ARCHIVE:: OCTOBER 2002 :: COVER STORY

Natural Intelligence
Helen Greiner Thinks Robots
Are Ready to Become
Part of the Household

By JOSEPH PEREIRA
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

When it was released in 1977, "Star Wars" inspired thousands of children to want to make movies. It inspired Helen Greiner to want to make robots.

Illustration: Igors Irbe

In particular, Ms. Greiner was fascinated by R2D2, the film's leading droid. But she was disappointed to discover that "there was a little guy inside" the machine controlling all the sounds and motion. So, she says, she set her sights on attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-with a goal of creating a real R2D2.

So far, R2D2 has proved elusive. But over the years, Ms. Greiner has become a respected name in robotics. Her company, iRobot, of Somerville, Mass., has made robots that do everything from logging oil-well data deep underground to surveying territory on a battlefield. And now she's focusing on an ambitious new project: bringing robots into the consumer market.

During the past decade, mobile robots have crept into society with barely a whir. Some deliver drugs and meals to patients in hospital rooms or mail in large office buildings. A handful give tours in science museums. But current robots are so expensive that consumers seldom see them. Ms. Greiner's military and industrial models range from $10,000 to more than $100,000.

Name: Helen Greiner Age: 36 Occupation: Roboticist Affiliation: iRobot "If we don't take robotics to the next level, we'll have a lot of explaining to do to our grandchildren."

Now Ms. Greiner thinks technology is getting cheap enough to bring robots into the home. In five years, she says, the consumer market for robots will increase nearly tenfold to about $100 million, with all sorts of mechanized creations roaming the home-ones that will take on the functions of maids and guard dogs, as well as remote-controlled surrogates that would watch out for an elderly parent or spy on the baby sitter. Within 10 years, she estimates, every U.S. home with a PC could have a robot as well. "If we don't take robotics to the next level, we'll have a lot of explaining to do to our grandchildren," she says.

Blazing a Trail

Ms. Greiner's experiments in household robotics have already begun to win recognition. Technology Review, an MIT publication, dubbed her an "Innovator for the Next Century" in late 1999. Last year International Data Group, a technology-research firm, presented her with a "DEMO God" award, for her pioneering efforts in consumer and industrial robotics. And despite the venture-capital drought, iRobot secured $7 million in capital last October.

"Helen is blazing a trail in the area of creating practical products for the average consumer," says Brian Friedman, managing director of Robotic Ventures, a venture-capital fund that invests primarily in artificial-intelligence companies.

Ms. Greiner's optimism about the future of consumer robotics is grounded in a number of scientific developments. Artificial intelligence-the computer technology that allows robots to make basic judgments and react to situations-has evolved rapidly in the past few years. Already, AI systems perform many behind-the-scenes tasks, such as aiding GPS navigation devices and helping your videogame system decide whether the game you're playing is too challenging or easy for you.

At the same time, the cost of components has been dropping since the mid-1990s, as computers have gotten smarter and the price of chips and sensors has fallen. Robotics parts that once cost $1,000 can now be bought for $10 off the shelf.

Ms. Greiner thinks she can combine those two trends to create cheap AI applications for the home. She and other researchers believe that robotics today is where computer science was in the 1970s-on the verge of an applications explosion.

Although government contracts make up a large part of iRobot's business currently, Ms. Greiner says, "there's no question that consumer products are soon going to be the main driver for us."

Playthings

But Ms. Greiner and other roboticists admit that it's one thing to custom-build costly robots to walk and talk in a controlled environment such as a museum-and another to mass-produce them using off-the-shelf chips, sensors and actuators that cost less than $10.

So, most of the robots to hit the consumer market so far have been toys, as are most of the designs on the drawing board right now. They can't do anything complicated, but they are a valuable place to test AI technology on a mass-produced scale.

Ms. Greiner has had her own experiences with robots in toyland. In the late 1990s, iRobot developed My Real Baby for Hasbro. The doll was programmed to get hungry, upset and happy; it could respond to a child's touch with the aid of sensors and a motor that moved the doll's skin, making it frown, smile and screw up its face. My Real Baby was released two years ago for $95.95. But sales were weak, and Hasbro pulled it off the market.

Still, the designers at iRobot consider My Real Baby a milestone. "For the first time, our robots [had] to interact with countless thousands of real people in ordinary homes, not graduate students interested in esoteric aspects of human psychology," says Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab and iRobot's co-founder.

One product in the wings at iRobot with mass-market promise is a remote-controlled 3-foot-high robot with audio and video capabilities. The wireless signal to the robot is relayed through your home Internet connection. Users logging onto the Web can move the machine around from thousands of miles away with a click of the mouse. The robot, which rolls around on eight wheels, can climb stairs and be guided from room to room by the remote user. Via a video camera installed in the robot, the Web user can see the people who are in the room with the robot, and carry on a conversation with them using the machine's audio speakers.

Its applications are many. A parent, away on business, could read a bedtime story to the children, chat with them and watch them get tucked into bed. The machine could also be deployed as a guard dog roaming the grounds of your home.

If put on the market today, the robot would carry a price tag of less than $2,000. So what's the holdup? Ms. Greiner says she's waiting for more homes to be hooked up to high-capacity Internet connections. In the meantime, a version of the robot is being tested for use in the office, where broadband connections are more common.

Better Than R2

Ms. Greiner's bent for science began to manifest itself early in life. As a child in Southampton, N.Y., she looked enviously at the construction and science toys her older brother played with, she says. By age 11, she had learned to program her TRS-80, one of the earliest home PCs, and was tinkering with ways to use it to control the movement of cars and other toys.

While at MIT in the 1980s, Ms. Greiner interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., where she helped design robots to do repairs in space. Part of her master's thesis was about efforts to make space robots grasp objects more easily. She also founded a company called California Cybernetics, making robots for manufacturing cars.

Kenneth Salisbury, a Stanford professor who was Ms. Greiner's adviser at MIT, recalls that she "was a talented researcher. But what struck me most about her was that she viewed robotics more as a business than some kind of abstract pursuit."

While Ms. Greiner conceeds that she has yet to create a smart, strong-willed robot like R2D2, she says, "in many ways we've come up with robots that are more capable. For instance, R2D2 couldn't go up stairs. We have Pacbots that not only can go up stairs, they can negotiate some really rugged terrain such as climbing rocks and crossing streams."

And just because she hasn't built that ideal robot, Ms. Greiner adds, "I can assure you, I'm not about to pack it up and go home yet."