Denning Mobile Robotics, Inc., was the first to list on the stock market, (NASDAQ symbol originally GARD and later DMRI), which it did in 1982. Despite having public funding similar to what some dot.com companies had 2 decades later, and being founded by important names in business and technology, by early 1993 the company had failed to commercialize its technology and products. In late 1993, the company which had closed its doors 9 months earlier and was entering Chapter 7 bankruptcy, was rescued by Branch & Associates, becoming 4 years later its industry leader as other robotics companies continued to struggle. After Branch & Associates quit its association with Denning in July 1997, the company again struggled for another 2 years before finally closing its doors forever in 1999.

Still in Business as Denning Branch Int.

http://www.southcom.com.au/~robot/index.html

Branch & Associates, (B&A), released its first robot product, the Tasman Turtle, in 1979. This LOGO educational turtle featured speech recognition, speech synthesis, electronic compass, touch sensors, drawing pen, stepper motor motion control, infra red RS232 interface and expansions ports. With no other commercially available mobile robots, this unit was also a popular hobby platform. Various versions were released through to 1984, including the compact Turtle Tot, the affordable Standard Turtle, and others. Prices ranged from $340 to $2,400 and about 2,500 were sold. Kit robots were also marketed, primarily the Hobbybot in 1985. Another innovative product was the two legged dynamically balanced Mr. Walker in 1986.

The company in those days was called Aero Electronics Pty Ltd, incorporating later as Flexible Systems for manufacturing and marketing, of which B&A was a corporate partner. In 1984 the company continued in its own right as B&A then in December 1993 took majority control of Denning Mobile Robotics, Inc. in the USA, trading as Denning Branch International Robotics. This relationship ended in July 1997 when the company returned to its Australian offices as Denning Branch International Robotics (Australia).

During the 1980's B&A specialized in prototype development for other companies including the Chester for Commodore Computers in Texas, Elami for the Re Foundation in Hong Kong, and several robots for Axlon in California. This phase culminated with the development of the Samsonite Luggage robot, the Access stair climbing wheelchair and the General Electric Florbot.

From 1984, B&A embarked on a long term project to develop and autonomous navigation and guidance system suitable for inexpensive mass produced robots. This resulted in the ultrasonic parametric mapping technology used in Blinker (1986), Florbot (1989), Moulinex's d'Entrecasteaux (1991) and the Berkeley Challenge industrial floor cleaner (1994). Laser versions appeared in the Trident and Quadra floor cleaning robots in 1996.

Products in other markets including security robotics, television camera robotics, materials handling robots and research robots were also developed and released through the late 1980's. These include the Sentry, Roboped, RoboScrub and UTV-200. These robots are fully autonomous and applications specific. RoboScrub is manufactured by Windsor Industries in Denver Colorado under license. In education the Fander series including Maxifander and Hobbybot 2 were released in 1995.

Expansion to agricultural robots resulted in prototype walking robots for forestry and rubber latex harvesting in plantations. Several of our smart sensors are now available off the shelf including the LaserNav and Rotosonar, and our autonomous navigation and guidance systems are available as packages such as Lasermap and Paramap, suitable for most mobile platforms

Current activity involves the integration of walking technology to the MRV6 research robot, and a strawberry harvesting robot.

DBI believes it is the oldest continuously active mobile robotics company with more products, prototypes, and projects than any other robotics company. Total sales are in the 10,000's of robots for direct sales including products sold by our contracting clients. For example around 10,000 Elamies were sold in Australasia in 1984.

All of the products are still available and serviced through the Australian office.