December 2012

A humanoid robot with ‘common sense’, designed to work safely alongside its human co-workers on factory production lines, has been unveiled in the US. Baxter, the robot is priced at USD 22,000 and will go on sale in October. It could apply common sense, adapt to its environment and be trained in less than 30 minutes to complete specific tasks, by workers without robotic expertise, its makers say. Currently factory robots tend to work separately to humans, often in cages, the ‘BBC News’ reported.

Rodney Brooks, Rethink Robotics founder and former director of the MIT Computer and Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, said that he hoped Baxter represented a “new concept in manufacturing.”

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