Director of M.I.T.'s prestigious Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and arguably the world's most important figure in robotics, Rodney Brooks is a technology visionary, a ground-breaking scientist, and a creative entrepreneur. If there is a "leading edge" in the world of technology, his spectacular career has been spent exploring it.
Brooks has played a major role in some of the most exciting, state-of-the-art inventions in a field bursting with invention. The company he founded, iRobot, sent a robot to Mars to collect samples for NASA, helped create the Predator robot aircraft for use by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recently brought the first commercial robot to market (named Roomba, it weighs less than 6 lbs., sells for $199, and cleans floors). By deftly combining the latest artificial intelligence technology with easy-to-use interfaces, Brooks has developed robots for government, industry, scientific research, and kids who want to have fun.
Indeed, fun is never far away when Brooks, a lively speaker, explains his passion for invention and discovery. "A voluble Australian," according to Time Magazine, "he's famous for finding radical, counterintuitve approaches to intractable problems".
To the general public, Brooks is best known for his popular book, Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us and for his role in the underground movie classic, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (the movie's title derives from Brooks' iconoclastic advice to NASA concerning the kinds of robots to develop for use in outer space). He has been a frequent guest on numerous television and radio programs, including Good Morning, America, the Discovery Channel, and NPR Science Friday.
