It’s not every day that New York Times columnist Tom Friedman covers a Boston startup. But today’s column is all about the launch of Baxter, the new robot unveiled this morning by Rethink Robotics. And that’s just a start. Baxter has already been covered by The New York Times news desk, The Wall Street Journal, and more. Rethink has officially been crowned one of Boston’s hottest startups.
None of that is surprising given the company’s story. Founded by an MIT professor and iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks and originally named Heartland Robotics, this very stealthy firm had already raised $62 million before most people had any idea what they were up to. Today, we get a look:
As Scott Kirsner, who’s been ahead of most everyone in publishing details about the company, has reported, Rethink wants to be the iPhone of robots. That means both that it should have an out-of-the-box intuitiveness and that it should act as a platform with a community of developers contributing software to enhance its capabilities. (The latter is something iRobot is working on, too.)
To the former point, Baxter can be “programmed” by someone walking it through a set of motions, without writing any code. The idea is to offer a robot that can work in manufacturing where robots were previously out of reach based price tag, flexibility, and know how.
It’s clear from the video that Rethink is pushing hard on the idea that Baxter doesn’t replace U.S. jobs, but makes them better. I can’t help but wonder if this is mostly a media strategy for the launch (one that seems to have worked), if it reflects the company’s core commitments, or if it is an acknowledgement that manufacturing is a somewhat sensitive political topic.
Will Baxter replace some jobs in manufacturing if adopted? Almost certainly. But it also enhances the productivity of the workers employed to “train” and manage it. In other words, it makes their time more valuable without requiring a prohibitively high bar for technical knowledge.
In any case, for the purposes of Boston’s tech scene, none of that is really the point. The point is simply that this is an impressive new entrant to the maturing robotics sector. We’ve got Rethink, iRobot, Kiva, Boston Dynamics, and more startups like Harvest Automation. Massachusetts is a hotbed for robotics. And as robotics software starts to open up a bit, I can’t help but hope we’ll excel there as well.
Come to think of it, the Commonwealth is also strong in advanced manufacturing, making Rethink – located in the Innovation District -the perfect fit for Boston.
