Rodney Brooks Urges More Robotics

In the most recent MIT Technology Review, Rodney Brooks, robotics pioneer, founder of iRobot, and Heartland Robotics writes that in order for American business to succeed, our markets must not relent on producing the 'small stuff.'

Making ordinary stuff domestically keeps transportation costs low and creates short supply chains that respond quickly to customers. More significant, it offers the chance to empower factory workers with information technology, just as the personal IT revolution has empowered office workers.

Moreover, Brooks explains how the present-day factory is similar to the computer industry prior to the PC revolution.  When computers went from mainframes to individual desktop PCs, productivity, innovation and efficiency followed.

The same democratization of information flow and automation has yet to come to manufacturing. By analogy, our current industrial systems and robots are mainframes, and advanced-manufacturing innovation is concentrated on supercomputers. But the building blocks needed to create the PCs of manufacturing abound; these will be the robotics and automation tools for the masses. We can create tools for ordinary workers, with intuitive interfaces, extensive use of vision and other sensors, and even the Web-based distribution mechanisms of the IT industry.

If the rumour mill is correct, Heartland Robotics may have a lot to do with this advanced-manufacturing model in the near future.


http://www.technologyreview.com/article/39324/