Heartland Robotics, the Cambridge, MA, firm founded by Rodney Brooks and backed by Jeff Bezos and Charles River Ventures, said today it has hired Scott Eckert as its new chief executive. Eckert, a former Dell executive and co-founder and CEO of Motion Computing, succeeds Heartland’s outgoing president, Patrick Sobalvarro. Heartland Robotics, which raised $7 million from Charles River Ventures and Seattle-based Bezos Expeditions last year, is developing a new class of robots for manufacturing applications based on research done by Brooks, the MIT roboticist and co-founder of Bedford, MA-based iRobot (NASDAQ: [[ticker:IRBT]]).
Author: Gregory T. Huang
Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003.
Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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