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"   RELATED STORIES \u2022 UDPATE: Inside Story of the SWORDS Armed Robot &amp;quot;Pullout&amp;quot;     PITTSBURGH \u2014 We already knew that iRobot CEO Colin Angle was running the only successful business in the home robotics game, so it was fitting that he closed his keynote at the RoboBusiness Conference here today by asking if there&amp;#039;s really a robot industry in the first place: &amp;quot;Are we sure we&amp;#039;re not just an adjunct to another industry?&amp;quot;  After all, Disney stopped buying its animatronic actors years ago, and started building them. What&amp;#039;s to stop retail chains from adding a robotics division, or an upright vacuum-maker from hiring its own team of roboticists? This is not, we can assume, what audience wanted to hear. This conference, whose founder and biggest sponsor is iRobot, is a place for deals to be made, and an industry to be cultivated. But as the public continues to devour news of Asimo&amp;#039;s latest sprint or stumble, and schools across the country vie for scholarships in national robotics competitions, the industry itself is barely out of the incubator. For proof, take a walk through the RoboBusiness exhibit hall. One presenter claimed that his company&amp;#039;s booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was bigger than all of the booths here combined. We believe him. The roughly 40 exhibitors are clustered together in the center of a sprawling room. Microsoft&amp;#039;s booth is the size of a cubicle, and many companies show up with little more than brochures for the impressive-looking robots that couldn&amp;#039;t make the trip. iRobot&amp;#039;s booth is the biggest by far, with the new, bright orange ConnectR video-conferencing bot circling your feet, and the Looj tossing leaves out of a makeshift gutter. I search around for the Warrior, a bulked-up Packbot that&amp;#039;s being tested for use as an armed robot. But it isn&amp;#039;t even here, one rep explains, because it&amp;#039;s too heavy. This is how fragile the robotics industry is: Last year, three armed ground bots were deployed to Iraq. But the remote-operated SWORDS units were almost immediately pulled off the battlefield, before firing a single shot at the enemy. Here at the conference, the Army&amp;#039;s Program Executive Officer for Ground Forces, Kevin Fahey, was asked what happened to SWORDS. After all, no specific reason for the 11th-hour withdrawal ever came from the military or its contractors at Foster-Miller. Fahey&amp;#039;s answer was vague, but he confirmed that the robots never opened fire when they weren&amp;#039;t supposed to. His understanding is that &amp;quot;the gun started moving when it was not intended to move.&amp;quot; In other words, the SWORDS swung around in the wrong direction, and the plug got pulled fast. No humans were hurt, but as Fahey pointed out, &amp;quot;once you&amp;#039;ve done something that&amp;#039;s really bad, it can take 10 or 20 years to try it again.&amp;quot; So SWORDS was yanked because it made people nervous. Meanwhile, the V-22 Osprey program has killed 30 people during test flights, but the tiltrotor aircraft is currently in active service. Fahey expects another armed ground bot to be deployed within the year, but the point has been made: For robots, there is no margin for error. Suffice it to say, this is not a welcoming environment for startups. During a roundtable discussion at CES in January, Angle was the first to point out that one company\u2014his\u2014doesn&amp;#039;t make an industry. iRobot has thrived because it sells what are possibly the only useful consumer robots in the world, as well as unmanned vehicles for use by the military. But for anyone looking to enter the industry, Angle described the experience as &amp;quot;nightmarish.&amp;quot;  The risk for new companies is incredibly high, since it involves either competing with highly entrenched contractors for defense money\u2014including global powerhouses like Boeing and Lockheed Martin\u2014or finding a consumer niche that&amp;#039;s been waiting for a robot&amp;#039;s firm hand. &amp;quot;The killer app that will drive the industry hasn&amp;#039;t yet emerged,&amp;quot; Angle said during his keynote here. Although 5 percent of last year&amp;#039;s new vacuum sales were iRobot products, and millions of the maid bots have been sold to date, even the Roomba doesn&amp;#039;t constitute a killer app. Angle isn&amp;#039;t sure what that app might be, but he suspects that as today&amp;#039;s increasingly robo-friendly populations ages, the demand for domestic bots will take off. &amp;quot;When I&amp;#039;m old, I want robots to make my bed and clean my house.&amp;quot; Angle said. &amp;quot;I want to live in my own house, until death comes and jumps on me in my sleep.&amp;quot; If Angle is right, then robotics could indeed become a healthy, viable industry right when we most need it. That is, if it can survive for another 30 years. \u2014Erik Sofge  RELATED STORIES \u2022 UDPATE: Inside Story of the SWORDS Armed Robot &amp;quot;Pullout&amp;quot;   \u2022 ANALYSIS: The Paradox of the Unprepared Robot Industry  \u2022 PODCAST: Inside Pentagon&amp;#039;s Armed Robot Pullout in Iraq  \u2022 EARLIER: Segway Unveils Sideways Mover at RoboBusiness  \u2022 PLUS: All of PM&amp;#039;s Robotics Coverage in One Place!   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a2777/4258103/>