Father's grief inspires military robots
TYNGSBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) - July 6, 2008 BODY TEXTBrian Hart didn't channel his grief quietly. Committed to
"preventing the senseless from recurring," he railed against the
military on his blog for shortcomings in supplying armor to
soldiers. The one-time Republican teamed with liberal Sen. Edward
Kennedy to tell Congress that the Pentagon was leaving soldiers
ill-equipped.
And then Hart went beyond words to fight his cause. He became a
defense contractor.
He founded a company that has developed rugged, relatively
inexpensive robotic vehicles, resembling small dune buggies, to
disable car bombs and roadside explosives before they detonate in
hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, Hart has won over the military brass he so harshly
criticizes. Three years after starting Black-I Robotics Inc., Hart
and his four employees won a $728,000 contract from the Pentagon in
June to further develop the "LandShark" robot.
Technology to protect troops is a subject uncomfortably close to
home for Hart, who says the death of his son, Army Pvt. First Class
John Hart, left him in "total devastation." Brian Hart can't
forget the call he got from his son in Iraq a week before he was
killed by a gunshot Oct. 18, 2003.
"He asked me to help him: `Get us body armor and vehicular
armor,"' Brian Hart said. "He thought he'd be killed on the road
in an unarmored Humvee. And a week to the day later, he was."
The Pentagon contract requires Black-I to supply three of its
six-wheeled, electric-powered vehicles this year and provide
support.
The military will test two units, while Boston's Logan airport
will get one for bomb-disposal duties. If tests go well, soldiers
in Iraq could be using the robots as soon as next year, Hart says.
His company also is trying to secure an additional $1.5 million
in Pentagon funding next fiscal year.
At 275 pounds and about 4 feet long, Black-I's LandShark looks
like a dune buggy without a seat for a human driver. Hart hopes to
make them available for commercial sale to law enforcement next
year, with expectations that the cost would be $65,000 to $85,000
per robot, including the chassis and add-on bomb-disposing
equipment. The vehicle can pull tilling equipment to plow up soil
where an explosive or trip wire may be hidden. Or it can drop off
"disrupters" that can be maneuvered near a bomb and set off, with
jets of water disabling the bomb.
Hart contends LandSharks will be far less expensive than many of
the Pentagon's current bomb-disposing robots, including models made
by two larger Boston-area companies, iRobot Inc. and Foster-Miller
Inc. Those models have more sophisticated electronics, but also are
more fragile than LandSharks, which use car batteries rather than
lighter and pricier lithium-ion batteries.
"We want to make robots affordable, so that a private first
class or a lance corporal could get this equipment," Hart said.
A Foster-Miller vice president, Bob Quinn, called Hart a
"superb individual," but countered that the LandShark is too big
and heavy to be practical for most soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Quinn said soldiers using his company's $100,000-plus
Talon robots typically carry four of the hand-portable, 80-pound
bots in military vehicles, along with other cargo. The advantage of
this approach, he said, is that multiple robots are needed as
backups. Insurgents frequently watch from a hiding spot as a robot
approaches to dismantle an explosive, then remotely detonate the
bomb to knock out the robot in a war of attrition, Quinn said.
Hart is a clean-cut former College Republicans chapter president
who describes himself today as a radical. But he speaks like a
Pentagon insider, peppering his conversation with acronyms for
battlefield weapons and defense technology initiatives. His
sport-utility vehicle has a "Support our troops" bumper sticker,
and he posts nearly every day to his blog, which focuses on
security and political issues.
While his entrepreneurial intentions are in part idealistic,
Hart also hopes to make a buck with Black-I - which he co-founded
with longtime business partner Arthur Berube, who helped put up
money to supplement startup cash from Hart's personal savings. Hart
wouldn't specify how much money they used, but said he and his four
employees went without pay until the company won an unspecified
amount of private equity funding in May.
While many Pentagon critics, including families of soldiers,
have spoken out about better gear for soldiers, Brian Hart stands
apart for his decision to launch a company focused on troop
protection, said Bill Thomasmeyer, president of the National Center
for Defense Robotics. The Pittsburgh-based nonprofit organization
helps robotics firms like Black-I compete for government contracts.
"I don't know of any other similar company that is headed by
someone who has had such a personal loss as he has," Thomasmeyer
said. "His company has had to overcome a lot of obstacles to get
to this point, without having a lot of resources."
Another company founder is Hart's younger brother, Richard, a
former Marine who serves as a Black-I product designer. But the
staff is otherwise made up of acquaintances from Hart's previous
ventures, which had nothing to do with robotics or military
contracting. His prior executive experience has been in such fields
as wireless communications and pharmaceuticals.
At Black-I, Hart and his staff relied on basic knowledge of
mechanical and electrical engineering to design their robotic
buggies. They cut costs by pairing custom design features with
components already available commercially from other makers of
small vehicles and remote-control gadgets. The off-the-shelf parts,
such as the car batteries, are also expected to simplify repairs
and maintenance.
Black-I operates from a modest office and garage in a small
industrial park in Tyngsborough, 40 miles north of Boston, with a
paved back lot serving as a testing ground.
In a demonstration for a reporter, a LandShark pushed a trash
Dumpster. It was meant to simulate how the buggy could be useful
for letting soldiers remain at a safe distance while a robot rams
aside a car booby-trapped with explosives. The company is
developing versions operated remotely by a human using radio
signals, as well as models designed to complete bomb-disposing
missions either wholly or partly without human intervention.
Whether or not the company keeps getting defense contracts,
Brian Hart doesn't plan to stay quiet on the issues he's been
raising since his son's death. He still argues that the military
must remake itself to meet ground troops' basic needs and wean
itself off expensive high-tech systems.
"We are spending billions upon billions on technologies and
equipment we will never use, while we shortchange our infantrymen
on basic equipment that will save their lives in combat," Hart
said. "The way our military is run and the way our government is
run doesn't have to be this bad."
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On the Net:
Brian Hart's blog: http://www.minstrelboy.blogspot.com
Black-I Robotics Inc.: http://www.blackirobotics.com