Women at the Helm
of Robotics Industry
and Research
I recently had a very enjoyable
conversation with Helen Greiner (Figure
3) who is the Co-founder and Chairman
of the Board of iRobot Corporation,
maker of the popular Roomba and many
other robotic products for consumers
and the military. At first glance, you
might not identify Helen as the
co-founder of a large technical company.
You’d be wrong if you felt that this petite
and soft-spoken woman would head up
the housecleaning Roomba and Scooba
robots division and leave the Government
and Industrial Robots Division of iRobot
to the other co-founder, Colin Angle.
Greiner overcame her basic shyness
to now speak before thousands of
industrial and government specialists
and start new divisions of their
company. She leaves Angle the tasks of
marketing the highly-successful Roomba
and the consumer half of their corporation. She has always said, “Leaders don’t
always look like you think they should.”
Under that reserved persona is an
industrial leader who is second to none.
What was the spark that set her off
on this highly successful path? As a
young girl who was born in London, she
grew up on Long Island, NY with an
early interest in science, mathematics,
and engineering. Her mother was a science and math teacher who undoubtedly had a great influence on her, as did
her father who had a major in chemistry
in college and was a businessman.
From the age of five, she enjoyed a
FIGURE 3. Helen Greiner of iRobot.
80 SERVO 03.2008
daily chess match with her father, but
had an even greater interest in her first
RadioShack TRS-80 that she quickly
learned how to program. To her, the
computer was not just another toy with
which to play a few games on and
then set it aside for lack of interest.
Programming this early personal computer was a challenge to her; it gave
her the ability to create something new.
To many of us in the field of robotics, a robot in a story or movie was what
sparked our first interest in these unique
mechanisms we all love. Greiner’s
epiphany was seeing “Star Wars” at the
age of 11 and being transfixed by
R2-D2. It was a bit disconcerting to her
to find out that the little robot star of
the film was actually controlled by a
diminutive man (Kenny Baker) inside the
robot. She knew in her heart that real
robots were not too far in the future
and certainly hoped that she may,
someday, be a part of that future. Little
did she realize that she would be one of
the driving forces behind one of the
most successful robot companies.
In high school, she found it quite
natural to do repairs on her Volvo station
wagon. Many girls still find technical
things geeky, but Helen saw no good
reason why women cannot major in
mechanical engineering and similar fields
in college. The salaries are certainly much
higher than most other fields, “but,” she
says, ‘it’s so creative and interesting.”
Planning for college, she knew that
engineering and computer science
were the courses for her. As she told
me, the proximity to MIT was not only
a plus, but the courses at this
renowned school offered a unique
hands-on atmosphere. She remembered watching the televised competitions between MIT students that were
basically given a bag of parts and told
to construct a robot or similar mechanical device to collect as many ping pong
balls as possible in a given time. “This is
the school for me,” she thought.
She received a BS in Mechanical
Engineering and a Master’s in
Computer Science, but one of the most
important gains from MIT was a close
association with Rodney Brooks and
Colin Angle at MIT’s Artificial
Intelligence Lab, both of whom would
be instrumental in the future formation
of IS Robotics, later called iRobot.
After graduation, she worked a
few years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Labs (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. She later
formed California Cybernetics to commercialize some of the unique and useful technical ideas that were developed
at JPL but not used in industry at the
time, and also to perform government-sponsored research in robotics.
When IS Robotics came into being,
the main interest was walking robots
and artificial creatures. IS Robotics, Inc.,
was formed in 1990 and changed to IS
Robotics Corporation in 1994, then
finally to iRobot Corporation in 2000. In
the early IS Robotics days, DARPA and
the Office of Naval Research were major
customers and ISR developed unique
robots to detect and retrieve mines and
unexploded bombs, swim like fish, and
even crawl up walls. They had an early
contract with the toy company, Hasbro
to develop interactive robots as toys.
With over two million Roomba
floor sweeping robots and many
Scooba floor washing robots sold by
iRobot, Greiner, Angle, and the rest of
their team do not dare rely on their
many laurels, but are actively pursuing
government and industry contracts.
iRobot has brought in Joe Dyer as
President of the Government and
Industrial Robots Division to work with
Helen in this very lucrative market. They
have delivered over 1,200 Packbot
Tactical Mobile Robots to the military
to assist in many facets of on-going military operations around the world.
The Packbot can more accurately
be described as a kit as users can configure it in many ways, according to the
particular mission or task. The Packbot
Scout, Explorer, and EOD (explosive
ordinance disposal) or IED (those deadly improvised explosive devices) configurations are the more popular uses and
have found to be extremely valuable to
urban SWAT teams and other law
enforcement agencies. There is even a
variation called ‘Fido’ with bomb sniffing technology for a reasonable $150K.
As iRobot’s board chair, Greiner
must oversee all divisions of the company and balance the basic structures
within. iRobot has also developed
strategic alliances with John Deere, the
Clorox Company (Scooba’s floor-wash-
