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In the 1980s, thousands of robots began replacing factory workers in the U.S. auto industry. In the 1990s, U.S. manufacturing jobs went overseas in droves. In 2010, some optimists believe, Massachusetts’ billion-dollar robotics industry is on the cusp of bringing those jobs back home.
In a locked-down laboratory upstairs from a Cambodian restaurant in Central Square, Cambridge, venture-backed Heartland is stealthily building a robot designed to work hand-in-hand with humans — boosting productivity for small and midsize manufacturers, where human flexibility and ingenuity are required for fast ramp-up and complex tasks.
“There are a lot of elements of the low-cost offshore manufacturing model that are not quite as compelling as they used to be,” CEO Scott Eckert said in an interview in his office, while mysterious whirring and grinding emanated from beyond a frosted window behind him. “One of our goals is to bring that back to the U.S.”
Heartland’s founder and CTO is Rodney Brooks. Brooks co-founded iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT), whose 2008 revenue composed nearly a third of the $942 million in robotics sales by Massachusetts companies, measured in a 2009 study by the trade group Mass. Technology Leadership Council. Backed with $12 million from Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos and Waltham VC firm Charles River Ventures, Heartland is pre-revenue. It now has about 24 employees and plans to continue hiring.
Harvard University last year won a $435,000 National Science Foundation grant to develop inexpensive robots able to grasp “arbitrary objects.” Not far away, in another Cambridge robotics lab, Barrett Technology Inc. is working on a “portable, user-friendly, cost-effective robotic arm... (applicable) across a broad range of products and manufacturers,” according to the abstract from a $100,000 federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant the company received last year.
San Jose, Calif.-based Adept Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: ADEP) is among the largest U.S. makers of robots currently used in manufacturing. Right now, robots are isolated from workers for safety reasons, said Adept president John Dulchino. If robots could work safely with humans, that would open up industries that can’t afford the long ramp-up time of a traditional robotic assembly line, he said. That’s already beginning to happen in warehouse settings, he said, through companies including Adept subsidiary MobileRobots, an Amherst, N.H., firm that Adept acquired in June.
“We feel like we’re at the cusp of something big,” Dulchino said. “The market is transitioning from historical robot methods to this more flexible, more aware model of robotics.”
But Dulchino said he doubts that will bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Citing smart-manufacturing industries like cell-phone assembly that have departed in the last decade, he said: “Having a new generation of smarter, more aware robots isn’t going to bring that industry back.”
Instead, he said, the progress is more likely to open up markets with offshore manufacturers — a significant boost for the robotics industry.
“Everybody believes that we’re very close to a tipping point, where robotics is going to surge, and we’re all looking for that,” said Barrett CEO Bill Townsend.
Townsend founded Barrett in 1993. The privately held company is profitable, now employs about 15 people, and does under $10 million in annual sales with a customer list that includes General Motors Co., Townsend said.
“Heartland has been very quiet about what they’re doing,” he said. “We would like to know.”
The U.S. government also is showing interest. A new SBIR program posted last month seeks robotics innovation efforts very similar to Heartland’s and Barrett’s, for medical, military and agricultural applications.
Brooks and Eckert demurred from revealing exactly what Heartland is building. Reports on robotics blogs have focused on Obrero, a robot prototype Brooks, an MIT professor, and Ph.D. candidate Eduardo Torres-Jara worked on in the university’s robotics lab. Unlike existing robots, Obrero’s grip is capable of reacting to tactile feedback, explained Torres-Jara, now a professor in Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s new robotics engineering program. He likened the machine’s capability to a human, feeling for the TV remote control.
Eckert said Obrero is only one of Heartland’s component technologies. He declined to specify others, but another collaboration between Brooks and an MIT robotics Ph.D., dubbed Domo, is a likely candidate. In comments before an engineering convention last year, Brooks said Domo is part of a robotics revolution he compared to the PC revolution, which brought human workers into direct contact with computers. “We’ve just seen an amazing abundance of new ways of using computers, unthought of 30 years ago because ordinary people get to touch them all the time,” Brooks said. “What if ordinary people could touch robots?”
In a locked-down laboratory upstairs from a Cambodian restaurant in Central Square, Cambridge, venture-backed Heartland is stealthily building a robot designed to work hand-in-hand with humans — boosting productivity for small and midsize manufacturers, where human flexibility and ingenuity are required for fast ramp-up and complex tasks.
“There are a lot of elements of the low-cost offshore manufacturing model that are not quite as compelling as they used to be,” CEO Scott Eckert said in an interview in his office, while mysterious whirring and grinding emanated from beyond a frosted window behind him. “One of our goals is to bring that back to the U.S.”
Heartland’s founder and CTO is Rodney Brooks. Brooks co-founded iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT), whose 2008 revenue composed nearly a third of the $942 million in robotics sales by Massachusetts companies, measured in a 2009 study by the trade group Mass. Technology Leadership Council. Backed with $12 million from Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos and Waltham VC firm Charles River Ventures, Heartland is pre-revenue. It now has about 24 employees and plans to continue hiring.
Harvard University last year won a $435,000 National Science Foundation grant to develop inexpensive robots able to grasp “arbitrary objects.” Not far away, in another Cambridge robotics lab, Barrett Technology Inc. is working on a “portable, user-friendly, cost-effective robotic arm... (applicable) across a broad range of products and manufacturers,” according to the abstract from a $100,000 federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant the company received last year.
San Jose, Calif.-based Adept Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: ADEP) is among the largest U.S. makers of robots currently used in manufacturing. Right now, robots are isolated from workers for safety reasons, said Adept president John Dulchino. If robots could work safely with humans, that would open up industries that can’t afford the long ramp-up time of a traditional robotic assembly line, he said. That’s already beginning to happen in warehouse settings, he said, through companies including Adept subsidiary MobileRobots, an Amherst, N.H., firm that Adept acquired in June.
“We feel like we’re at the cusp of something big,” Dulchino said. “The market is transitioning from historical robot methods to this more flexible, more aware model of robotics.”
But Dulchino said he doubts that will bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Citing smart-manufacturing industries like cell-phone assembly that have departed in the last decade, he said: “Having a new generation of smarter, more aware robots isn’t going to bring that industry back.”
Instead, he said, the progress is more likely to open up markets with offshore manufacturers — a significant boost for the robotics industry.
“Everybody believes that we’re very close to a tipping point, where robotics is going to surge, and we’re all looking for that,” said Barrett CEO Bill Townsend.
Townsend founded Barrett in 1993. The privately held company is profitable, now employs about 15 people, and does under $10 million in annual sales with a customer list that includes General Motors Co., Townsend said.
“Heartland has been very quiet about what they’re doing,” he said. “We would like to know.”
The U.S. government also is showing interest. A new SBIR program posted last month seeks robotics innovation efforts very similar to Heartland’s and Barrett’s, for medical, military and agricultural applications.
Brooks and Eckert demurred from revealing exactly what Heartland is building. Reports on robotics blogs have focused on Obrero, a robot prototype Brooks, an MIT professor, and Ph.D. candidate Eduardo Torres-Jara worked on in the university’s robotics lab. Unlike existing robots, Obrero’s grip is capable of reacting to tactile feedback, explained Torres-Jara, now a professor in Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s new robotics engineering program. He likened the machine’s capability to a human, feeling for the TV remote control.
Eckert said Obrero is only one of Heartland’s component technologies. He declined to specify others, but another collaboration between Brooks and an MIT robotics Ph.D., dubbed Domo, is a likely candidate. In comments before an engineering convention last year, Brooks said Domo is part of a robotics revolution he compared to the PC revolution, which brought human workers into direct contact with computers. “We’ve just seen an amazing abundance of new ways of using computers, unthought of 30 years ago because ordinary people get to touch them all the time,” Brooks said. “What if ordinary people could touch robots?”
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