Rodney Allen Brooks (born 30 December 1954) is an Australian

roboticist Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science The Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science is made up of about 500 Australian scientists. Scientists judged by their peers to have made an exceptional contribution to knowledge in their field may be elected to Fellowship of the Academy ...

, author, and robotics entrepreneur, most known for popularizing the actionist approach to robotics. He was a Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

and former director of the

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

. He is a founder and former Chief Technical Officer of iRobot and co-founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of

Rethink Robotics Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics, Inc.) is a robotics company co-founded by Rodney Brooks and Ann Whittaker in 2008. In 2018 the assets of Rethink Robotics were bought by the German automation specialist Hahn Group, HAHN Group. In 202 ...

(formerly Heartland Robotics) and is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Robust.AI (founded in 2019).

Life

Brooks received an M.A. in pure mathematics from

Flinders University Flinders University, established as The Flinders University of South Australia is a public university, public research university based in Adelaide, South Australia, with a footprint extending across a number of locations in South Australia and ...

of South Australia. In 1981, he received a PhD in Computer Science from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

under the supervision of Thomas Binford. He has held research positions at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

and

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

and a faculty position at

. He joined the

faculty in 1984. He was Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the

. He was director of the

(1997–2007), previously the "Artificial Intelligence Laboratory". In 1997, Brooks and his work were featured in the film ''

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control ''Fast, Cheap & Out of Control'' is a 1997 documentary film by filmmaker Errol Morris. Summary The film profiles four subjects with extraordinary careers: Dave Hoover, a wild-animal tamer; George Mendonça, a topiary gardener at Green Animals ...

''.Beyond computation
a talk with Rodney Brooks, Edge, 2002 Brooks became a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

in 2004 for contributions to the foundations and applications of robotics, including establishing consumer and hazardous environment robotics industries.

Work

Academic work

Instead of

computation A computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that is well-defined. Common examples of computation are mathematical equation solving and the execution of computer algorithms. Mechanical or electronic devices (or, hist ...

as the ultimate

conceptual metaphor In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. An example of this is the understanding of quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "the pr ...

that helped

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

become a separate discipline in the scientific community, he proposed that ''action'' or ''

behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of Individual, individuals, organisms, systems or Artificial intelligence, artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or or ...

'' is more appropriate to be used in robotics. Critical of applying the computational metaphor, even to the fields where the action metaphor is more relevant, he wrote in 2008 that:

Some of my colleagues have managed to recast Pluto's orbital behavior as the body itself carrying out computations on forces that apply to it. I think we are perhaps better off using Newtonian mechanics (with a little Einstein thrown in) to understand and predict the orbits of planets and others. It is so much simpler.

In his 1990 paper, "Elephants Don't Play Chess", Brooks argued that for robots to accomplish everyday tasks in an environment shared by humans, their higher cognitive abilities, including abstract thinking emulated by symbolic reasoning, need to be based on the primarily

sensory-motor coupling Sensory-motor coupling is the coupling or integration of the sensory system and motor system. For a given stimulus, there is no one single motor command. "Neural responses at almost every stage of a sensorimotor pathway are modified at short and l ...

(action) with the environment, complemented by the proprioceptive sense which is a critical component in hand–eye coordination, pointing out that:

Over time there's been a realization that vision, sound-processing, and early language are maybe the keys to how our brain is organized.

Industrial work

Brooks was an entrepreneur before leaving academia to found Rethink Robotics. He was one of ten founders of

Lucid Inc. Lucid Incorporated was a Menlo Park, California, Menlo Park, California-based computer software development company. Founded by Richard P. Gabriel in 1984, it went bankrupt in 1994. History The first CEO was Tony Slocum, formerly of IntelliCorp ...

, and worked with them until the company's closure in 1993. Before Lucid closed, Brooks had founded iRobot with former students Colin Angle and

Helen Greiner Helen Greiner (born December 6, 1967) is a co-founder of iRobot and former CEO of CyPhy Work, Inc., a start-up company specializing in small multi-rotor drones for the consumer, commercial and military markets, and of Tertill Corporation. Grein ...

Robots

He experimented with off-the-shelf components, such as

Fischertechnik Fischertechnik is a brand of construction toy. It was invented by Artur Fischer and is produced by fischertechnik GmbH in Waldachtal, Waldachtal, Germany. Fans often refer to Fischertechnik as "FT" or "ft". It is used in education for teachin ...

and

Lego Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

, and tried to make robots self-replicate by putting together clones of themselves using the components. His robots include mini-robots used in

oil wells An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsatur ...

explorations without cables, the robots that searched for survivors at

Ground Zero A hypocenter or hypocentre (), also called ground zero or surface zero, is the point on the Earth's surface directly below a nuclear explosion, meteor air burst, or other mid-air explosion. In seismology, the hypocenter of an earthquake is its p ...

in New York, and the robots used in medicine doing

robotic surgery Robot-assisted surgery or robotic surgery are any types of surgical procedures that are performed using robotic systems. Robotically assisted surgery was developed to try to overcome the limitations of pre-existing minimally-invasive surgical ...

. ;Allen In the late 1980s, Brooks and his team introduced

Allen Allen, Allen's or Allens may refer to: Buildings * Allen Arena, an indoor arena at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee * Allen Center, a skyscraper complex in downtown Houston, Texas * Allen Fieldhouse, an indoor sports arena on the Univ ...

, a robot using

subsumption architecture Subsumption architecture is a reactive robotic architecture heavily associated with behavior-based robotics which was very popular in the 1980s and 90s. The term was introduced by Rodney Brooks and colleagues in 1986.Brooks, R. A., "A Robust Pro ...

. Brooks' work focused on engineering intelligent robots to operate in unstructured environments and understanding human intelligence through building humanoid robots. ;Baxter Introduced in 2012 by Rethink Robotics, an

industrial robot An industrial robot is a robot system used for manufacturing. Industrial robots are automated, programmable and capable of movement on three or more axes. Typical applications of robots include robot welding, welding, painting, assembly, Circu ...

named Baxter was intended as the robotic analogue of the early personal computer designed to safely interact with neighbouring human workers and be programmable for the performance of simple tasks. The robot stops if it encounters a human in the way of its robotic arm and has a prominent off switch that its human partner can push if necessary. Costs were projected to be the equivalent of a worker making $4 an hour.

AI

In June 2024, Brooks said GenAI is overrated.

Bibliography

* * * . * * Alternative * * * K. Warwick "Out of the Shady age: the best of robotics compilation", Review of Cambrian Intelligence: the early history of AI, by R A Brooks, Times Higher Education Supplement, p. 32, 15 September 2000. *
The Relationship Between Matter and Life
' (in Nature 409, pp. 409–411; 2001) * ''Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us'' (Pantheon, 2002) * * * Brooks contributed one chapter to ''Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building it'', Packt Publishing, 2018, , by the American futurist Martin Ford.

References

External links

*
Rethink Robotics
* * *
Rodney Brooks: Why we will rely on robots
(TED2013) *
Rodney Brooks: Robots will invade our lives
(TED2003)
Home page

Interview with Rodney Brooks by ''

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

''
The Past and Future of Behavior Based Robotics
Podcast Interview with Rodney Brooks by ''Talking Robots''
Intelligence Without Reason
seminal criticism of Von Neumann computing architecture
BBC article

CSAIL Rodney A. Brooks Biography

Rodney A. Brooks Biography

Rodney's Robot Revolution (2008)

Rodney Brooks on Artificial Intelligence
-

EconTalk ''EconTalk'' is a weekly economics podcast hosted by Russ Roberts. Roberts, formerly an economics professor at George Mason University, is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. On the podcast, Roberts typically interviews ...

podcast interview with Rodney Brooks. Released Sep 24, 2018. {{DEFAULTSORT:Brooks, Rodney 1954 births Living people Artificial intelligence researchers Australian atheists Australian computer scientists Australian roboticists Carnegie Mellon University faculty Australian cognitive scientists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2005 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science Fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering Flinders University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Researchers of artificial life Stanford University School of Engineering alumni The Futurist people American roboticists People from Adelaide