IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008 - 30

competition. "You make a
little prototype and you
put your robot where your
The ConnectR robot looks a lot like a Roomba with an onboard
mouth is," she says. "The
camera, but it's expanding the iRobot consumer line into personal
Roomba itself was started
communication. "You want to know what's happening in your home
by a guy that once said,
when nobody's there," says Helen Greiner, co-founder and board
'Shoot, we could be putchair of iRobot.
ting something on the
With the ConnectR robot that can follow the people in the housemarket that everyone
hold and transmit images and sound remotely, the consumer can
could have.'" One of iRokeep a roving eye on the action and interact with the family. "Why
bot's newest inventions,
would you expect something you'd want to see to be in that 200 x
the Looj, a robotic gutter
200 pixel screen that your Web cam targets?" Greiner asks. "When
cleaner, is another great
you're in a home, you can walk anywhere you want to go to find the
example an internal bakepeople or take a look at what's going on. You could stay connected
off idea, Greiner says. And
to that elderly person who might have a problem," she says.
the bake-off concept does"It's not just a little step; it's really a different communications
n't end when the products
technology."
reach the market. Like any
-Julia C. Keller
geeky inventor, Greiner is
more interested in innovation than maintaining creative control. "We've
opened the interface on
the Roombas for people
who are into hacking,"
says Greiner, harkening
back to her own hacker
days. Instead of producing
a basic LEGO-like robotic
kit that is a "follow these
directions" model, iRobot's
philosophy is "Here's the
base, put whatever you
want on it, and at the end of the day, you
people to overcome any challenges that
have a very practical robot that's going to
they face," Greiner says. It has lead to
last-and you know because you made it,"
major successes for iRobot. "We can go up
Greiner says.
against large defense companies and win
and go up against Fortune 500 companies
and win. We can get a product to market
What Kind of Robot Do You Want?
in a year," she says. "At the core you have
Providing a hacker platform is one small
to have the people at the company who
part of educational outreach for iRobot
feel empowered to make it happen.
and Greiner, who also sits on the Boston
They're not just waiting for your comMuseum of Science board to encourage
mand to 'do this now'."
people, especially kids, to get into science
and technology. "I ask kids, 'What kind of
a robot do you want?' A homework-doing
A Robot Bake-Off
robot is usually the first one they think
At iRobot, autonomy is key and as a
of. But they think of other tasks from
result, "The innovation is incredible,"
things like a robot that does window
Greiner says. The home robotics division
washing to a robot that takes the
hosts what iRobot calls a "bake-off," in
garbage-jobs that the kids are asked to
which employees have an internal design
PHOTO COURTESY OF IROBOT

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IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2008

do themselves." Greiner says that she
also tries to make her programs scalable.
"With the older kids you get to ask,
'What would it take to build that kind of
robot?' and get them to think what kind
of behaviors it would need to exhibit."
Reaching out to young women is also
an important extension of Greiner's educational goals. "I get asked to talk to
young girls a lot," she says, adding that
despite the gender divide that still exists
in engineering, she has tons of examples.
"Pointing out women engineers in robotics is easy. Yoky just won a Genius award.
There's Cynthia at MIT who's doing the
emotive robots," she says, referring to
Yoky Matsuoka's neurorobotic work that
earned her a 2007 MacArthur Fellow
award and to MIT's Cynthia Breazeal's
work as director of MIT's Robotic Life
Group. Greiner knows that role models
and outreach are keys to keeping girls
interested in science. "As a young
woman, it must be positively discouraging" not to have enough support or
encouragement, says Greiner.
Even though Greiner turned 40 this
past December, she's still just a big kid
hacking away at computers. In her spare
time, she tries to learn one new sport a
year. Greiner seems drawn to water and
winter sports, whether wakeboarding,
kayaking, or windsurfing on waves or
slicing down a mountain on snow. Greiner recently learned how to kiteboard.
"With kiteboarding, you're flying. You
can really get lift out of it, and when you
get lift you can do cool tricks," she says.
Apart from seeking out the next cool
sport, Greiner says her birthday celebration isn't anything special. "But I took
the opportunity to organize a sailing trip
to Bermuda this summer. I consider that
part of my birthday," Greiner adds. After
all, turning 40 is no big deal when you're
the board chair for iRobot and get to do
what you love every day-dream of and
design new robots.
-Julia C. Keller is a freelance
science writer living in Boston.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008