackBot: a next-generation robot designated by the Army as the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or SUGV. In its production phase, from about 2010 to 2020, the program could be worth up to $150 million to iRobot, based on current Army projections.

First, though, company engineers have to make their robots smaller and lighter so they are easier to carry and better able to slip into areas that are inaccessible or too dangerous for soldiers to enter.

''We're putting the PackBot on the Atkins diet," said Robert A. Bell, iRobot's executive director for the Army's Future Combat Systems program. ''We've got to get it under 30 pounds."

As part of the Pentagon's effort to transform the military to a leaner, more high-tech force able to respond swiftly to low-intensity and unconventional threats, the Army wants to develop new organizational building blocks called ''units of action."

These brigade-sized units will field manned, unmanned, and robotic weapons networked together to communicate in real time with one another and with other US military and allied forces.

iRobot was tapped by the program's general managers, Boeing Co. and Science Applications International Corp.

It beat out about a half dozen competitors, including Foster-Miller Inc. of Waltham, to win the SUGV development contract.

In all, about two dozen contractors will be involved in the future combat systems program and, under the Army's ''fast track" timetable, their development and demonstration work is scheduled to be completed by 2008.

Initially, the Army plans to order about 3,600 of the small SUGVs, with production starting in 2010.

Land systems like the SUGVs could prove to be the most critical robots for the US military, said Marcus Corbin, senior analyst with the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank.

''The unmanned aircraft, like the Predator, got a lot of attention in Afghanistan," Corbin said. ''But, to me, they won't be as important as the ground vehicles. There are few countries that can challenge our Air Force. But anyone can challenge our ground forces in urban warfare. It's a type of combat with a lot of casualties on both sides, and the only easy answer may be robots. If we continue to occupy foreign countries that don't like us very much, the role of these robots will be key."

In addition to weight reduction, the other technical challenge for the SUGV designers will be lengthening its battery life. The PackBot, which sells for $50,000 to $108,000, depending on the model, and can travel up to 15 miles an hour, has a battery life of about two hours -- insufficient for the kind of extended missions planners envision.

The new military contract will help privately held iRobot, a spinout from MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that also markets the Roomba robotic vaccum cleaner, build up its government business alongside its consumer and industrial businesses. Helen Greiner, the company's cofounder and chairman, said revenues from the military made up less than half of iRobot's $55 million in revenue last year.

Joe Dyer, a retired Navy vice admiral who is vice president and general manager of iRobot's government and industrial robotics division, said the company has delivered about two dozen of the advanced PackBot models, equipped with extension arms, to US troops in Iraq. One was destroyed detonating an explosive device.

''We had one blown up last week," Dyer said yesterday. ''And it was cause for celebration. Because a robot was sent in harm's way and saved the life of an American soldier."

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.