Three iRobot Spin-Offs: Harvest, Heartland, North End

Sunday's column focused on the robotics cluster in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, including new companies like Harvest Automation, North End Technologies, and Rod Brooks' new venture, Heartland Robotics. All of them involve former iRobot employees and execs as founders, so I consider them the spawn of iRobot.

Here's the video - a demo of Harvest Automation's prototype greenhouse robots, with Harvest CEO Charles Grinnell.



Two days after the column ran, Rod Brooks -- one of iRobot's three founders -- officially announced he was stepping away from his role as iRobot's CTO to focus entirely on getting Heartland off the ground; he'll still head a technical advisory board at iRobot and remain on the board of directors.

Xconomy has another piece about Heartland, which deftly doesn't mention that my Globe column broke the news of the company's formation two days earlier...but that's the blogosphere for ya.