Helen Greiner

What do a Roomba vacuum, a battlefield drone, and a sun-powered garden robot have in common? Helen Greiner.

Helen Greiner was ten years old when she saw Star Wars.

While other kids dreamed of flying the Millennium Falcon, she was captivated by R2-D2, the little droid with attitude.

She studied mechanical engineering and computer science at MIT, then co-founded iRobot in 1990, alongside Rodney Brooks and Colin Angle.

They started with a belief: robots could make everyday life better.

Greiner co-designed the first Roomba.

Millions were sold.

For the first time, robots weren’t science fiction.

They were under your coffee table.

At iRobot, Greiner also led the development of the PackBot, a rugged robot designed for military use.

It was built to detect and disarm IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on the battlefield.

The U.S. Army deployed over 6,000 of them in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers credit PackBots with saving hundreds of lives.

Some even gave their robots nicknames, like “Skooby Doo.”

Greiner raised $35M in venture capital for iRobot and led it to a $75M IPO.

She served as President until 2004 and Chairman until 2008.

During that time, the company grew from zero revenue to over $300M.

Then she left.

In 2008, she founded CyPhy Works, a drone startup that built long-endurance tethered drones for military use.

These drones flew missions over Iraq and Syria, providing real-time surveillance and communication.

They were deployed with Army and Special Forces units, and, once again, saved lives.

CyPhy was eventually acquired by FLIR Systems.

After stepping down from CyPhy in 2017, Greiner went to the Pentagon.

In 2018, she was sworn in as a Highly Qualified Expert in Robotics, Autonomous Systems & AI for the U.S. Army.

Her job: advise top military leaders on emerging tech that could reshape defense.

And still, she wasn’t done.

In 2020, she took her love of gardening and her hatred of weeding and turned it into her next company: Tertill.

The company’s flagship product is a solar-powered weeding robot that lives in your garden and prevents weeds from growing.

Under her leadership, Tertill tripled revenue in one year.

Along the way, she became a Trustee of the Museum of Science and MIT, a speaker at TEDxBoston, and a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship under Barack Obama.

She’s earned more than a dozen major awards, including…

The Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision Award for Innovation.

The DEMO God Award.

And induction into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame.

She’s summited Kilimanjaro, hiked Machu Picchu, snowboarded across continents, and still finds time to kayak in the mornings after dropping her daughter off at school.

Helen Greiner doesn’t believe in robots for robots’ sake.

She believes in robots that help people by doing the dull, dirty, or dangerous jobs.

Vacuuming floors. Pulling weeds. Disarming bombs. Saving time. Saving lives.