The first sale for Rethink Robotics, she churns away now in the DFJ lobby area. More below…
One response to “Invoice #1”
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The big boxes arrive…
and then it lurks in the lobby, as excitement grows about the creature within…I’m coming out…
What a great out-of-box experience, as Baxter stretched out his arms from his cramped box.
I suggested that he should do a happy dance and ask if this is the uprising?Watching the program I entered…
To “program” the robot, I simply move its arms from place to place, and it generalizes the task. The arms avoid each other and continue on as the cups arrive in random places, and people get in the work space, bumping and playing alongside.
It learns what its hands can do by looking at them against the table as background. With new fingers, even 3D-printed custom fingers, it learns what it has for prosthetics with a glance and exercise of movement.
Tomorrow we will add tables and surround him with racetracks and Tesla Hot Wheel toys that he will keep in constant motion, like the Möbius waltz of Sisyphus…
Then the Stanford Fellows arrive and the Mech E’s are smitten…
Baxter reminds me of my first personal computer, and the revolution in human productivity that ensued. It is like the Apple ][ era for robotics, with radically lower price points, plug and play simplicity, and democratized access ("a safe robot you can trust" as Jobs might envision it). The humanoid form factor makes the target markets intuitive and obvious — anywhere a human is doing mind-numbing repetitive tasks, these robots could drop in with similar capabilities; we need not ask about the performance details of weight, speed and accuracy because the task was already designed for a human with two arms.
As investors in Tesla Motors and SpaceX, we have seen how scores of robots have made both companies globally competitive, while bringing the manufacturing activities back to California. The modern manufacturing operation shifts to a highly skilled and ultimately rewarding operation, much like the PC liberated us from the repetitive tasks that were originally relegated to human “computers.”
Here are more photos of Rodney Brooks & Baxter and scenes from the Rethink Robotics HQ in Boston.
And from the Tech Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2013, which came out on Tuesday:
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