Rodney Brooks: revolution in robotics
Huge breakthroughs await us in the development of robotics. This is what Rodney Brooks believes when he looks at the future of robots.
Rodney Brooks is founder of Heartland Robotics and Irobot Corp. So you could say that this man must know the future developments in robotics. Of course when you have two companies in robotics you must talk very positive about the future of robotics. But Rodney Brooks is also the former Director (1997 - 2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This puts his talk in another perspective (not a commecial one)!
There were zero ground robots in the US military in 2002. Now there are more then 10.000. There will be hundreds of thousands in not too long.
Brooks compares the developments of robotics with the personal computer. In the starting days of the PC we humans couldn't reach PC's. They stood behind glass and were not accessible. Now everyone can access a PC and has one or more. This will also happen with robotics according to Brooks. Nowadays robotics are still far away from humans but in the upcoming years we will see more robots on our streets. Robots will also become adaptable and will be more alike humans.
Now we could say that these kind of predictions aren't strange to us. Futurists always gave robotics a warm future. But nowadays technology is advanced enough to keep up with the promise.