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2018年10月5日 | Time to read: 5 min
普拉薩德-阿凱拉博士，Drishti董事會的創始人和主席，正在創造他的第三個大規模的市場類別，使用技術來擴展人類的能力。在20世紀90年代，普拉薩德領導通用汽車公司的團隊建造了世界上第一個協作機器人（"cobots"，預計到2025年將成為一個120億美元的市場）。在21世紀初，作為社交網路先驅Spoke的聯合創始人，他設想並幫助建立了第一個大規模的社交圖譜--這個類別現在價值數萬億美元。今天，在Drishti，他正在努力將人工智慧的認知與人類在工廠中的靈活性相結合，形成人工智慧驅動的生產。普拉薩德在加州山景城辦公。
In the mid-1990s, I led the industry/academia team at General Motors that built the world’s first collaborative robots. It was hard work; most people even in robotics had not heard of a “cobot” (or, “intelligent assist devices” (IADs) as we referred to the broader category), knew what it was, much less how it could be useful. Our academic partners-in-crime, Northwestern Professors Michael Peshkin and Ed Colgate, founded Cobotics, Inc. (renamed CoMoCo, for Collaborative Motion Control, Inc.), the first startup in the cobot market, in 1996 while UC Berkeley Professor Hami Kazerooni went on to found Berkeley Bionics, renamed Ekso Bionics, later on). By the time I left to head back to the Valley and co-found the social networking pioneer Spoke Software, the word was out. Vendors like Fanuc, ABB, Gorbel and Stanley were producing early versions of product, and companies, including GM and Ford, were beginning to explore the use of cobots of different forms because they could see how useful and valuable this form of collaborative automation was on the factory floor.
Fast forward a decade, and Esben Østergaard, Kasper Støy and Kristian Kassow founded Universal Robotics in 2007, while Rodney Brooks and Ann Whittaker launched Rethink Robotics (then Heartland Robotics) in 2008 – and all previous cobot development efforts paled in comparison. Brooks’ track record and dynamism leant a celebrity power to his company. It’s indisputable how much Baxter and its little brother, Sawyer, changed the landscape and public dialogue around collaborative robots over the next ten years.
That’s what makes this week’s news about Rethink Robotics closing its doors such a shame, but it doesn’t come as a surprise. As I learned first-hand at Spoke, and as anyone who has worked in the startup world knows, it’s a hard road. And even after many successful years, companies can fail. Especially when you’re trying to define a category – to prove the value of a technology that has yet to be seen by the vast majority of your audience – the roadblocks are many, and the folks who emerge as victors are few.
Still, there are several takeaways we in the world of manufacturing automation can glean from Rethink’s journey, and use to help drive our own successes to the benefit of everyone in the factory:
It’s never a happy occasion to see a promising company with pioneering technology fail, especially one where a very dedicated and smart set of people have worked so hard. Luckily, Rethink’s end doesn’t mean the end of innovation in manufacturing, and I look forward to an exciting future for all of stripes of Industry 4.0 startups (including Drishti) that are attempting to help companies harness and evaluate data from tasks their machines and employees execute on the floor. The potential to impact GDP and human lives is incredible.
Our thanks and best wishes go to the pioneering team at Rethink, whom I personally applaud for moving the world of cobots forward.
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