Rodney Brooks

Rethink Robotics

Rethink Robotics launched Baxter in 2012 as a collaborative industrial robot designed to work safely beside humans — using physical stoppage and manual override, not AI. It released Sawyer in 2015 for finer tasks, then went global with cobots in 2016. It ceased operations in October 2018. Its assets were sold. Its later relaunch attempts failed within a year. Its safety mechanisms worked. Its business model did not.