It seems as if the type of person who helps dream up a great product or launch a successful company is never satisfied. Commonly, the same people bounce from startup to startup, dedicating their time and resources to ever-changing, innovative projects. (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/8YPbBH)Charles Grinnell, formerly of DEKA Research and Development Corp., the company that created the Segway, and Joseph Jones, formerly of iRobot, the company that created the Roomba, have come together to work towards developing a robot for use in wholesaler greenhouses and nurseries. In their new venture, Harvest Automation Inc., Grinnell serves as CEO and Jones serves as CTO.
Recently, Harvest Automation relocated from Grinnell’s garage to a new, 6,000 square foot headquarters in Billerica, MA. The startup financed the move in part by using some of the $4 million in funding the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp., Life Science Partners and MidPoint Food & Agriculture Fund provided. Presently, Harvest Automation employs fifteen engineers and is actively seeking more. By 2011, the company anticipates hiring at least ten additional engineers to fuel its expansion.
Harvest Automation’s first goal is to create a robot for use in the warehouses of wholesale plant growers, which will complete “dangerous and dirty jobs,” as well as repetitive tasks. In some industrial warehouses, for example, employees work full-time potting acres of plants by hand.
“Our robots can move these heavy containers one at a time, but with great speed,” Wade Appleman, Harvest Automation’s vice president of marketing, explained. “We are in prototype development now, but will be in the market in 2011.”
According to the company’s homepage, Harvest Automation’s new robots will fit into a new category of machines dubbed Agile Mobile
Robots, or ARMs. These ARMs are “designed to work in unstructured environments and perform a wide range of tasks safely alongside humans to improve working conditions and productivity.” (Image courtesy: harvestautomation.com)Harvest Automation is in good company, having started in the same place as countless now famous bands and notable businesses, such as Microsoft. Although, it would stand to reason that potential investors will look more seriously at the startup now that it has a more customary headquarters. Considering the world-wide spread of wholesale plant growers, hopefully Harvest Automation will be greeted with substantial demand once its ARMs enter the market, allowing it to expand its Massachusetts operations.
[Sources: http://bit.ly/8YPbBH, http://www.harvestautomation.com/]
