Rethink Robotics

What Rethink Robotics was

Rethink Robotics was a robotics company based in Massachusetts^[3]. It is best known for Baxter, a humanoid robot designed to work safely alongside people on factory production lines^[1]. Humanoid describes a machine built on a human-like plan — a body with arms and a head — rather than a single-purpose mechanical arm. That shape follows from the intended use: a machine meant to share a workplace with people, instead of working sealed off from them.

Origins

The BBC described Rodney Brooks as the founder of Rethink Robotics and a former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab^[1]. The company developed Baxter in secret and unveiled it in 2012^[2]. The launch drew attention beyond the trade press: Rethink Robotics and Baxter were the cover story of the October 2012 issue of IEEE Spectrum^[2].

What the company said Baxter could do

According to the company, Rethink Robotics positioned Baxter as the world's first humanoid robot capable of applying common sense behaviour to manufacturing environments^[3]. The phrase points at a robot that can cope with the everyday variation of a real workshop, rather than only repeating a motion under fixed conditions.

The company also said that Baxter came ready to use on the factory floor in less than an hour^[3], and that workers without robotic expertise could train it in less than 30 minutes^[1]. Both figures are company claims rather than independent measurements. What matters about them is where they put the skill requirement: setting up and teaching the robot is presented as a job for line workers, not for programmers.

A platform, not just a product

Chief executive Scott Eckert said the company wanted to build a hardware and software platform that could grow through new applications^[3]. Consistent with that, Rethink Robotics said it would make a software development kit for Baxter available in early 2013^[3]. A software development kit is a bundle of tools, code libraries and documentation that lets outside developers write software for a machine; offering one is a way to let third parties teach the robot tasks the manufacturer never built in.

Where it sat in the field

Baxter's public pitch was collaboration on the production line: a humanoid working beside people, and the October 2012 IEEE Spectrum cover story put that pitch in front of a wide technical audience^[2]. The project therefore belongs to a line of work in which robots are judged by how easily ordinary staff can deploy and retrain them, not only by speed or payload.