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Why not a talent acquisition? iRobot has the best roboticists MIT has to offer, and a growing trove of patents. Apple isn't in the cleaning business now. But t

Why not a talent acquisition? iRobot has the best roboticists MIT has to offer, and a growing trove of patents. Apple isn't in the cleaning business now. But they weren't in the music business 10 years ago.

hop 16y ago
iRobot has the best roboticists MIT has to offer Really... they go to iRobot rather than NASA and the Joint propulsion Labratory, Boeing, Honda, Lockheed, DARPA, etc...? How do you think and iRobot's control system compares to an autonomous predator drone?
- thornstevens 16y ago
  Who has the most robots in our soldiers' hands in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who else has developed a robotic vacuum that sells in the millions, or a robotic mop that sells in the hundreds of thousands, or, frankly, any home robot that is not a toy and has sold more than 1 million copies? All of that takes serious engineering talent.
- robotresearcher 16y ago
  Some of them do, yes. For reference, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a NASA Lab, administered by Caltech. DARPA is a a funding agency and doesn't actually do any research itself. It generally employs only late-career scientists and engineers as program managers that hand out the money to researchers at actual labs at universities and companies. iRobot was started by Rodney Brooks, at the time the most famous roboticist in North America and Director of CS and AI at MIT, and his students. This team has attracted a lot of good talent over the years. Now the team has broken up and there has been little interesting robot development for a while. But the intelligent robot industry is still very small, and the good grads have to go somewhere. Outside university labs, the hot job recently has been at Willow Garage. (robot research prof here)
  - hop 16y ago
    Thanks, I am a mechanical engineer and worked on a DARPA challenge autonomous vehicle in college. These control systems get complicated very quick and I have much respect for the people working to conquer them.

hop 16y ago

iRobot has the best roboticists MIT has to offer Really... they go to iRobot rather than NASA and the Joint propulsion Labratory, Boeing, Honda, Lockheed, DARPA, etc...? How do you think and iRobot's control system compares to an autonomous predator drone?

thornstevens 16y ago
Who has the most robots in our soldiers' hands in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who else has developed a robotic vacuum that sells in the millions, or a robotic mop that sells in the hundreds of thousands, or, frankly, any home robot that is not a toy and has sold more than 1 million copies? All of that takes serious engineering talent.
robotresearcher 16y ago
Some of them do, yes. For reference, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a NASA Lab, administered by Caltech. DARPA is a a funding agency and doesn't actually do any research itself. It generally employs only late-career scientists and engineers as program managers that hand out the money to researchers at actual labs at universities and companies. iRobot was started by Rodney Brooks, at the time the most famous roboticist in North America and Director of CS and AI at MIT, and his students. This team has attracted a lot of good talent over the years. Now the team has broken up and there has been little interesting robot development for a while. But the intelligent robot industry is still very small, and the good grads have to go somewhere. Outside university labs, the hot job recently has been at Willow Garage. (robot research prof here)
- hop 16y ago
  Thanks, I am a mechanical engineer and worked on a DARPA challenge autonomous vehicle in college. These control systems get complicated very quick and I have much respect for the people working to conquer them.