Former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Rodney Brooks recently spoke to MIT students about the robotics technologies that he helped develop and how they will look primitive compared to future robots. Brooks' first major contribution to the field came with the idea of building swarms of tiny, inexpensive robots with autonomous control systems. Brooks also helped develop Sojourner, the first mobile robotic device on Mars. In addition, Brooks worked with other MIT researchers to develop robots that watch people's facial expressions and gestures and make inferences about their meaning and emotional state. In the future, Brooks thinks that robots could revolutionize manufacturing. He says smaller, nimbler, more responsive robots could work alongside people, helping them with tasks. Brooks predicts that future robots will compare to today's industrial robots in much the same way that an iPhone compares to an earlier, room-sized mainframe computer. However, he says they are not likely to closely resemble humans. “If you make them too human like, people’s expectations go up, and they’re easily disappointed,” Brooks says. “You don’t want to make it look like Einstein!”
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