Founded in 1990 by a trio of MIT alums, iRobot’s first big break came in 1998 with a DARPA grant that lead to the development of their now-famous PackBot. The automatic vacuuming robot Roomba, the company’s flagship civilian product, was launched in 2002 and has become a resounding commercial success, with more than six million units sold to date.
Founded in Shikuoza, Japan in 1946, Kabushiki gaisha Tamiya was originally a sawmill and architectural lumber company that made wooden ship models as a sideline. Their first plastic model, released in 1960, was a 1/800 scale battleship Yamato. Today, Tamiya manufactures R/C sea, air, and land vehicles, robots, educational materials, and a line of modeling tools, paints, and accessories in addition to their traditional scale model line.
Founded in 1987 in Rocklin, California, Parallax, Inc. manufactures the famous BASIC Stamp microcontroller. The Stamp has been popular among electronics hobbyists since the early 1990s, thanks to such user-friendly features as an embedded BASIC interpreter.
We were all pretty wowed back in January of last year when Parrot introduced their Parrot.AR quadrotor drone. Wowed because A) it’s a quadrotor, and we’re still kind of on our collective honeymoon with the quadrotor concept in general; B) its fancy fly-by-wire system makes it so stable and easy to fly that virtually no training or practice is required…
Founded in Japan in 1962 by a nightclub owner and an accordionist, Korg has been designing, manufacturing, and selling electronic musical instruments since the beginning. Their products have introduced ground-breaking features into keyboards and synthesizers and many of their older models are considered “classics.”
