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iRobot Scores $200 Million Army Deal; Could Include Former Foe's Machines

Last month, iRobot announced it would start marketing its former foe’s machines as its own. At the time, the company said the main market for the "Negotiator" ‘bots would be the country’s local police and fire departments, not the military. But on Tuesday, iRobot announced a new, $200 million contract with the U.S. Army — […]

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Negotiator1
Last month, iRobot announced it would start marketing its former foe's machines as its own. At the time, the company said the main market for the "Negotiator" 'bots would be the country's local police and fire departments, not the military. But on Tuesday, iRobot announced a new, $200 million contract with the U.S. Army -- one that lets the armed forces buy any machine in the company's inventory, including Negotiators.

Military deals are usually restricted to a particular product. But this contract enables the Army to "procure anything from the product line. That includes new products as they're developed," iRobot executive Joe Dyer tells DANGER ROOM. Does that include Negotiators? "Conceivably."

It's the latest development in a story that has "had more twists and turns than a John Grisham novel," as Dyer put it.

In 2007, iRobot sued one of its former engineers,
Jameel
Ahed, for allegedly stealing its trade secrets to build his Negotiator machine. It had generated enormous interest in the military robotics community, as a low-cost alternative to iRobot's PackBot. The
PackBot and the Negotiator went head-to-mechanical-head last summer to compete for the
Pentagon's biggest robotics contract to date, the so-called "xBot" contract. The Negotiator initally came out on top. And, for a time, Ahed secured the deal to supply the Army with up to 3,000 bomb-handling machines.

But the contract was stripped from Ahed, after he dumped incriminating evidence and blatantly BS'ed in court. The Army committed to buying as much as $285 million worth of PackBots. And the firm won the rights to the Negotiator's design.

Until yesterday, iRobot didn't have a legal vehicle to sell the things to the military. Now they do, under this $200 million "IDIQ"
(indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) contract.

As Xconomy notes, the company can also sell the Army its 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." Or the firm could just sell some yet-to-be-developed sensors for the PackBot. Or some more spare parts. Or some new robot altogether. The options are wide open.

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