In 2008, I decided I wanted to begin a new venture, so I started Rethink Robotics. We build factory robots that a person can learn to train in just a few minutes. In May 2011, I stepped off the iRobot board.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The reason it has taken so long for the robotics industry to move forward is because people keep trying to make something that is cool but difficult to achieve rather than trying to find solutions to actual human problems. Technology can be extremely expensive if you don't focus.
If you wanted to design a robot that could learn as well as it possibly could, you might end up with something that looked a lot like a 3-year-old.
I ultimately got into robotics because for me, it was the best way to study intelligence.
The way that the robotics market is going to grow, at least in the home, is that we'll have a number of different special purpose robots.
There are an endless number of things to discover about robotics. A lot of it is just too fantastic for people to believe.
I'm such a robot when it comes to work.
We're seeing the arrival of conversational robots that can walk in our world. It's a golden age of invention.
One of the great things about the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, which my company iRobot designed, is that it's too cheap not to be autonomous.
It's hard not to love Roomba. Roomba had such an amazing impact on the field. When we launched, we asked people, 'Is it a robot?' and got an overwhelming no - 'robots' have arms and legs; they command data. There was a very strong perception that robots had to look like people.
We're going to become caretakers for the robots. That's what the next generation of work is going to be.