A New Class of Industrial Robot

Dertouzos Lecturer Series 2012/2013
A New Class of Industrial Robot
Speaker: Rodney Brooks
Speaker Affiliation: Chairman & CTO, Rethink Robotics, Inc.
Host: Daniela Rus
Host Affiliation: CSAIL

Date: 12-13-2012
Time: 4:15 PM - 5:30 PM
Refreshments: 4:00 PM
Location: 34-101

Abstract:
Rethink Robotics (http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/) has been developing a new class of industrial robot for the  last four years. They first announced the robot on September 18th, and shipping it to small US manufacturers in late 2012/early 2013.  Its total cost of ownership is an order of magnitude cheaper than a conventional industrial  robot, its integration time is under two hours, and it can easily be retrained to do new tasks by factory line workers, without they themselves requiring any special training on how to operate the robot.  It is safe to work with collaboratively, and it has a very low barrier to entry for companies that have not previously had automation equipment.  It is made in the USA, and our goal is for it to make American workers even more productive than they already are, so that US manufacturing of low cost goods can be competitive with other regions.

Bio:
Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus) at MIT, and the Founder, Chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics.  Previously he was Director of MIT CSAIL until 2007, and Co-founder, sometimes Chairman, and CTO of iRobot  from 1990 to 2008.  He had 27 fabulous PhD students at Stanford and MIT, and has managed to have fun building robots for most of his life.