Boeing-iRobot Team Receives New SUGV Task Order from US Army

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny [NYSE: BA] and part­ner iRo­bot Corp. [NASDAQ: IRBT] today announced that they have received a new task order to an exist­ing con­tract to pro­vide Small Unmanned Ground Vehi­cles (SUGV) to the U.S. Army. The order calls for 94 new mod­el 310 SUGV robots, plus spares, for a total val­ue of $14.6 million. 

Small Unmanned Ground Vehi­cles (SUGV) Source: Boe­ing Com­pa­ny Click to enlarge

This order, the contract’s fifth, brings the total units ordered by the U.S. gov­ern­ment to 323. The exist­ing Indef­i­nite Deliv­ery, Indef­i­nite Quan­ti­ty con­tract will run through February. 

“Boe­ing and iRo­bot are pleased to be work­ing with our cus­tomers to pro­vide this life-sav­ing tech­nol­o­gy in response to urgent warfight­er needs,” said Bob DaLee, Robot­ics pro­gram man­ag­er for Boe­ing Net­work & Tac­ti­cal Sys­tems. “The 35-pound 310 SUGV sys­tem pro­vides the dis­mount­ed Explo­sive Ord­nance Dis­pos­al (EOD) tech­ni­cian with the abil­i­ty to per­form recon­nais­sance dur­ing extreme­ly haz­ardous EOD mis­sions involv­ing unex­plod­ed ord­nance and impro­vised explo­sive devices.” 

“Robots have played an impor­tant role on the bat­tle­field for years now, and their num­bers in the­ater are grow­ing,” said Joe Dyer, pres­i­dent of iRobot’s Gov­ern­ment and Indus­tri­al Robots divi­sion. “Warfight­ers can car­ry and quick­ly deploy the SUGV at a moment’s notice, which is cru­cial in chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ments such as Afghanistan. These robots are sav­ing lives every day.” 

Boe­ing and iRo­bot devel­oped the SUGV fam­i­ly of vehi­cles under a strate­gic alliance that began in 2007. SUGV is a small­er and lighter ver­sion of the com­bat-proven Pack­Bot. It is designed to give warfight­ers real-time aware­ness of crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions and to allow them to com­plete mis­sions from safe stand­off dis­tances. It is ide­al for a vari­ety of mis­sion types, includ­ing EOD, route clear­ance and recon­nais­sance. As the prime con­trac­tor, Boe­ing pro­vides pro­gram man­age­ment, con­tracts, gov­ern­ment-test sup­port and qual­i­ty-con­trol sup­port from offices in Huntsville. iRo­bot is respon­si­ble for engi­neer­ing, gov­ern­ment-test sup­port, man­u­fac­tur­ing, train­ing and logis­tics ser­vices, with the major­i­ty of work con­duct­ed in Bed­ford, Mass. 

“The SUGV can increase the safe­ty of U.S. and allied warfight­ers in uncer­tain sit­u­a­tions,” said William Bog­gs, direc­tor of Boe­ing Glob­al Forces & Robot­ics Sys­tems. “We will con­tin­ue work­ing with our cus­tomer not only to pro­vide these valu­able assets, but also to con­tin­ue to refine them so the SUGV we deliv­er tomor­row has even more capa­bil­i­ty than the one we deliv­er today.” 

iRo­bot designs and builds robots that make a dif­fer­ence. The company’s home robots help peo­ple with smarter ways to clean, and its gov­ern­ment and indus­tri­al robots pro­tect those in harm’s way. iRobot’s con­sumer and mil­i­tary robots fea­ture iRo­bot Aware® robot intel­li­gence sys­tems, pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy incor­po­rat­ing advanced con­cepts in nav­i­ga­tion, mobil­i­ty, manip­u­la­tion and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. For more infor­ma­tion about iRo­bot, vis­it www.irobot.com.

Boe­ing is the largest aero­space com­pa­ny in Alaba­ma and one of the state’s largest employ­ers. Cur­rent com­pa­ny oper­a­tions in Huntsville include the Ground-based Mid­course Defense pro­gram and oth­er mis­sile defense work, such as the Arrow sys­tem and the Patri­ot Advanced Capability‑3 seek­er, as well as work asso­ci­at­ed with Ares I, the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, Army Inte­grat­ed Logis­tics, Brigade Com­bat Team Mod­ern­iza­tion, SBI­net, and engi­neer­ing for the 787 and the P‑8A Poseidon. 

A unit of The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is one of the world’s largest defense, space and secu­ri­ty busi­ness­es spe­cial­iz­ing in inno­v­a­tive and capa­bil­i­ties-dri­ven cus­tomer solu­tions, and the world’s largest and most ver­sa­tile man­u­fac­tur­er of mil­i­tary air­craft. Head­quar­tered in St. Louis, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is a $34 bil­lion busi­ness with 68,000 employ­ees worldwide. 

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Contact: 

Kath­leen M. Cook
Boe­ing Net­work & Tac­ti­cal Sys­tems
Office: 314–233-6818
Mobile: 314–705-2239
kathleen.m.cook@boeing.com

Matthew Billings­ley
Boe­ing Net­work & Tac­ti­cal Sys­tems
Office: 703–647-1444
Mobile: 703–203-9435
matthew.p.billingsley@boeing.com

Char­lie Vai­da
iRo­bot Corp.
Office: 781–430-3182
cvaida@irobot.com

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