Tuesday, September 2, 2008

IRobot’s Rodney Brooks leaves, launches Heartland Robotics

By Mass High Tech Staff

Co-founder and chief technology officer Rodney Brooks has stepped down from iRobot Corp., according to the company.

Brooks will start a new company called Heartland Robotics, which iRobot (Nasdaq: IRBT) said would not be a competitor.
 
Brooks will stay on as a member of iRobot’s board of directors, the company said. He will also form a new technical advisory committee for the robotics company and serve as its chairman.

The company said it will begin a search for a new CTO in 2009.

Last year, Brooks stepped down as director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. 

Brooks founded iRobot in 1990 with Colin Angle and Helen Grenier, who studied under him at MIT. Over the course of five funding rounds, iRobot drew in $28 million in venture money, with its last round of $13 million in 2003. Since then the company has been funded through product sales and military development contracts. In 2005, the company filed for its initial public offering, which raised $72 million.

Earlier today, the company reported it had landed a contract worth up to $200 million to supply the U.S. Army’s Robotic Systems Joint Project Office with military robots, such as its PackBot, as well as spare parts, training and repair services over the next five years.

Bedford-based iRobot reported a 2007 net income of $9.1 million on revenue of $249.1 million.