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Will Baxter be the Model T of the robotics industry?

nextbigfuture.com

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Re: Will Baxter be the Model T of the robotics industry?

#4

Post by busted »

I've seen a couple Baxter videos now and it seems that the robot works very slowly. I understand that it has built in safety to slow down when it sees that there are people around, but I'd love to see it doing something useful at full speed to see how efficient it is. Surely they've tested that.

Re: Will Baxter be the Model T of the robotics industry?

#5

Post by marshallp »

This isn't getting enough attention. They'll be releasing an sdk in a few months and hoping to start an "app store" like industry. This could potentially be the Netscape moment for service robotics (robots that take over retail shelf stacking, fast food, parts of nursing). Web/App developers should consider learning computer vision/machine learning and get in on this.

Re: Will Baxter be the Model T of the robotics industry?

#6

Post by marshallp »

busted wrote: post #4

I've seen a couple Baxter videos now and it seems that the robot works very slowly. I understand that it has built in safety to slow down when it sees that there are people around, but I'd love to see it doing something useful at full speed to see how efficient it is. Surely they've tested that.

Speed isn't the main aim of this. Industrial robotics has an arms race in speed and precision but this is instead a beginning of an arms race in "common sense" abilities, robots that can do the work of humans without specialized programming. It already seems to operate at human worker speed.

Re: Will Baxter be the Model T of the robotics industry?

#7

Post by waterlesscloud »

marshallp wrote: post #6
busted wrote: post #4

I've seen a couple Baxter videos now and it seems that the robot works very slowly. I understand that it has built in safety to slow down when it sees that there are people around, but I'd love to see it doing something useful at full speed to see how efficient it is. Surely they've tested that.

Speed isn't the main aim of this. Industrial robotics has an arms race in speed and precision but this is instead a beginning of an arms race in "common sense" abilities, robots that can do the work of humans without specialized programming. It already seems to operate at human worker speed.

Lots of basic repetitive tasks are economically viable to robotize when the robot costs $22k. This should be interesting.

Re: Will Baxter be the Model T of the robotics industry?

#8

Post by ChuckMcM »

marshallp wrote: post #5

This isn't getting enough attention. They'll be releasing an sdk in a few months and hoping to start an "app store" like industry. This could potentially be the Netscape moment for service robotics (robots that take over retail shelf stacking, fast food, parts of nursing). Web/App developers should consider learning computer vision/machine learning and get in on this.

This is more like the Apple II moment in Service Robotics rather than the Netscape moment. Baxter is a really cool robot, his end effectors are more limited so that will constrain his ability to add value. That said, like the Apple II which opened up computing to a whole lot of folks who would not have considered it something "they" could do, I expect Baxter to open up pick-n-place type robotics to folks who would not have considered this level of automation. My 'stress test' for these robots are that they are cheap enough to separate recyclables accurately on a moving conveyor. In order to do that you need a certain threshold of dexterity and frequency response (speed), so things that can do that can do lots of interesting things.
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