Robots on the move

Mass. takes lead in industry with new firms, investors, research

In a greenhouse in Groton, Clara Vu is handing empty plastic pots to a pair of squat, two-wheeled robots. The robots hold onto the pots, ferry them to the far end of the small greenhouse, and then put them down, creating a nice, evenly spaced grid.

This is the sort of work that happens in thousands of commercial nurseries around the country: arranging potted plants in a field or greenhouse and then moving them to give them more room to grow. Often, the physically demanding work is done by migrant workers, some of whom are undocumented - which presents an enforcement risk to the growers that employ them. The company that Vu helped start, Harvest Automation Inc., thinks that a new kind of rugged robot could be the solution, doing the same work for about 65 percent of the cost.

A greenhouse is a pretty good metaphor for what's happening in the robotics industry in Massachusetts and southern New Hamp shire. All of the right elements have blended perfectly over the past two decades or so to cultivate a vibrant cluster of companies, investors, and academic research labs.

It's a great example of Massachusetts taking the lead in a new technology area - something that has become rare since the extinction of the minicomputer industry. "People are moving to Massachusetts from elsewhere because of the robotics companies. This is seen as a place where robotics is happening," says Rodney Brooks, the dean of robotics research at MIT and a cofounder of iRobot Corp., the Bedford maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner.

What's happening is that a new generation of companies - call them the spawn of iRobot - are popping up, working on robots that can navigate the real world and manipulate objects like plastic pots filled with dirt. All four founders of Harvest Automation worked at iRobot, and left in 2006. Two former iRobot employees started North End Technologies LLC, a Nashua start-up that's trying to merge robots with videoconferencing.

Even Brooks, who cofounded iRobot in 1990 with two former MIT students, is cooking up something new: a stealthy Cambridge start-up called Heartland Robotics whose website (until it was taken down last week) said it was seeking to combine robots "and the extraordinary intelligence of the workforce to re-humanize and revitalize American manufacturing." (Brooks isn't yet talking about the company, though an MIT employee told me last week that he's taking a leave of absence to get it off the ground.)

Another key piece of what's happening is that venture capitalists are beginning to put money into robotics companies, which have traditionally had to piece together government contracts and research grants. Waltham's Castile Ventures has been the primary investor in North End Technologies, which has raised $4 million, and Bain Capital Ventures in Boston has led the investment in Kiva Systems Inc., a Woburn maker of robotic warehouse workers.

When Brooks started iRobot 18 years ago, along with Helen Greiner and Colin Angle, robotics was not an industry in Massachusetts, although the state did have a few "industrial automation" companies like Varian Semiconductor Equipment, which focused on things like making microchip production more efficient. Robots were hulking, expensive machines that worked largely in industrial environments, where they were bolted to the floor. The idea of robots roving around the living room was still something that existed only in "Jetsons" reruns.

The company started off with big visions: building insect-like robots to explore far-off planets, and others that would work and play closer to home. Research contracts from NASA helped the company survive its infancy, even as its first few products geared to consumers tanked.

When I visited the company in November 2000, it had just launched a baby doll with Hasbro that had changing facial expressions and an ability to "learn" to talk over time and was getting ready to launch a $5,000 product called the iRobot-LE, which had an on-board camera and microphone, to allow workers to attend a meeting in a robotic form or inspect a far-off facility without traveling.

The robot-assisted videoconferencing was ahead of its time, but iRobot is coming back to the idea this year with a new product called ConnectR - just drive it into your child's room to read her a bed-time story while you're away - and North End Technologies seems to be pursuing the same market. The company hasn't announced the price tag, but it's expected to be about $500.

What made the robotics sector take root in this region? Academic research and government funding were a big part, as they were in seeding the data networking and biotech industries. But the unbelievable tenacity of the entrepreneur is essential, too: Brooks, Greiner, and Angle just refused to give up on their vision of building a company that would do for robots what Apple did for personal computing.

iRobot went public in 2005. It brought in about $250 million in revenue last year, though consistent profitability has been elusive. The company logged a net loss of $4.5 million in the most recent quarter.

But the company, which also produces reconnaissance and bomb-disposal robots for the military, is the pillar of the robotics sector in New England. "They've taken some of the mystique out of robotics for investors," says Ajay Agarwal, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures who serves on the board of Kiva. "If one or two other robotics companies are successful, I think that will make robotics much more mainstream for VCs, in terms of an area where they're willing to invest."

Harvest has begun making the rounds, talking both to firms that have made robotics investments and others, like Matrix Partners in Waltham, that have expressed some interest. Harvest will be demonstrating its bots next month at a horticultural industry trade show in New Jersey; chief executive Charles Grinnell says that some potential customers have already made equity investments in the company, and with sufficient additional funding, the company could have a product on the market within two years.

The future's looking bright for the sector as a whole, too. The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, a trade association, has created a robotics sub-group, though meetings seem to be few and far between.

Governor Deval Patrick visited iRobot last month, and noted that the state's robotics companies are bringing in nearly $1 billion in revenues, collectively. Worcester Polytechnic Institute started an undergraduate program in robotics engineering in 2006, and students at Olin College in Needham actively work in the field, too.

Brooks says that when he was born, in the 1950s, "there were very few computers in the world, and today there are more microprocessors than there are people. Now, it almost seems plausible that in my lifetime, the number of robots could also exceed the number of people."

And many of them, it seems, will have been designed and produced in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.