Two new books on the entrepreneurial side of robotics

By Frank Tobe | September 5, 2010

There's a chapter in Trade-Off by Kevin Maney where he describes how iRobot's Roombas came to be and why they became such a success. It offers the thesis that there is a “trade-off between the fidelity of an experience and its convenience and it's more like the invention of a feature that gives an edge to an age-old product.”

Change, circumstance and ego all worked to build and then unwind America's first robot manufacturer is described in a soon to be published book: Pity the Pioneer: The Rise and Fall of Unimation. An excerpt is in Sept/Oct issue of Robot Magazine.

Is America now sitting out the race for the future of robotics? Read BusinessWeek's remarks about the clean energy sector and see the similarities.

About The Author

Frank Tobe

Frank Tobe is the founder of The Robot Report and co-founder of ROBO Global which has developed a tracking index for the robotics industry, the ROBO Global™ Robotics & Automation Index. The index of ~90 companies in 13 sub-sectors tracks and captures the entire economic value of this global opportunity in robotics, automation and enabling technologies.