A six-foot, 650-pound robotic security guard, that's who.

They may never earn their stripes, but robots will be coming off the assembly line at Cybermotion Inc. in Roanoke this fall and going into the military.

In August the 18-employee firm inked a seven-year deal with the U.S. Army that could prompt the military to spend up to $27 million on robots from the 15-year-old firm.

Cybermotion specializes in producing security robots. Company president and founder John Holland — who graced the cover of Virginia Business in 1987 — is a 20-year veteran of robotics. He invented the CyberGuard security system, an indoor security patrol robot that can perform an array of mundane duties.

Armed with multiple sensors, the burly robot wheels through facilities, following a path programmed specifically for each location. The sensors allow the "guard" to detect intruders, fires and environmental hazards. It can even take inventory.

"The important thing from a business aspect is that we're making one of the first successful runs at automating the service sector," Holland says. "Just think about the enormous implications in the next decade."

Foot-patrol security guards have one of the highest turnover rates of any job on the market, Holland says. "It's boring and you're all alone." A lot of these jobs are in warehouses that don't have heating or air-conditioning. "It's terrible and people don't do it very long for minimum wage."

So Holland created CyberGuard in 1991. The latest version of the robot — the K3A — costs about $140,000, but Holland says the system can pay for itself in two years.

From a central console, one operator can control as many as 15 robots rolling through warehouses or offices at a rate of two-and-a-half-feet per second. On an average night, one of the guards can cover up to 10 or 15 miles, never tiring or succumbing to the monotony of the task. Over the years, Holland has fine-tuned the control panel readings to further simplify the controller's duties. The information "will pop up on a little window for the guy at the desk, and there's an analysis of the situation and what needs to be done," he says.

One of the robots recently detected a fire at the office of a major pharmaceutical company — 15 minutes before the fire alarm rang. The system also recently passed the stringent requirements necessary to be marketed in Europe. Cybermotion sent its first order to Securifrance, which plans to sell the product throughout the European Community.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Defense Department plans to use the robots to patrol and inventory warehouses that store high-value, high-risk materials. The Army's first $500,000 order in August helped Cybermotion account for its most profitable month ever with more than $700,000 in sales.

"Our revenues have been rather flat for a few years as we were finishing up our development work," Holland admits, "and then [they jumped] into the $1 million-to-$2 million range. We expect that to take off pretty rapidly now. We haven't really done any marketing in force, but now we're ready."

They'd better be. They're in the Army now.

— MA