STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 11 March 2013

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8. Could This Robot Save Your Job? by NINA GREGORY

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/03/09/173841848/could-this-robot-save-your-job?ft=1&f=1001

The man who invented Roomba, the robotic vacuum, is back — this time, with Baxter. Rodney Brooks, roboticist and entrepreneur, brought Baxter, his latest robot, to the TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., last week. Brooks' latest company, Rethink Robotics, describes Baxter as a collaborative manufacturing robot. Brooks showed how Baxter, which costs $22,000 per model, can work alongside humans — not replace them — to do simple, repetitive tasks.

Brooks is the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus) at MIT, where he also used to run the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His idea is that Baxter can help, for example, aging factory workers do their jobs more efficiently. He told the TED audience that after this generation ages out of factory work, they tell him, they don't want their children to carry on their work...According to Brooks, Baxter is not a threat to human jobs, as there are certain tasks that are hard for a robot to do that a human can do better — things like quality assurance or small assembly where things like sensing tension are important.

In Brooks' world, the robot can do the mundane, repetitive tasks, the human can do the tasks it excels at, and together they are more productive.

And Baxter can also be used outside the factory, doing things like helping caregivers and the elderly do daily tasks. Brooks describes a future in which a robot like Baxter that is easy to control and teach can give not just factory workers a hand but elderly people dignity as they age and a hand when they need one...

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