BURLINGTON, Mass., 22 April 2008.iRobot Corp. has reached a funding agreement with the U.S. Army's Lead Systems Integrator (LSI) of Boeing and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) team on the previously determined direction of SUGV acceleration on January 17, 2008 under the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.
Valued at $6 million, this award adds and accelerates delivery of 25 FCS Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV) near-term robots for testing to provide added capabilities to soldiers in the field. iRobot's FCS Program contract now totals approximately $63 million.
Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot, says: "With this agreement, as well as the recently announced accelerated testing schedule for FCS SUGV robots, it is clear the U.S. Army truly values the mission critical role robots play in theater as part of warfighters' teams."
In 2003, iRobot announced it was selected by the U.S. Army and its Lead System Integrator team of Boeing and SAIC to develop a next-generation SUGV for the FCS program.
Modeled after the combat-proven iRobot PackBot, SUGV features a rugged, lightweight body enabling a single soldier to carry and deploy the robot. By being linked in to the FCS network, the images and information gained by the SUGV can rapidly be made available to the warfighter.
