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Trade mag shines spotlight on local robotics efforts again
Thursday, January 25, 2001 By Antonio Gilb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Pittsburgh's growing robotics industry is catching national attention again. The engineering trade magazine Prism featured the region as one of four "new boomtowns" on the cover of its January issue.
The publicity comes 13 months after the region's fledgling robotics industry was featured in The Wall Street Journal, which in November 1999 dubbed Pittsburgh "Roboburgh" and listed it as one on the country's 13 hottest tech regions.
Pittsburgh's robotics industry is budding thanks to several factors, said Jim Osborn, director of the Pittsburgh Robotics Initiative, an organization that promotes the local industry. Among them are Carnegie Mellon University and its Robotics Institute, and the NASA-funded National Robotics Engineering Consortium in Lawrenceville. The region also has a historical link to robotics, primarily through automated transit work initially done by the former Westinghouse Electric Corp., which started the institute in 1979 with a $5 million grant.
Although the local robotics industry's growth has been more promise than reality the past two decades, Todd Simonds, president of Pittsburgh-based RedZone Robotics, believes it is on the threshold of substantial growth. He said his company, like the rest of the industry, is making the transition from research and development and military use to commercial applications. RedZone, for example, is developing automated machines that scrape environmentally unsafe paint off boats that will be demolished.
Local experts foresee a day when robotics can help people in their everyday lives, from cleaning the house to doing the mundane chores on farms and in factories. "My belief is ... that it's going to happen sooner than later," Simonds said.
San Diego, the Research Triangle region in north central North Carolina and Northern Virginia are the three other areas featured in the magazine.
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