Army: "The Robotic FX contract is no longer in existence"
A bad weekend for Robotic FX could mean good things for iRobot. On Friday, the US Army canceled its $280 million order for up to 3,000 of Robotic FX's bomb-detecting robots. According to Joanne Byrd, the Army administrator overseeing the contract, "The Robotic FX contract is no longer in existence." Harsh, and a tad confusing if you accept the fundamental axiom that existence exists. She did cite "peripheral complications" as the reason without going into detail. Though we're pretty sure that iRobot's injunction against Robotic FX had something to do with it. The move opens the door to iRobot as the next-lowest, qualified bidder for the XBot contract. Great. Perhaps when everyone is done futzing about with their lawyers and lobbyists we might actually get a few bots deployed to protect the innocents?
[Via Xconomy, thanks Jonas]
