DARPA Gives iRobot Award for LANdroids

From iRobot Central this morning, the mother ship announced that it had received an award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the LANdroids program, and will develop a small mobile communications relay robot over several years. This could be another HUGE deal for iRobot -- imagine an array of small, cheap, ultra ruggedized, disposable Roombas (or Rovers) fanning out over a battlefield and setting up shop and within minutes enabling first-class communications. I see this as a BIG positive that could yield very significant sales in the future. Anybody remember the Imperial Probe Droid that landed on Hoth? (thx, ibn) UPDATE: The award is for $2.5 million. thx, byronangel.
Here is the award specs for LANdroids: Awardees are expected to get up to $1 million per year for up to three years for software development, and the robots are expected to cost about $100 each. So doesn't seem like necessarily the most lucrative thing ever, but I'm still thinking this could have LOTS of uses down the road and lead to bigger and better things. NOTE: Multiple awards are expected, so expect iRobot to have competition.

Here is the press release:

iRobot Receives Award to Develop Small Mobile Communications Relay Robot – Empowering Warfighters with Ad-Hoc Communications In Theater

BURLINGTON, Mass., March 3, 2008 – iRobot Corp. (NASDAQ: IRBT) today announced it has received an award under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) LANdroids program. Through this multi-year robotics research and development program, iRobot will develop a new portable communications relay robot that is small, inexpensive, intelligent and robust. The new effort takes advantage of the company's extensive experience in mobile robot design and production.
"More than 1,300 of iRobot’s field-tested and combat-proven PackBot robots have been deployed in theater delivering mission-critical support to warfighters around the globe,” said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot. “Research and development awards such as the DARPA LANdroids program enable us to continue driving innovation towards the next-generation of revolutionary mobile, tactical combat robots that deliver advanced situational awareness and help keep warfighters out of harm’s way.”
The goal of the DARPA LANdroids program is to develop technologies to enable the warfighter operating in dense urban environments to rapidly deploy and maintain a vital communications infrastructure. This infrastructure is composed of a system of multiple LANdroids mobile communications relay robots that form a reconfigurable communications backbone in support of operations.
During this program, iRobot will design and develop the LANdroids robot. This robot will be small enough that a single dismounted warfighter can carry multiple robots, inexpensive to the point of being disposable, robust enough to allow the warfighter to drop and throw them into position, and smart enough to autonomously detect and avoid obstacles while navigating in the urban environment.
DARPA is the central R&D organization for the Department of Defense (DoD) dedicated to sponsoring revolutionary, high-payoff research and development that maintains the technological superiority of the U.S. military.

Here are some pics of what a LANDROID might look like, and a grid showing how the nodes will interact, from the DARPA document (Click to enlarge):