Kirkland's CoroWare Moving its Robotics into Defense, Security Sectors

, a technology company on Kirkland’s Market Street, has hired an expert on security and artificial intelligence to help it move its robotics platforms into the security, defense and commercial sectors.

CoroWare, which to date has made WiFi-guided, CPU-driven, camera-equipped mobile robots primarily for academia, recently hired Dr. William R. Norris as a program development and business management consultant.

He most recently worked in security and military robotics applications for Deere and Co. in Illinois, and is a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division who has also worked at the U.S. Army’s Construction Engineering Research Lab and the National Center for Supercomputer Applications.

“CoroWare's experiences with the Robotic Operating System (ROS), mobile robot simulations, and custom robot development are greatly needed in these markets today," Norris said.

Norris has BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and holds an M.B.A from Duke University. He is veteran of the Desert Shield and Desert Storm campaigns in Iraq.

Andrew Zager, CoroWare’s robotics manager, said the company will likely focus first on the so-called 3D applications -- in situations that are "dull, dirty and dangerous."

“Where I see this going is in areas that really complement or enhance a person’s ability to work where it is dangerous,” he said. “When you are in an earthquake or a situation like Fukushima (the tsunami-damaged nuclear plant in Japan), you can broadcast video to experts anywhere in the world. You can broadcast information on what is going on and where it is going on. You can run a robot in India from (Kirkland).”

Because they’re equipped with a central processing unit, the company’s “CoroBots" are “capable of truly autonomous operation,” Zager said.

Most of CoroWare's robots so far have been smaller wheeled devices, sold to more than 80 academic and corporate researchers in more than 20 countries around the world.

“We’ve been helping the balance of payments in the U.S. in our own little way,” joked Lloyd Spencer, CoroWare CEO and owner. “Now we can start expanding into homeland security. It will take about a year, but we have time.”

CoroWare can make larger, tracked mobile robots that use the same open-platform software -- vehicles that can be used for surveillance, reconnaissance, search and rescue, threat assessment and detection of radiation or hidden devices, such as deadly IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. Appendages can also be added to do most any task, including industrial applications, such as moving goods in an intelligent way.

The robots are operated by keyboard or joystick, and send streaming video and other digital data back to the operator’s computer. Applications in the home are possible. “Your imagination is one of the main things limiting you,” said Spencer.

CoroWare also makes and sells a web-based advanced business video conferencing system and provides consulting services for technology companies such as Microsoft. “That’s really helped us stay alive in this economy, which has been a challenge,” Spencer noted.

For more information on CoroWare , visit its web site at www.coroware.com.

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Some of the information in this report came from a CoroWare press release.