business has recently passed the half-a-million unit mark worldwide -- an industry now in excess of eight billion dollars, in no small part owing to one of its foremost founding fathers and continuing supporter, Joseph F. Engelberger. In fact, the Robotic Industries Association has a yearly award named after our industrial advisor, and in 1997 he received the coveted Japan Prize from their Prime Minister himself (an oriental "Nobel Prize", if you will).

Not content with starting the industry by founding "Unimation", maker of famed Unimate/PUMA arms the world over (later internationalized and sold to Westinghouse Electric), Engelberger returned to the foray starting the younger, but now established "Service Robot Industry", with Transitions Research Corporation, which later went public as HelpMate Robotics, Inc. Featuring the namesake Hospital Courier, of which over 100 now roam the people-laden halls of hospitals the world over, Fortune-100 NYSE Cardinal Heath recently purchased the company to join their San Diego-based Pyxis Corporation, a medical automation giant hoping to place thousands of HelpMate hospital robots to supplement their tens of thousands of Pyxis Medstations.

Raised in "Upper" (Southern) Canada and educated in the Eastern United States, Andrew has been "in robotics" for some time. After working in both university research laboratories (including NASA's Center for Intelligent Robotic Systems for Space Exploration and New York State's Center for Automation Technology,) and in industry (Shuttle/ Space-Station CanadARM/2's SPAR Aerospace and HelpMate's former TRC/HRI, now Pyxis), he finds it time to bring about his mentor's next robotic genre -- the Personal Service Robot. Under mentorship of J.F. Engelberger and continuing beyond work started at Rensselaer's Doctoral program, the first product prototype (second prototype, following NASA demonstrator) came to life in New York and currently continues in Toronto.

Silverthorne's career intersected with Engelberger's remotely at first. He did his Master's thesis on a TRC LabMate mobile platform with a TRC SonaRanger ultra-sonic system at NASA's "Center for Intelligent Robotic Systems for Space Exploration" in Rensselaer upon completing his bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering. Thereafter, he immediately went into the New York State-funded "Center for Advanced Technology in Automation and Robotics", working on Variable Autonomy with a Unimate/PUMA arm and a robot hand from NASA called the Anthorobot. His career finally brought him to HelpMate Robotics, where he was hired by Engelberger as we fused the company's newest component technologies and HelpMate experience to complete the "Anthropomorphic Robotic Testbed" (pictured on top of last page, Maturing Technologies) for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston-- an automaton that we felt was better suited to an "Elder/Personal Care" future.

Engelberger and Silverthorne have a number of colleagues in the world's growing robotics profession-- both through universities and within the industry. With Engelberger's experience from scientist to author, manager to founder of Unimation and Transitions Research Corporation (as well as being on a number of companies' boards) and Silverthorne's cross-crafted Mechanical (BS/ME), Electrical (MS/EE) and Computer/Systems (5 years Doctoral work) Engineering background and exposure to various small and growing industrial businesses, our careful growth of a hand-picked team of players will ensure this new industry has proper foundation.