We have previously blogged about Automatika and their Dragon Runner robot. We met the owner Mr. Schempf and he showed us how tough his robots were. We were smitten. (With the robots, not Mr. Schempf) Apparently we weren’t the only ones to like his robots because Foster-Miller Inc. just acquired his company.

Two robotics-related companies with Carnegie Mellon University roots have been acquired for as much as $9.2 million by Foster-Miller Inc., the largest supplier of robots to the Department of Defense.

The deal is expected to increase employment at both companies, and help breathe life into the Pittsburgh area’s eight-year-old nickname “Roboburgh,” as the region graduates from being just an idea developer to producing what its researchers dream up, experts said.

O’Hara-based Automatika Inc., which designs, develops prototypes and does small-scale manufacturing of robotic systems, and Applied Perception Inc. of Cranberry, which creates software and control systems for navigating unmanned ground vehicles, will be able to fast-forward their designs and ideas, executives said.

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Check out Automatika’s hilarious video where they beat the crap out of their robots.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 11:53 am and is filed under Announcements, Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.