A Father's Grief Inspires Military Robots

After Losing Son In Iraq War, Mass. Man Develops Robotic Devices To Disable Explosives

(CBS)  The knock on Brian Hart's door came at 6 a.m. An Army colonel, a priest and a police officer had come to tell Hart and his wife that their 20-year-old son had been killed when his military vehicle was ambushed in Iraq.

Brian Hart didn't channel his grief quietly. Committed to "preventing the senseless from recurring," he railed against the military on his blog for shortcomings in supplying armor to soldiers. The one-time Republican teamed with liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy to tell Congress that the Pentagon was leaving soldiers ill-equipped.

And then Hart went beyond words to fight his cause. He became a defense contractor.

He founded a company that has developed rugged, relatively inexpensive robotic vehicles, resembling small dune buggies, to disable car bombs and roadside explosives before they detonate in hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, Hart has won over the military brass he so harshly criticizes. Three years after starting Black-I Robotics Inc., Hart and his four employees won a $728,000 contract from the Pentagon in June to further develop the "LandShark" robot.

Technology to protect troops is a subject uncomfortably close to home for Hart, who says the death of his son, Army Pvt. First Class John Hart, left him in "total devastation." Brian Hart can't forget the call he got from his son in Iraq a week before he was killed by a gunshot Oct. 18, 2003.

"He asked me to help him: 'Get us body armor and vehicular armor,'" Brian Hart said. "He thought he'd be killed on the road in an unarmored Humvee. And a week to the day later, he was."

The Pentagon contract requires Black-I to supply three of its six-wheeled, electric-powered vehicles this year and provide support.

The military will test two units, while Boston's Logan Airport will get one for bomb-disposal duties. If tests go well, soldiers in Iraq could be using the robots as soon as next year, Hart says.

His company also is trying to secure an additional $1.5 million in Pentagon funding next fiscal year.

At 275 pounds and about 4 feet long, Black-I's LandShark looks like a dune buggy without a seat for a human driver. Hart hopes to make them available for commercial sale to law enforcement next year, with expectations that the cost would be $65,000 to $85,000 per robot, including the chassis and add-on bomb-disposing equipment.

The vehicle can pull tilling equipment to plow up soil where an explosive or trip wire may be hidden. Or it can drop off "disrupters" that can be maneuvered near a bomb and set off, with jets of water disabling the bomb.

Hart contends LandSharks will be far less expensive than many of the Pentagon's current bomb-disposing robots, including models made by two larger Boston-area companies, iRobot Inc. and Foster-Miller Inc. Those models have more sophisticated electronics, but also are more fragile than LandSharks, which use car batteries rather than lighter and pricier lithium-ion batteries.

"We want to make robots affordable, so that a private first class or a lance corporal could get this equipment," Hart said.

A Foster-Miller vice president, Bob Quinn, called Hart a "superb individual," but countered that the LandShark is too big and heavy to be practical for most soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Quinn said soldiers using his company's $100,000-plus Talon robots typically carry four of the hand-portable, 80-pound bots in military vehicles, along with other cargo. The advantage of this approach, he said, is that multiple robots are needed as backups. Insurgents frequently watch from a hiding spot as a robot approaches to dismantle an explosive, then remotely detonate the bomb to knock out the robot in a war of attrition, Quinn said.

(Left: Foster-Miller's Talon SWAT/MP robot can be outfitted with a variety of weapons, as well as used for breaching and sensor placement.)

Hart is a clean-cut former College Republicans chapter president who describes himself today as a radical. But he speaks like a Pentagon insider, peppering his conversation with acronyms for battlefield weapons and defense technology initiatives. His sport-utility vehicle has a "Support our troops" bumper sticker, and he posts nearly every day to his blog, which focuses on security and political issues.

While his entrepreneurial intentions are in part idealistic, Hart also hopes to make a buck with Black-I - which he co-founded with longtime business partner Arthur Berube, who helped put up money to supplement startup cash from Hart's personal savings. Hart wouldn't specify how much money they used, but said he and his four employees went without pay until the company won an unspecified amount of private equity funding in May.

(left: iRobot's PackBot 510, used for neutralizing roadside bombs and other IEDs.)

While many Pentagon critics, including families of soldiers, have spoken out about better gear for soldiers, Brian Hart stands apart for his decision to launch a company focused on troop protection, said Bill Thomasmeyer, president of the National Center for Defense Robotics. The Pittsburgh-based nonprofit organization helps robotics firms like Black-I compete for government contracts.

"I don't know of any other similar company that is headed by someone who has had such a personal loss as he has," Thomasmeyer said. "His company has had to overcome a lot of obstacles to get to this point, without having a lot of resources."

Another company founder is Hart's younger brother, Richard, a former Marine who serves as a Black-I product designer. But the staff is otherwise made up of acquaintances from Hart's previous ventures, which had nothing to do with robotics or military contracting. His prior executive experience has been in such fields as wireless communications and pharmaceuticals.

At Black-I, Hart and his staff relied on basic knowledge of mechanical and electrical engineering to design their robotic buggies. They cut costs by pairing custom design features with components already available commercially from other makers of small vehicles and remote-control gadgets. The off-the-shelf parts, such as the car batteries, are also expected to simplify repairs and maintenance.

Black-I operates from a modest office and garage in a small industrial park in Tyngsborough, 40 miles north of Boston, with a paved back lot serving as a testing ground.

In a demonstration for a reporter, a LandShark pushed a trash Dumpster. It was meant to simulate how the buggy could be useful for letting soldiers remain at a safe distance while a robot rams aside a car booby-trapped with explosives. The company is developing versions operated remotely by a human using radio signals, as well as models designed to complete bomb-disposing missions either wholly or partly without human intervention.

Whether or not the company keeps getting defense contracts, Brian Hart doesn't plan to stay quiet on the issues he's been raising since his son's death. He still argues that the military must remake itself to meet ground troops' basic needs and wean itself off expensive high-tech systems.

"We are spending billions upon billions on technologies and equipment we will never use, while we shortchange our infantrymen on basic equipment that will save their lives in combat," Hart said. "The way our military is run and the way our government is run doesn't have to be this bad."

[pete_in_az]

"We are spending billions upon billions on technologies and equipment we will never use, while we shortchange our infantrymen on basic equipment that will save their lives in combat," Hart said. "The way our military is run and the way our government is run doesn''t have to be this bad."


Yeah right, this is the Military-Industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us in his Jan 17 1961 farewell address If it didn''t cost billions what would be the point of these people?

[feelfree4u]

Re: "Brian Hart didn''t channel his grief quietly. Committed to "preventing the senseless from recurring," he railed against the military on his blog for shortcomings in supplying armor to soldiers."

If this man is a supporter of the fraud-based and criminal war of aggression against Iraq, then he owns a share of the responsibility for his son''s pointless death.

[cdfoxtrot]

"A Father''s Grief Inspires Military Robots".

My thoughts and prayers go out to all the military robots out there, defending our freedom, and their families.

[sandy19731]

I wish the best to this father. It is sad that this is not new technology. It is just under-used technology.

[tulcak]

does it always take a death to inspire people to do something? and how many more will have to die? when will those who still support the war realize what a horrible mistake it is? what day will that be? the day that their loved one dies? what a monumental loss for millions of people...

[excoachken]

I am glad that Mr. Hart was able to channel his grief in a productive way, but his son''s life was lost for another man''s profit. By the way, who is responsible for such a stupid choice of words for the story headline?

[watcher269-2009]

See - a Republican turned Democrat to Resolve a Problem! He had to get smart and Read technical manuals and learn something new - and he probably stopped watching Fox News too!

I think its an IQ level that the Change is logically and subconciously made - above an IQ of 90 I believe is when the change happens from Republican to Democrat.

Perfect examples - Bush, McCain, Lindsy Graham - still Republicans - a note about McCain - he used to be Democratic leaning - that is until he started slipping into Dementia these last 5 years and now he''s Republican leaning all the way - His IQ is now about 85.

[tulcak]

We all already know you are a moron, as evidenced by your many insane comments. People like you have never served a day in the military and probably don''''t even have a job and if you do, it''''s probably part time and you have to ask, "do you want fries with that?"
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is this supossed to be witty? i could not find the post that refers to this, or, is this part of the total post?... hmmm... and, really, what the hell does any of it have to do with the topic? dumb.

[rushman71]

tulcak: Seems to me that you weren''t paying attention to what he was talking about. FeelFree was making another sphincter comment, therefor MyOpinion1 was trying to shutup FF.
Not trying to attack you, it''s Monday!!!

[tulcak]

rushman71, ok, but, still, this article is about a guy who was republican whose son told him before he died that they needed equipment. why didn''t he act on that to begin with? why didn''t he join the thousands who were criticizing bush and his administration''s handling of the Iraq war? why did it take his son''s death to bring the truth home to him? or for him to act. you have to ask yourself, what if he didn''t have a son in Iraq? would he had even cared or changed? this is the point. this is only one issue. what about global warming? what is it going to take for people to admit they were wrong and start supporting and pushing for legislation to reverse it? and our dependence on oil? what is it going to take for everyone to be convinced that we shouldn''t be using oil? and our economy, what is it going to take for people to realize that its not about the almighty profit. just because something is profitable doesn''t make it right or a good thing to do. i do not hold much hope for our chances as a country or a world. we see the signs all around us and yet, we deny it all and cling to the status quo. its time to abandon that ship and swim to shore.

[barbaram99]

Mr. Hart I want to say thank ye for doing something to help others. As a Mainer in Seattle I am so sad ye lost yer boy but I want to thank ye and the vets who did/do raise their paw to serve in a war that illegal. He makes me want to cry. He was so young. I am 53 and I hate war and will always thanks the troops as they are doing their duty. I have kin there. I can''t watch the news or this. I am so sorry. I WOULD HOPE THAT AMERICA CAN LEARN WAR IS WRONG AND THAT OIL IS NOT WORTH OF THEM DYING OVER.