Rodney Brooks could be aiming low.

Rodney Brooks is making news by keeping his mouth shut. After leaving iRobot (so long, Roomba!), and retiring from MIT, one of the most famous names in robotics has been silently building his new company, Heartland Robotics. Silent being the key word here. Besides regular updates on the millions of dollars he’s raised, Brooks isn’t sharing any details about the first (unnamed) robot the startup will produce. Heartland’s website makes bold claims for their mystery bot, saying it “will change the definition of how and where robots can be used, dramatically expanding the robot marketplace.” But what will it be? Scott Kirsner at The Boston Globe spoke with some of the select few that had been invited to Heartland’s Cambridge office and had seen the unnamed bot demonstrated. The consensus is that Brooks is building a robot with two arms that can be trained to perform a task simply by moving it physically. And it will cost around $5000. Pretty incredible. At that price point a completely new echelon of companies could afford to augment and replace workers with robots.

Here’s a selection from Kirsner’s article:

Visitors to Heartland describe a robot that looks like a human from the waist up, with a torso; either one or two arms with grippers; and a camera where you might expect the head to be. The robot is on a rolling base rather than legs; it can be moved around but doesn’t move autonomously. The arm and gripper can be quickly trained to do a repetitive task just by moving them, no software code required.

And I’m told the robot has a sense for when people get close, so it doesn’t pose a safety hazard to humans working alongside it.

The company is apparently targeting a $5,000 price point.

The Obrero Robot, developed by Rodney Brooks and Eduardo Torres-Jara at MIT, is still my favorite contender for what Heartland Robotics' unnamed bot will be based upon.

Most of this jives with what we’ve been expecting from Heartland Robotics. The last big project Brooks seemed to be associated with at MIT was a compliant robotic hand that could pick up delicate objects quickly and easily. (The robot described above sounds almost exactly like “Obrero“, the robot from the MIT project.) Heartland’s website has also stated that one of their goals is “making manufacturers more efficient, their workers more productive and keeping jobs from migrating to low-cost regions.” A $5000 robot that can perform manual tasks would definitely give manufacturers an alternative to shipping jobs overseas. The fact that you can “program” the bot simply by moving it through a task would allow it to be used by people with little to no technical background. If this really is what Heartland is working on, it seems custom fit to automate an untapped sector of manufacturing.

I should point out that nothing described in Kirsner’s article is outside our current levels of technology. Robots taught through manipulation have been around for a while, and we reviewed a fairly sophisticated example more than a year ago. As we said, Brooks already has experience with compliant arms and hands. Sufficient computer vision packets are available via open source libraries like OpenCV. All the pieces seem to be in place. The real story is that Brooks and Heartland may be assembling those pieces into a robot that can be produced on a mass scale and on the cheap. $5000 is an amazing price point. Not cheap enough for home use, probably, but still very accessible to small businesses. Hopefully Brooks and Heartland robotics will break their silence soon and give us a look at what they’ve been developing behind closed doors. It doesn’t have to look cool, Rodney, just show us that it works. That will be exciting enough, I assure you.

[image credit: MIT CSAIL]
[source: Scott Kirsner, Boston.com (The Boston Globe), Heartland Robotics]

$20 million richer, but no clearer on what they are actually producing, Heartland remains a tantalizing mystery to investors.

What do Roombas and Kindles have in common? They’re fueling the next generation of industrial robots. Rodney Brooks, one of the founders of iRobot, has been developing his new company, Heartland Robotics, for the past few years. Recently Heartland announced it had raised $20 million in series B funding. Among the second round of financiers is returning investor Bezos Enterprises, the personal fund of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. According to Brooks, Heartland Robotics will revolutionize the field of industrial robots, moving us away form big bulky machines that are dangerous to be around. The working robot of the future will be safer, smarter, and cheaper. At least, that’s Heartland’s plan. We’ve yet to see a hint, let alone a working prototype, of what the new company is developing. Still, with Brooks’ impressive history in robotics, and with a growing pile of capital to draw upon, Heartland Robotics may be able to live up to its claims.

As we’ve mentioned in our past Heartland coverage, it looks like Brooks may be building off of a humanoid grasping arm called Obrero. Frustratingly, no one from the new company has confirmed that premise or proposed alternatives. In a general way, however, Brooks made his thoughts on the current stand of manufacturing robots clear in a presentation to Maker Faire in 2009. I’ve shown parts of this before so I just want to share a brief clip (see the following) where he addresses ways to improve robots. I’m not sure what Heartland is building, but judging from these comments they are probably focusing on visual and audio recognition, and pairing that to improvements in dexterity.

Even without knowing exactly what Heartland is up to the internet media as well as investor groups seem to believe its potential is remarkably big. That perception is enhanced by some of the over-the-top rhetoric coming out of the company. Brooks and iRobot have been pivotal players in US robotics, but these claims seem grandoise even for him. I’ll leave you to mull over the ones below on your own. Can Heartland, or any single company, enact this kind of innovation in industrial robotics? Too early to say…but if they succeed it’s going to cause some profound and wonderful changes to the way we produce everything.

Our robots will be intuitive to use, intelligent and highly flexible. They’ll be easy to buy, train, and deploy and will be unbelievably inexpensive. Heartland Robotics will change the definition of how and where robots can be used, dramatically expanding the robot marketplace.
—Rodney Brooks, Heartland Robotics Press Release 11/30/2010

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It used to be the stuff of science fiction. Now it’s simply science. Robotics has advanced to the point where industrial robots are no longer the sole province of a few big manufacturers in a handful of industries. Soon any manufacturer will be able – quickly, affordably, with no special technical skills – to acquire a robot and integrate it into the production process.
— Taken from the Heartland Robotics website.

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Robots will change the way we work.

They will have intelligence and awareness. They will be teachable, safe and affordable. They will make us productive in ways we never imagined.

Robots will reinvigorate industry and inject new life into the economy. Making businesses more competitive. Keeping jobs from moving overseas. Demonstrating the power of American ingenuity.

Robots will change how we think about manufacturing. And Heartland will change how we think about robots.
— Taken from the Heartland Robotics website.

[image credit: Heartland Robotics]
[source: Heartland Robotics, Press Release (PDF)]

Brooks left MIT. Heartland may be ready to take off.

Rodney Brooks is one of the founders of iRobot, and an influential figure in the world of robotics. For the past 26 years he’s been a professor at MIT, but that changes starting July 1st. According to Xconomy, Brooks is formally retiring from MIT, at age 55, the earliest possible time at which he can become a professor emeritus. Seemingly in good health and good standing at the University, it is very likely that Brooks is leaving MIT to focus on his new venture: Heartland Robotics. The robotics startup aims to bring human-like robots to the workplace. With Brooks’ full attention now resting on it, Heartland Robotics is a company to watch.

Brooks, Colin Angle, and Helen Greiner started iRobot back in 1990. They since have built it into a robotics empire, selling more than 2.5 million of their Roomba vacuum cleaners and working on dozens of different projects in fields as diverse as sea-exploration and army intelligence. But Brooks is more than just a founder of a major robotics firm, he’s also a top innovator of the field. His behavioral approach to programming robots defined the archetype of household and office bots for years. His future ideas could be likewise definitive.

Back in 2008, Brooks left his position as Chief Technology Officer at iRobot, presumably to give him more time to focus on his work at Heartland. Now that his duties at MIT are also ending, it’s likely to facilitate an even bigger change in the robotics firm. The only question I have: is Brooks leaving MIT because Heartland is ready to ramp up, or is he leaving because Heartland desperately needs his attention to keep from failing? Either way, we can probably expect news to come out of the Massachusetts-based company rather soon.

In 2009 Brooks gave a talk at Maker Faire about how robots can be, and need to be, adapted to enter into human workplaces. While not directly about Heartland Robotics, the talk gives some great insight into Brooks’ outlook. Check it out in the video from Fora.Tv below.

When we reviewed Heartland Robotics back in September of last year, the main focus of their work was the Obrero robot. Developed in large part by grad student Eduardo Torres-Jara, the Obrero is a new model for gentler robotic limbs. It can pick up delicate objects easily and is still nimble enough to work in practical applications. This gives the robot the potential to work in human-environments, interacting with us without the fear of a crushed hand or damaged equipment.

Curiously, I can no longer find public videos of the Obrero robot in action. The associated channel on YouTube seems to have been removed or restricted and the video we linked to in our previous story is now private. While this certainly could be just a house-keeping type error, it may mean that Heartland is moving towards market and doesn’t want information available too soon.

Heartland seems to still be operating in stealth mode, and as such it’s hard to predict what (if anything) the company may produce in the next few years. Yet Brooks’ record for inventive engineering stands on its own. When he and his partners started iRobot it was with the hopes of bringing robots into the mainstream. I think they succeeded rather well. Now, Brooks and Heartland want to expand robot use into every level of manufacturing and human work. Could he succeed again? Not sure I would bet against him.

If you have any tips or information about what Heartland is up to, please do let us know!

[image credit: MIT]
[video credit: ForaTv]
[source: Xconomy]

Rodney Brooks (right) helped Eduardo Torres-Jara (left) develop the Obrero bot. We could see a robot like this emerge as the flagship product for Brooks' new company: Heartland Robotics.

What do you do after you’ve climbed a mountain? Climb another one. Rodney Brooks, MIT professor, robotic guru, and co-founder of iRobot is developing another robotics company, Heartland Robotics. Along with Helen Greiner and Colin Angle, Brooks helped iRobot become a household name with the development of the widely popular vacuum bot, Roomba. Now Brooks is looking to improve the capabilities of the average worker with a new robot and a new robot company. Obrero, is a humanoid-like bot with a hand developed for sensitive manipulation, see the video below, and seems likely to be developed into Heartland’s chief product. The questions on everyone’s mind: can Brooks strike gold again, and will Obrero become the next Roomba?

In some cases, robotics have already entered and dominated the commercial workforce. As we’ve said before, KIVA, FlexPicker, and desktop dispensing bots are at the top of their specialized fields. On the retail side, Roomba is still a popular product after 7 years. Brooks may be able to blend the two fields by combining industrial level capabilities with retail-level prices.

As you can see in the video, Obrero is a robot with a sensitive hand. It’s delicate enough to hold onto those cookies and not break a one. That’s important to us cookie lovers, but also to anyone who hopes to work along side a machine without losing a limb. It’s unclear if Brooks aims to adapt the robot to a particular level of manufacturing or even if Obrero, in its current incarnation, will serve as the key product of Heartland Robotics. The technologies involved, sensitive manipulation and object recognition, could be adapted into different robots in the future with a wide range of possible uses.

Though Brooks’ career spans decades of outstanding robotic accomplishments, he never makes his achievements alone. Eduardo Torres-Jones, one of MIT’s CSAIL graduate students, developed Obrero (which in Spanish means ‘worker’) under Brooks’ guidance. Heartland Robotics already has its top brass organized, but they are still looking for many senior positions. Those interested should check out the career listings on the company website.

It’s still too early to tell how Heartland will fare, but when one of the people from iRobot starts talking new companies, I start to listen. More than 2 million Roombas have been sold worldwide. If Brooks can capture just some of that popularity with his next venture, we’re going to be seeing his robots become part of the industrial landscape.

And if he can’t get Heartland off the ground? We’re still going to see a lot more robots in jobs that used to belong to humans. Robotic workforces have some amazing advantages that are too profitable to ignore. But blue-collar types shouldn’t lose hope, there’s a new paradigm that I think Brooks and others are working towards: the human-machine worker. Why settle for a robot or a human when a human working with a robot gives you maximized results? Getting biology and machinery to work together with all the perks and none of the disadvantages is a mountain of a task. And I have no doubt someone is going to climb it.

[photo credit: Patsy Stampson]