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Some slightly related from Technorati and Google.

[Features.engadget.com] Interview: Helen Greiner, Chairman and Cofounder of iRobot, Corp ...: Government and Industrial Robotics and Consumer Robotics are our division names.  iRobot’s PackBot is the new standard in unmanned reconnaissance and bomb disposal. It is a lightweight, rugged robot that can be carried and deployed by a single soldier. PackBot offers unprecedented mobility and durability—it can be thrown into a building through a window, climb stairs, drop 20 feet and still function properly. The robot was originally developed under the Tactical Mobile Robotics program, which was sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).  Designed as a versatile payload carrier, iRobot has added reconnaissance payloads with pan/tilt head and night vision, Chem/gas/rad payloads, and a bomb disposal (EOD) payloads.

[Jcwinnie.biz] After Gutenberg: Another site, the Distributed Intelligence Laboratory in the Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee, also is engaged in research in cooperative robotics and distributed artificial intelligence. What is important to note is that while multiple entities (such as robots or agents) could “integrate perception, reasoning, and action to perform cooperative tasks under circumstances that are insufficiently known in advance, and dynamically changing during task execution”, they need not be identical. Rather different entities or groups could have distinct purposes as occurs among insects.

[Futuresalon.org] Future Salon : Business Mechanisms to Accelerate Change: Keynote speaker: Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of the board of iRobot. You may have heard of their most popular product, Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner. They've sold a million units. [Congrats ACC, it's rare to see a woman as the opening keynote at a technology conference.]

 [Gizmodo.com] Gizmodo Search Results: Oh hey, new Roomba! The Roomba Discovery is being pre-sold "exclusively [to] current Roomba owners" at the moment, but includes some much-needed improvements, like a self-charging Home Base which the Roomba will head to, automatically, when done cleaning (finally!), an "intense cleaning" feature (presumably detecting areas that need multiple passes, and a dust bin that's 3 times larger. Sounds lik... [MORE]

 [Anti-com.com] anti-com.com : multimedia for your brain: Its mission maybe to find people in a burning building, or to help neutralize biological, chemical or nuclear contaminants. The Deployer releases a group of SwarmBots, which spread out through the building, moving down hallways and into other rooms. The Deployer monitors their progress, collects data from the Swarm, builds maps, and directs the Swarm toward unexplored areas. When the SwarmBots find an item of interest, the Deployer can navigate through the Swarm and deliver a payload, such as medical supplies.

Reflected tags on Technorati: Blog, Irobot, Roomba, Personal Technology, Gadgets, Cleaning, Gadgetism.org