September 3rd, 2008
iRobot's Brooks starts worker bot company
Even as iRobot won a wide-open contract with the Army, the company’s part-time CTO, Rodney Brooks, left the company to start a new robotics firm, Cambridge-based Heartland Robotics.
The new company is focused on industrial robotics, which logic would dictate would put factory workers out of work. But Brooks’s robots will be “empowering.”
I want to effect a powerful evolution in the world’s labor markets, and my current focus is to develop low-cost robots that will empower American workers.” (cnet)
Engadget thinks the talk of empowerment is BS.
By “rehumanize” we assume they mean replace the American manufacturing workforce with robots. Come on Brooks, grow a pair of Ayn Rands and just say what you mean. (engadget)
Brooks will also take a leave from his post as robotics prof at MIT to work on the new venture. iRobot’s biggest hit was the Roomba, of course, but Brooks is most proud of the company’s work for the military:
“Mobile robots were sort of lab curiosity, and I’m so proud that we’ve been able to turn it into robots that are in everyday use in the US military and that they’re saving lives,” he said. “Another thing is that we’ve got millions of them in people’s homes.” (Boston Globe)
