iRobot continues surge on HUGE volume

iRobot powered higher again today on massive volume -- 831,000 shares! -- nearly 4 percent of the total shares outstanding on continued speculation that iRobot will win the competition for a contract worth up to 3,000 robots on Sept. 14. (Of course, iRobot could win only a portion and still see major upside.) I think there is substantial evidence that iRobot will win the contract and has indeed been preparing for this moment for a while.
1) The company has doubled PackBot production capacity and has a significant "surge" capacity should they get an urgent order.
2) Several of the PackBot variants, including the PackBot w/Fido bomb sniffing technology, the PackBot 510 EOD and the PackBot 510 w/Engineer Kit are perfect for the job. Check out the new videos at the links for each showing them peering into vehicles with their long arms, sniffing for bombs!
3) iRobot has already announced that they have 85 percent of the contracts they need for the year to meet their guidance, and they are expecting additional contracts, and mentioned the 510 in particular. No promises of course, and orders are "lumpy," but this has the potential for some serious boosts to iRobot over the long run. (Remember that the most profitable part of any contract is not the initial sale but the back-end servicing which goes on for years and years...)

Note that 3,000 robots is roughly $450 million if they were all Fido PackBots. Of course, iRobot could somehow get shut out, or get only a portion, but that's not where the buzz is. And it's a LOUD buzz.