Kevin Harrington and Bob Breznak had just finished up robotics projects – “two disasters of projects,” according to Harrington – at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2008, and realized they had each wasted time independently solving the same problem different ways.
The pair realized they were on to something, and started working on a company called Neuron Robotics.
“We’ll bang this out this weekend, it’ll be cool,” Harrington recalled saying at the time.
Two years later, the company has a product, the DyIO, or Dynamic Input Output module.
With the $120, ashtray-sized module, a user can link a PC to robot parts including LED lights, sensors and servos, and program them using languages such as Java or Python rather than more obscure, complex robotics languages.
During those two years, Neuron worked on turning a gadget into a product, Harrington said, and it recently landed its first customer, Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School in Upton.
The school’s IT staff is trying out a DyIO for possible use in the classroom in the fall, according to Harrington.
Neuron is targeting the higher education and hobbyist markets with the DyIO. The start-up plans to offer curriculum resources in addition to the hardware and software, to make it easier to adopt in classrooms, Harrington said.
The company also plans to gradually move toward an open-source model similar to software company Red Hat, Harrington said, selling technical support and other services in addition to the DyIO module.
The bootstrapped company – four founders and a recent marketing hire – has so far used friends and family funding to operate.
Neuron, split between Somerville and Worcester, is still in the “garage” phase, Harrington said, but wants to start full production of the module by the end of the summer.
Harrington just wrapped up his undergraduate degree and works as a teaching assistant at WPI.
Breznak also works as a software engineer at VistaPrint, a printer of business cards and other products which has its U.S. headquarters in Lexington.
“We’re all sort of double-dipping at this point,” Harrington said.
Harrington, a Simsbury, Conn. native, grew up fascinated with animatronics. He said he built an animatronic monkey – fur glued to a wire frame and a motor – for a junior high biology project.
In 2008, he began an internship at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, but was hired to run the company’s servers after about two weeks because an employee quit. The job didn’t overlap much with robotics, he said, but had other perks.
Source:http://www.bostonherald.com/jobfind/news/technology/view/20100801sci-fi_device_can_program_robots/srvc=home&position=also
