Date: May 09, 2011 Source: SBIR.gov (
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When Robotics Engineering Excellence (RE2) was founded in 2001, its primary business was contract engineering for its Pittsburgh neighbor, Carnegie Mellon University. Although this provided steady work for a company of RE2's small size, it didn't present an avenue for growth—in size, revenue, or products.
This all changed in 2005.
2005 was the year RE2 won its first SBIR award, for a Small Robot Infrastructure Toolkit. The contract called for mobile robotic manipulators, and the tools that they use, to be more modular and efficient. While performing this work, RE2 identified a marketplace need to make the manipulators even better and easier to use. This epiphany helped to set the company's strategy and current direction: making manipulators more dexterous, precise, and intuitive for manual control, and more intelligent for autonomous control. Today, RE2 is a leading developer of these systems, specializing in robotics that are as agile as they are reliable.
The SBIR Program has benefitted RE2 in many ways. First, it created the opportunities to attract talented machinists, technicians, and engineers to Western Pennsylvania. In turn, these employees pursued and won their own projects, which allowed RE2 to create even more jobs and contribute to the economic development of the region.
Second, the program helped RE2 to develop technology that allowed it to compete with companies 10 times its size. For example, using the fruits of its SBIR research, RE2 has proposed and won Broad Agency Announcement solicitations. "Without the SBIR Program, winning those larger contracts would not have been possible," according to a company statement. Indeed, "RE2 would not be the successful company it is today without the SBIR Program and all that it has to offer."
Since winning its toolkit grant, RE2 has doubled in size and revenue every year. What started in 2001 as a firm of four working exclusively for one customer has exploded to a thriving business of 40 engineers, managers, administrators, business developers, and student interns supporting both the military (the Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, and Technical Support Working Group) and the private sector. With plans to chase 16 new SBIR proposals, RE2 anticipates again doubling in size in 2011.
