“Ask me anything: The answer is a robot! …I’m a roboticist.” -Dr. Rodney Brooks
2012/10/15 Leave a comment
On Friday, I had the pleasure of attending Rodney Brooks’ first public talk on the Baxter robot, “A New Class of Industrial Robots.” Although, there wasn’t a great deal of new technical information available beyond what the barrage of press exclusives has already announced, it was a fascinating look at the thought process that went into building the Baxter. I’ll attempt to share some of the ideas that he shared at Carnegie Mellon to best of my deficient note taking abilities. You can can also watch the video here.
My general impression is that the Baxter is a real product. That’s really exciting to see in robotics! We don’t get true products all that often. I mean this robot can be used by people who cannot code and don’t know how to do math. You can use a Baxter at a basic level just by pressing some buttons and moving the Baxter’s arms. A ‘power user’ might use the menu system to enable (or more likely disable) features that make the Baxter so easy to use. A forthcoming software development kit will let the robotics engineers tinker if they like. The overall impression I got however is that the Baxter is a not a fundamental breakthrough so much as a breakthrough product. It is designed around a specific set of user needs, responds to their preferences, and doesn’t attempt to do everything. I could see how it might delight people who need a box packed or something sorted.
Another interesting aspect of the Baxter is how it takes an alternative design approach to current industrial robots. The Baxter focuses on tasks that have some degree of compliance. Most industrial robots are focused on precision. It will be interesting to see how these two classes of robots end up interacting, competing, and complementing one another.
ReThink has an ambition to bring back a lot of manufacturing value to the United States. The idea that much of the drudgery in a factory can be completed at an all in cost of $3/hr definitely puts the economic rationale for taking production offshore into question. We all know that there are tremendous efficiencies achieve from having production close the large markets and design centers, this will make it possible to further substitute capital for the lowest skill labor and create many more valuable manufacturing jobs in the United States.
“Advanced Manufacturing doesn’t mean manufacturing advanced stuff.” Dr. Brooks pointed out that although employment in manufacturing has remained stable or declined over the last several decades, the output of American manufacturing has been on a nearly uninterrupted increase. This has been driven, in part, by a march up the value chain into business to business and complex products. Dr. Brooks hope that the Baxter will let us look at having
Why isn’t Baxter mobile? First, Baxter doesn’t need to be mobile to fulfill its intended function and adding mobility probably would add cost and complexity that the customers don’t require. Baxter can be moved on casters easily by a worker, but it doesn’t need to move on its own for most applications. Second, Dr. Brooks’ non-compete agreement with iRobot prevented him from working on mobile robotics until recently. Maybe, we’ll see a mobile Baxter soon.
Finally, I’m really curious to see how the end effector strategy plays out. ReThink is going to publish an interface that includes mechanical, electrical, and software specifications. Currently they provide an end effector that appears to be only a two finger gripper that can be customized for size to some degree. I’m curious if there will be a lot of end effectors that come out and to what extent the Baxter and ROS become a platform for further innovation in robotics.
The Baxter was designed in conscious analogy to the PC. Will it usher in a new age of robotics the way the PC did? From a business perspective will Baxter-type platforms become commoditized and can ReThink retain its edge? Dr. Brooks was refreshingly humble about the future, but it was clear that he is optimistic and willing to learn more from the market for this disruptive product.
If you’re going to RoboBusiness have fun at the public unveiling of the robot!
robocosmist 
Before we can even have a bubble in robotics…
2012/06/29 by Robert Morris Leave a comment
Our industry needs a better methodology for managing robotics development.
I just a had a great entrepreneurship conversation. My entrepreneur friend opened my eyes to the possibilities for robotics in an industry, platform space, and application that I had pretty much written off. The application was using robots to collect data–the simplest and earliest task for any class of robots. He had taken a fresh look at an industry he knew intimately and seen that there was an opportunity to do something extraordinary and make some money.
This friend is not a robotics expert, but he’s been awakened to the potential in the robotics field. His big concern and great hesitancy to jumping into this business is establishing a workable business model. He sees the potential in the opportunity with the vividness of an insider, but when it comes to the robotics he could use, he sees the immature, expensive junk of an outsider’s eye. He’s vividly aware of the danger he might not structure the business or implement the technology in such a way as to be the guy who becomes profitable and grows first. He saw that it would take a lot of money and time just to prove out the concept and that it might take much longer to figure out the right business model. Meanwhile, his fledgling robotics company would be burning cash at the combined rate of a software, hardware, and an operations company with a direct sales force–not a very pretty proposition.
I didn’t really have anything to say to him on that front other than hackneyed cliches about iterating, pivoting, and the value of moving early. It really occurs to me that my friend is already following what little we know about how to build a robotics company. Be a great whatever-you-are first (medical device, logistics solution, toy, etc.) then have it be a robot. Don’t market the thing as a robot; market it as a new technology solution to a real problem that is worth money to solve. Be willing it iterate (fail on first attempts). Go to market with the least capability that you can get paid any money at all for. All great principles, but it seems like we’re still missing the kind of prescriptions that have developed for software.
The Lean Start-up movement, combined with movements like Agile Development have brought much more rigor to how software development in early stage companies is managed. More traditional software and engineer models are still applicable to projects where the desired outcome is well known. In most of my conversations with engineers, it seems like robotics engineering has not reached a similar stage of maturity. It is difficult for robotics engineers to communicate to business leaders when they will know something that allows for opportunities in business decision making, let alone accurately forecast the true cost of a development job.
The most successful robotics companies do a great job managing development. However, when you talk to their founders or engineering leads, they are often at a loss to explain what they did differently from failed efforts. They might explain how they avoided some basic pitfalls–like outsourcing design work–but they often have a very difficult time offering an affirmative description of what they did, why it worked, and how they kept the engineering process and the business on track towards the correct goal. If robotics is ever going to be the semi-conductors of the 80’s, web of the 90’s, or social and mobile of today, our industry will need to develop a compelling description of how to stay on track towards successful technology and business outcomes.
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