VentureBeat

Roomba technologist moves to new robotic venture — Rodney Brooks, chief technology officer and co-founder at iRobot, is moving on to a new company called Heartland Robots, which will work to “rehumanize and revitalize manufacturing.”

Zombie networks surge ahead — Botnet networks of infected computers have tripled in size over the past three months, according to a tracker, the Shadowserver Foundation.

Newspapers giving business to ad startups — Faced with falling revenues, some of the biggest dailies, including the Chicago Tribune and LA Times, are going to startups like Creative Circle Advertising Solutions, Gumiyo and IQZone in hopes of winning back advertisers, according to VentureWire (sub. req’d).

There.com adds Mac and messaging support — There.com, a competitor to Second Life, now works with Macs. The company also added an instant messaging tool called ThereIM, which can communicate with others either within or outside of the virtual world, as well as control some aspects of the game.

Moses Joseph, VC at Anila Fund, convicted of fraud — A former general manager at Palo Alto’s Anila Fund, Moses Joseph, was convicted on Thursday of 22 felony counts, including theft and securities fraud. He faces up to 28 years in jail.

Avago Technologies files for $400M IPO — Singaporean chip maker Avago is planning an initial public offering in the U.S., although it has not decided on a share price or date. The company, which primarily makes LEDs and other lighting products, was once part of Agilent.

Codexis withdraws its IPO — Don’t get too excited about the IPO market. As Avago goes in, biocatalyst outfit Codexis is backing out, citing difficult market conditions. The company plans to make pharmaceuticals, biofuels and other products from its process.

NebuAd’s CEO hits the road – Controversial advertising startup NebuAd has lost its CEO, atop its many other problems.

Amphire merges with iTradeNetwork — Two supply chain startups that mainly work in food and hospitality, Amphire and iTradeNetwork, have merged their operations, taking on the latter’s name.

Mobile social network Buzzd teams up with Virgin Mobile — Buzzd will provide an ad-supported entertainment service to Virgin, combining user-generated content with material from Time Out Magazine and Flavorpill.

When in doubt, send in a robot. That’s an increasingly common solution for the military and police these days. iRobot, the maker of cave-busting and vacuum-cleaning robots, today is announcing the introduction of its iRobot Negotiator.

This low-cost tactical robot is designed to meet the basic reconnaissance needs of public safety professionals. The robot is a follow-on to the bigger iRobot PackBot 510. It costs less and is smaller, but can still negotiate through tough terrain such as stairs, as you can see in the photo.

The Negotiator is targeted at police departments, fire departments and domestic security experts. Depending on the customers’ needs, the robot can be outfitted with a civil response kit and a range of add-on accessories, enhancing its reconnaissance and chemical detection capabilities. It will be available in the fourth quarter.

To date, iRobot has delivered more than 1,600 PackBot robots and more than 2 million Roomba vacuum-cleaner robots. The company recently announced a line of robots that sniff out chemicals for the military and another line that can dive underwater for research purposes. Maybe the next robot they make will be a Jetsons-style household servant.

iRobot is developing a new series of military robots that detect chemicals. Under a $3.3 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army Research Office, iRobot will develop Chemical Robots (or ChemBots) that can maneuver through highly cluttered environments to find chemicals and perform other tasks.

Just last week, iRobot announced that it would build Seaglider undersea robots for oceanographic research and industrial purposes. The Bedford, Mass. company is best known for its Roomba vacuum-cleaning robots, which have sold more than two million units. But it also has a thriving business in selling robots to the military for battleground use. Its robots have been used to scout caves in Afghanistan and deal with bombs in Iraq.

The ChemBots will be soft, flexible and mobile so that they can identify and maneuver through smaller openings than their actual structural dimensions. iRobot is leading a team of experts that includes researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. The team will incorporate advances in chemistry, materials science, actuators (little motors) electronics, sensors and fabrication.

Helen Greiner, chairman of iRobot, said that the project will help intelligent robots move from the realm of science fiction to ever more advanced uses on the battlefield. DARPA originally approached iRobot to make robots dubbed PackBot for a tactical military robot program. More recently, DARPA asked iRobot to create a communications robot, dubbed a LANdroid. To date, iRobot has built more than 1,500 PackBots.

The robot beat is busy today. iRobot has sold more than two million Roomba vacuum cleaner robots. Now it’s launching an underwater robot.

The Bedford, Mass., company has licensed the rights to the Seaglider underwater vehicle from the University of Washington to commercialize the robots. The lightweight vessesl are energy efficient and able to travel for thousands of kilometers for months at a time if necessary. Researchers can attach measurement devices to the tiny submarines for different types of missions. The mini subs can, for instance, keep track of temperatures of the ocean depths for months at a time, according to the university. The robots send their data back to a computer using a satellite radio link.

The Seaglider was previously funded by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation as early as 1995. More than 70 Seagliders have been built during that time.

This may seem like a nutty business to get into, considering there aren’t as many people who want to plumb the ocean depths as there are people who want a vacuum-cleaning robot. But it’s consistent with iRobot’s range of business, which includes the high-volume vacuum robots as well as the low-volume robots that the military uses to search dangerous areas in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you can charge enough for the robots, it seems, then it’s not a bad business. Last month, iRobot announced it got a $22 million order from the U.S. Army to build 200 more robots, with spare parts. Eventually, iRobot realizes, the robot technology for the most sophisticated robots can migrate downstream to the least sophisticated ones, such as the next vacuum robots.

iRobots own history comes from licensing technology from military research, said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot. The robots are designed to make measurements underwater at a fraction of the cost of traditional research vehicles. It’s not clear just yet when the robots will be available and how much they will cost.