Rodney Brooks

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Rodney Brooks

| birth_name = Rodney Allen Brooks

| image = Rodney Brooks in 2021.jpg

| caption = Brooks in 2021

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=yes|1954|12|30}}

| birth_place = Adelaide, Australia

| death_date =

| death_place =

| nationality = Australian

| field = Robotics

| alma_mater = Stanford University
Flinders University

| workplaces = Stanford University
MIT

| doctoral_students = Lynne Parker
Maja Matarić
Charles Lee Isbell Jr.
Cynthia Breazeal
Yoky Matsuoka
Holly Yanco

| awards = IJCAI Computers and Thought Award

| website = {{URL|rodneybrooks.com}}

}}

Rodney Allen Brooks (born 30 December 1954{{Cite news |title=Rodney Brooks {{!}} Biography, Robots, & Facts |language=en |work=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-Allen-Brooks |access-date=2022-12-02}}{{cite web|url=http://www.nndb.com/people/471/000128087/|title=Rodney Brooks|work=NNDB|access-date=23 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160825181942/http://www.nndb.com/people/471/000128087/|archive-date=25 August 2016}}) is an Australian roboticist, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, 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 and former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is a founder and former Chief Technical Officer of iRobot[http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/companies.html Companies – CSAIL People – MIT] and co-founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics) and is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Robust.AI (founded in 2019).{{Cite web|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2020/10/28/startup-robustai-founded-by-cognitive-scientist-gary-marcus-and-roboticist-rodney-brooks-raises-15-million-to-make-building-smarter-robots-easier/?sh=7dc89916f4b8|title=Startup Founded by Cognitive Scientist Gary Marcus and Roboticist Rodney Brooks Raises $15 Million to Make Building Smarter Robots Easier|website=Forbes |last1=Feldman |first1=Amy }}

Life

Brooks received an M.A. in pure mathematics from Flinders University of South Australia.{{cite web | url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rodney-Allen-Brooks | title=Rodney Brooks | Biography, Robots, & Facts | Britannica | date=18 September 2023 }} In 1981, he received a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University under the supervision of Thomas Binford.{{mathgenealogy|name=Rodney Allan Brooks|id=61090}}. He has held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT and a faculty position at Stanford University. He joined the MIT faculty in 1984. He was Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (1997–2007), previously the "Artificial Intelligence Laboratory".

In 1997, Brooks and his work were featured in the film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control.[http://edge.org/conversation/beyond-computation Beyond computation]: a talk with Rodney Brooks, Edge, 2002

Brooks became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for contributions to the foundations and applications of robotics, including establishing consumer and hazardous environment robotics industries.{{cite web |title=NAE website-Dr Rodney A. Brooks |url=https://www.nae.edu/30520/Dr-Rodney-A-Brooks |website=NAE |access-date=5 September 2021}}

Work

=Academic work=

File:Rodney Brooks ML40.jpg

Instead of computation as the ultimate conceptual metaphor that helped artificial intelligence become a separate discipline in the scientific community, he proposed that action or behavior 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.{{Cite web|last=Brooks|first=Rodney|date=2008|title=Computation as the Ultimate Metaphor ("What have you changed your mind about?")|url=https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11249|access-date=2021-10-31|website=www.edge.org}}

In his 1990 paper, "Elephants Don't Play Chess",{{cite journal | last=Brooks|first=RA| title= Elephants don't play chess| journal= Robotics and Autonomous Systems| volume= 6|issue=1–2| year =1990| pages= 139–159| url =http://www.liralab.it/teaching/ROBOTICA/docs/brooks.1990.pdf| doi=10.1016/s0921-8890(05)80025-9|citeseerx=10.1.1.588.7539}} 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 (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., and worked with them until the company's closure in 1993.{{Citation needed|date=October 2021}} Before Lucid closed, Brooks had founded iRobot with former students Colin Angle and Helen Greiner.

=Robots=

File:Caught Coding (9690512888).jpg, the photographer.]]

He experimented with off-the-shelf components, such as Fischertechnik and Lego, 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 explorations without cables, the robots that searched for survivors at Ground Zero in New York, and the robots used in medicine doing robotic surgery.

;Allen

In the late 1980s, Brooks and his team introduced Allen, a robot using subsumption architecture. {{As of|2012}} Brooks' work focused on engineering intelligent robots to operate in unstructured environments and understanding human intelligence through building humanoid robots.{{Citation needed|date=October 2021}}

;Baxter

Introduced in 2012 by Rethink Robotics, an industrial robot 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.{{cite news |title=A Robot With a Reassuring Touch |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/a-robot-with-a-delicate-touch.html |access-date=18 September 2012 |newspaper=The New York Times |date=18 September 2012 |author=John Markoff}}

=AI=

In June 2024, Brooks said GenAI is overrated.{{cite news |last=Miller |first=Ron |url=https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/29/mit-robotics-pioneer-rodney-brooks-thinks-people-are-vastly-overestimating-generative-ai/ |title=MIT robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks thinks people are vastly overestimating generative AI |work= Toggle the table of contents TechCrunch |date=2024-06-29 |accessdate=2024-07-01 }}

Bibliography

{{cite journal |author=Brooks, Rodney |date=March 1986 |title=A robust layered control system for a mobile robot |journal=IEEE Journal of Robotics and Automation |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=14–23 |url= |doi=10.1109/jra.1986.1087032|hdl=1721.1/6432 |s2cid=10542804 |hdl-access=free }}
{{citation |year=1989 |author=Rodney Brooks |title=A Robot that Walks; Emergent Behaviors from a Carefully Evolved Network |journal=Neural Computation |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=253–262 |doi=10.1162/neco.1989.1.2.253 |hdl=1721.1/6500 |s2cid=33987248 |access-date=24 August 2010|url=http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/AIM-1091.pdf |hdl-access=free }}
{{Citation | last = Brooks | first = Rodney | title = Elephants Don't Play Chess | url=http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/elephants.pdf | year =1990 | author-link=Rodney Brooks | journal = Robotics and Autonomous Systems | volume=6 | issue = 1–2 | pages = 3–15 | doi = 10.1016/S0921-8890(05)80025-9| access-date=30 August 2007 | citeseerx = 10.1.1.588.7539 }}.
{{citation |date=January 1991 |author=Rodney Brooks |title=Intelligence without representation |journal=Artificial Intelligence |volume=47 |issue=1–3 |pages=139–159 |doi=10.1016/0004-3702(91)90053-M |citeseerx=10.1.1.308.6537 |s2cid=207507849 }}
{{citation |year=1995 |editor=Steels, Luc |editor2=Brooks, Rodney |title=The Artificial Life Route to Artificial Intelligence: Building Embodied, Situated Agents |place=Hillsdale, New Jersey |publisher=Lawrence Erlbaum Associates |isbn=978-0-8058-1519-1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hh7x98OpzzsC |access-date=24 August 2010}} Alternative {{ISBN|0-8058-1518-X}}
{{citation |year=1996 |editor=Brooks, Rodney A. |editor2=Maes, Pattie |title=Artificial Life: Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems |place=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-52190-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8a6uC0BbyjAC |access-date=24 August 2010}}
{{citation |year=1999 |author=Rodney Brooks |title=Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI |publisher=MIT Press |isbn= 978-0-262-52263-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=btvRZ5rj51EC&q=%22cambrian+intelligence%22 |access-date=24 August 2010}}
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.
[http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/nature.pdf The Relationship Between Matter and Life] (in Nature 409, pp. 409–411; 2001)
Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us (Pantheon, 2002) {{ISBN|0-375-42079-7}}
{{citation |year=2007 |editor1=Thrun, Sebastian |editor2=Brooks, Rodney Allen |editor3=Durrant-Whyte, Hugh |title=Robotics Research: Results of the 12th International Symposium ISSR |place=Berlin & Heidelberg |publisher=Springer-Verlag |access-date=24 August 2010|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0Y4bdwbOLKkC |isbn=9783540481102 }}
{{cite journal |author=Brooks, Rodney |date=May–Jun 2013 |title=Robots at work : towards a smarter factory |journal=The Futurist |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=24–27 |url= }}
Brooks contributed one chapter to Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building it, Packt Publishing, 2018, {{ISBN|978-1-78-913151-2}}, by the American futurist Martin Ford.{{cite news |url = https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamfalcon/2018/11/30/this-is-the-future-of-ai-according-to-23-world-leading-ai-experts/#60939b2b62f2 |title = This Is The Future Of AI According To 23 World-Leading AI Experts|last=Falcon|first=William |date=November 30, 2018|website=Forbes |access-date=March 20, 2019 }}

References

External links

{{commons-inline}}
[http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/ Rethink Robotics]
{{IMDb name|112227}}
{{TED speaker}}
[http://www.ted.com/talks/rodney_brooks_why_we_will_rely_on_robots Rodney Brooks: Why we will rely on robots] (TED2013)
[http://www.ted.com/talks/rodney_brooks_on_robots Rodney Brooks: Robots will invade our lives] (TED2003)
[http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/ Home page]
[http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brooks/brooks_p1.html The Deep Question] Interview with Rodney Brooks by Edge
[http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/2007/04/rodney-brooks-past-and-future-of.html The Past and Future of Behavior Based Robotics] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070630151814/http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/2007/04/rodney-brooks-past-and-future-of.html |date=30 June 2007 }} Podcast Interview with Rodney Brooks by Talking Robots
[http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/AIM-1293.pdf Intelligence Without Reason] seminal criticism of Von Neumann computing architecture
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/2202825.stm BBC article]
[http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/ CSAIL Rodney A. Brooks Biography]
[http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/cog.html MIT: Cog Shop]
[http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/bio.shtml Rodney A. Brooks Biography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070305211633/http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/bio.shtml |date=5 March 2007 }}
[http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/publications.html Rodney A. Brooks Publications]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1350504/ Rodney's Robot Revolution (2008)]
[http://www.econtalk.org/rodney-brooks-on-artificial-intelligence/ Rodney Brooks on Artificial Intelligence] - EconTalk podcast interview with Rodney Brooks. Released Sep 24, 2018.