Someday, Walt Weisel hopes robots will be able to do everything — well, almost everything.

Robots hold a lot of promise from deep sea exploration to space walks and operating unmanned army vehicles to conducting search-and-rescue missions and defusing mines on a battleground. If all this happens, Weisel wants his Fort Myers-based company to be the one providing the software that makes these robots run. And these aren't dreams. Weisel knows what he's talking about — and what he's doing.

Innova Holdings Inc., a company Weisel created to incorporate the various branches of robotic technologies he wants to be involved with, recently won an exclusive contract with NASA to provide the software for a mission involving the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA plans to send up a module that will connect itself to the telescope and, with the help of two robotic arms, remove and replace the older, slowly failing parts of Hubble. The module also will reposition the telescope so that it will remain active until 2020 and continue transmitting images of space to Earth.

Robotic Workspace Technologies, a subsidiary of Innova Holdings Inc. and the original company Weisel founded 13 years ago, also holds three pioneer patents for universal robotic controllers. In everyday household language, the controllers would be the remote controls that can operate every TV, appliance and electronic device in the house, whether it be the microwave or the DVD player.

Next, Weisel has his eyes set on the use of robots in military operations.

He recently spoke at the First Joint Military/Civilian Conference on Intelligent Vehicle Technology Transfer, held Nov. 2-3 at the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center in Warren, Mich.

The conference was held by the Department of Defense's Joint Robotics Program, the Department of Transportation's Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office and the intelligent systems division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Weisel was an invited guest and speaker and also was asked to become a member of the steering committee for the joint program. The steering committee advises the Pentagon in the development of unmanned transportation systems.

“I told them, ‘If you can remotely control a vehicle and get it from point A to point B, it is just a toy, and I am not in the business of making toys,’” Weisel said. “If you want it to touch, feel, pick up, take apart, blow, do anything ... once it gets to point B, I can make it happen.”

His beliefs about the potential of robotics are so strong they've carried him and his company through a major downturn in the business after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Weisel's experience with technology and engineering began as a young Navy recruit in the 1960s. His job on the ship was to hold the missile steady for accurate aiming while the ship rolled and pitched. After he got out of the Navy, he got into the robotics industry. His new career was prompted by an episode of “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.”

Joseph Engelberger, “The Father of Robotics,” demonstrated the uses of a robotic arm on the show. The robot played music, hit some golf balls and even gave an “editorial commentary” on the virtues of an accordion by taking it out of a musician's hand and dropping it.

He's held key positions at Ohio-based Cincinnati Milacron, which provides equipment for the plastic industry.

He also was chief operating officer and president and CEO of Prab Robots Inc. in Michigan, where he dealt with industrial robots and automation. While there, he took the company public and increased revenues by more than 700 percent. He also formed Prab Command Inc., a subsidiary that introduced the world's first 100 percent voice-controlled robotic arm and PC computer work station for the severely disabled.

Weisel started Robotics Workspace Technologies after he “flunked early retirement.”

“I moved to Cape Coral at age 49. Within four days I was tired of grouper and was looking for something to do,” he said.

For the first couple years, RWT was only a consulting operation. Eventually, the company branched out — developing PC control systems that operate across the board on all robots.

“The equivalent of a universal programming language for robots,” Weisel explained.

He acquired three pioneer patents for PC automation that governed a dozen robot styles. The first patent for the robot control system is an “improved, versatile robot control system comprising of a general purpose computer with a general purpose operating system in electronic communication with a real-time computer system” or a universal PC-based robot controller that the company acquired in September 2002.

The second patent was for an automation equipment control system. It was awarded in April 2004.

A third patent for an automation equipment control system, a continuation of the versatile robot control system, was awarded in October.

“There are about 10 different manufacturers that make robots right now and they all have proprietary control systems. It is hard to find parts for them,” Weisel said. “Our controllers are 20 percent faster, more accurate and have a better path controller than any on the market today.”

And they work on any system, he says.

In its early years, RWT flourished and by 2001 the company had four offices in Fort Myers, Detroit, Atlanta and Chicago, with more than 50 employees.

Ford Motor Co. bought a 10 percent share in the company and RWT moved to bigger offices. The company had 850 orders for controllers from Ford, mostly dealing with robots for vision check, measuring and inspections of cars on the assembly line.

After the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center, the automotive industry took a major downturn, deeply affecting RWT. Ford pulled out of the company and the local company lost a large number of its pending orders.

“For the last three years, our job has been to survive — and we have,” Weisel said.

The company closed its Detroit, Atlanta and Chicago offices. The Fort Myers office downsized and the company focused solely on taking care of existing customers and staying alive.

In 2004, Weisel started Innova Holdings, a public company that trades on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board under the symbol IVHG. Innova was formed as a holding company for RWT and other subsidiaries that would expand the company's portfolio in other areas, such as providing robotic technologies to the Army.

Innova's stock trades for pennies a share.

In the quarter ending June 30, the company reported zero revenues coming in to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company had a net loss of $384,963, according to filings with the SEC. That compared with $117,305 a year earlier.

Innova has more than $8 million in debts, according to the SEC filings.

In the past couple of months, the company has started doing research and development again and it recently introduced a new control system to the market.

“We are now working on controllers that are faster, smarter, cheaper and more compact,” Weisel said.

The company's systems can operate anything from a small desktop robotic arm to a 6,100-pound one. The price tag can be anywhere from $12,000 to $15,000 for a small system to $35,000 to $50,000 for a larger one.

“And that's just the controls. We are not in the business to manufacture robots,” Weisel said.

Operated by the systems Weisel's company manufactures, robots and robotic arms can do a wide range of tasks.

They can do delicate tasks, such as shaping glass, and more precision-oriented tasks such as assisting in surgery. Through vision integration they can be programmed to do tasks that require not just precision, but speed as well.

One of the companies that uses RWT's controllers is Oak Ridge National Labs, an experimental center that deals with materials processing with advanced photonics based in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The lab uses the second unit ever built by RWT for a robotic arm that manipulates a 3,000-watt plasma lamp. The lamp is used for a variety of tasks — from thermal spray fusing to high temperature heat treatments.

Because the lab is an experimental center, said Craig Blue, group leader for materials processing for Oak Ridge, it needs its robots to adapt quickly and easily.

“The older controller made it next-to-impossible,” Blue said. “It didn't have the accuracy we needed and reprogramming was a major issue. Now, with the PC-based controller system, my technical staff can reprogram it on the fly to do any number of different tasks.”

The “open architecture” concept of the controllers made by RWT give them the flexibility they need for their work, he said. Oak Ridge is about to upgrade another one of its systems, a 4,000-watt lamp, to the new controller.

“Automation is the future and there is a lot of infrastructure involved in it. The ability to change the ‘brain' is a very innovative idea,” Blue said. “As processing speeds for different things keep going up, your controller has to keep up.”

Weisel is trying to keep up with both the innovation in the industry and the growth of his company. The company's Detroit office has reopened. Weisel also hired a new president for RWT, Neil Dueweke, to handle operations in that office.

Dueweke has spent most of his career around robots. He has worked for a number of robotics companies, including Japan-based Fanuc Robotics, one of the largest companies in the field.

“When I first heard Walt talk about a universal PC-based controller, I thought it was a fantastic idea, but he was way ahead of his time,” Dueweke said.

He firmly believes in the future of robotics and has followed Weisel's work and progress over the years. When he got the chance to join the company, he jumped at it, Dueweke said.

“What you see in ‘Terminator' is going to happen,” he said. “The march is on for robots to replace humans in not just factory settings for dangerous jobs but on the battlefield. It is going to happen ... it's just a matter of when.”

In the meantime, Weisel is focusing on the more immediate future — that of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. He has a one-source contract with NASA. Only RWT was allowed to bid on the project. NASA currently is building the arms that will emerge from and attach the module to the telescope and also perform all the replacement tasks.

Weisel's team is working on the control system to communicate with the arms. The earthbound system will send the arms 1,000 instructions per second.

“My vision for robotics is being able to control unmanned army vehicles and have them perform activities that require a combination of vision, touch, motion, voice and mobility,” Weisel said. “If I can do it 300 miles in space, I can do it here.”

The battlefield and space aren't the only places Weisel envisions the use of robots. He hopes robotic technology also can be developed to function as arms and perform biomechanic functions for disabled people.

He hopes to work with universities that specialize in research in different fields of robotics to help advance the field.

“The one thing I always tell my team and all those that bring me their ideas is to focus on things that are salable not just doable,” Weisel said. “Why develop something that doesn't have a use. If we do this right, we will add technology and pieces to the market that we don't have right now.”

And the robotics company will flourish once again.