Robust AI’s Carter robot is designed to complement human workers in warehouses, addressing fears of job replacement by enhancing productivity rather than replacing people.
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Despite fears about robots replacing humans at work, there are still plenty of things humans can do far better than machines. That’s fine with Robust AI, a startup building robots designed to complement what humans do best.The company’s mobile robot, named Carter, resembles a utility cart on wheels and is designed to fit seamlessly alongside humans in fast-changing warehouse and factory environments. Carter features a force-sensitive handlebar for easy guidance, an AI-powered vision system, and holonomic wheels for instant movement in any direction.As a result, humans can cut Carter off, push and pull it in any direction with one hand, and direct it with gestures or the onboard touch screen.The company’s robots are currently deployed in logistics warehouses and on factory floors, where they help humans while picking or stocking shelves and moving items across facilities autonomously.“In these environments, what really determines success is how the overall system performs,” explains Anthony Jules ’92, SM ’92, who co-founded the company with MIT Professor Emeritus Rodney Brooks. “The robot does some of the work, the people do some of the work, and the backend systems do some of the work. It’s that combination that determines how well your system performs. We believe it’s really important that people have an appropriate level of agency and input so that they’re always moving the system forward.”Collaborative robotsBrooks was a faculty member at MIT from 1984 until 2010 and served as the director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) from 1997 until 2007. While at MIT, he co-founded iRobot, which invented the popular Roomba vacuum and went public in 2005. Later, he co-founded the company Rethink Robotics, which also designed collaborative robots.Jules met Brooks as a graduate student at CSAIL in the 1990s. The two never worked together, but their labs were on the same floor. The pair kept in touch after Jules graduated and co-founded the
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