Robotics: Past, Present And Future

How do you figure out what robotics is going to look like in 2030, 2035, 2040, etc.?

Actually, five or ten years out is hard enough. Anyway, you could do worse than asking somebody who pioneered one of the most famous robotics designs of the past two decades.

At the IIA physical AI summit called Minds in Motion, at MIT’s Samberg Conference Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we got an excellent speech from Colin Angle, the creator of the vaunted Roomba, October 30. I wanted to include some of his remarks on robot design, now, as we try to answer these questions around physical AI.

To Boldly Go

Angle started out with a little tribute to the late Patrick Stewart:

“You gave us dreams,” he said. “You inspired us. So many of us are here because of the vision you helped create. You will be missed.”

As a fellow Trekkie, I say, bravo.

Next, Angle launched into a touching story about his employee, a man named Joe (you can hear all about it in the video,” who came up with something called a “rule 5:” defined by the axiom that “nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems.”

“When I think about AI, I think about Joe, I think about rule five, and I think about the fact that this is a moment in time filled with hype and craziness, and will neither be as good nor as bad as it might seem. It is an opportunity. It is a new tool to move us forward as a species. Things are absolutely changing. I think they’re changing slower than many imagine, but certainly the changes are profound.”

Roomba Time

Angle’s next idea had to do with eras of time.

“Roomba is about 25 years old,” he said, of his company’s flagship creation, “and it’s still just Roomba. Shouldn’t it be, like, using lasers, as opposed to brushes, and flying, hovering across surfaces? I mean, 25 years is like forever, right? It’s not. But it is driving change. AI is driving change. And certainly, we exist in a day with a toolkit which I would have (only) dreamed of back at the beginning of my career.”