Rethink Robotics Release Imminent

 Robotics

In an article for the New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman describes his recent visit to Rethink Robotics.  The robotics company is slated to release its robot that is intended to help jump start the US economy and be as simple to operate as an iPhone.

Writing for the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman recently related his experience visiting the Rethink Robotics design workshop.  Formerly Heartland Robotics, Rethink Robotics is a start-up venture begun by iRobot co-founder and MIT professor, Rodney Brooks.  The company has been operating in stealth mode for years now, and is soon expected to release the robots it says will, "create a revolution."

Friedman writes that the robot will be released within weeks.

According to Friedman, "Rethink’s goal is simple: that its cheap, easy-to-use, safe robot will be to industrial robots what the personal computer was to the mainframe computer, or the iPhone was to the traditional phone. That is, it will bring robots to the small business and even home and enable people to write apps for them the way they do with PCs and iPhones — to make your robot conduct an orchestra, clean the house or, most important, do multiple tasks for small manufacturers, who could not afford big traditional robots, thus speeding innovation and enabling more manufacturing in America."

“Just as the PC did not replace workers but empowered them to do many new things,” argues Brooks, the same will happen with the Rethink robot. “Companies will become even more competitive, and we will be able to keep more jobs here. ... The minute you say ‘robots’ people say: ‘It’s going to take away jobs. But that is not true. It doesn’t take away jobs. It will change how you do them,” the way the PC did not get rid of secretaries but changed what they did.


SOURCE  New York Times

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