
Rethink Robotics shuts down - ph0rque
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17935820/rethink-robotics-shuts-down-baxter-sawyer-robot-cobots
======
notnot
Isn't making a robot that looks like a human to replace a human's job a bit
like making a mechanical horse to fulfill our transportation needs?

Having worked with robotics for years I can say the amount of setup work that
goes into installing fully-functional hardware and software and getting a
robotic process running smoothly is enormous. The basic idea is that
everything, the robot, all the hardware, all the firmware/software, the end-
effector, the workpieces, the sensors, etc. is rigidly-defined and over-spec'd
so that with all the tolerance stackup and after all the integration and
process debugging work you set it and DON'T CHANGE IT for as long as possible.
The chaos that ensues from one little component changing it's behavior can be
enormous.

The notion of "smart" robots that you can just slap down or that can just
handle all sorts of unknowns and adjust themselves to changes to me always
seemed like a really, really big challenge, maybe not as challenging as a
driverless car but definitely more of a "general AI" problem.

I'm sure someone has coined the term but there must be some kind of "uncanny
valley" of intelligence: a little intelligence (e.g. the PID controllers that
actually run robots) is great, a lot of intelligence (fully-blown general AI)
is great (if you can get it), but what's in the middle may not be worth the
while. Getting the answer correctly 99% of the time doesn't work if you need
99.9% success rate.

From an investment standpoint I would be looking for companies with a REALLY
specific well-defined problem that "medium AI" could solve rather than someone
who's claiming to take medium AI and apply it vaguely/generally.

I guess that's my take away from this: work on specifying the problem before
you work on the solution.

~~~
colordrops
I see current AI to be like donkeys, and the middling AI you speak of as
chimps. There's a reason we domesticated donkeys and not chimps.

The autopilot feature of Teslas is a lot like a donkey. It mostly handles
itself but is stupid and needs a lot of monitoring. Using autopilot feels a
lot like sitting on a cart and pulling the ropes on the donkey every once in a
while.

~~~
leetcrew
imagine the chaos that would have ensued in the ancient world if donkeys could
pull carts at over 80mph.

------
Animats
It's not that the concept is a failure. It's that Rethink, the company, is a
failure. Universal Robotics in Denmark is doing something very similar, but
they have over 25,000 installed robots and distributors in 50 countries. They
also have a robot arm that is a nice piece of mechanical engineering, and
retains its precision over a very large number of cycles.

The coming thing is robots as a service, paid by the hour. Hirebotics offers
that. They own the robots. They set them up. They fix them. You pay them for
each hour of use, like an employee.

Vision for robots today works well for semi-structured situations. If you know
what the parts look like, and can see the parts and target location reasonably
well, you can probably get a vision system to guide a robot arm to put things
where they're supposed to go. The fixturing no longer has to be so rigid that
a robot can do the job blind. The systems that do this are often just
convolving a stored image of the target against a camera image of the area
that contains the target. This is 1970s technology, but we have enough cheap
compute power now to make it work fast.

------
zplizzi
I have been working with the Sawyer arm for the past few months and it's a
really nice piece of hardware - far better than the Universal Robots arms that
it competes with, while being a similar price. The software is also far ahead
of the crappy 2000's era interface of the UR arms, and they have a nice ROS-
integrated SDK for people who want to go farther with it. I was really
disappointed to see them shut down as we were hoping to buy several more in
the next few months.

------
javiramos
I was an intern at Rethink (back then, Heartland Robotics) 2010~2011, it was
an exciting place to work at. There were ~10 employees when I joined, and ~40
when I left.

One of the early product mistaked they made was focusing way too much on low-
cost. They compromised many necessary performance specs (repeatability, speed
etc.) just to be able to make the robot out of plastic. They eventually
pivoted to their second generation robot, Sawyer, which was made out of casted
metal components. This gave the robot much better performance but I guess that
it was too late.

~~~
gisely
I would really love to hear why performance specs you mention are still
necessary for robotics applications. Repeatability and speed certainly seem
useful industrial robotics applications, but low cost also seems critical to
enabling broader use of robots. I am particularly interested in the
possibility that modern algorithms (e.g. deep reinforcement learning) can
compensate for not having completely repeatable behaviors from a robot by
using sensory feedback to create behaviors that reliable despite their
variability. Additionally, materials with higher elasticity (e.g. plastics
instead of metal) might allow some previous impossible efficiencies, e.g. by
storing potential energy in the links and then releasing it at the right time.
Is it just too soon for these sorts of approaches?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Compromise on stiffness and rigidity in a servo system means the thing jitters
about like a squirrel on speed. Robots need to be smooth, and there's precious
little you can do in your controls to compensate for system instability.
Precision comes along almost for free once you have that rigidity.

They didn't get the basics right. Special sauce on top needs to have a solid
foundation.

And that's why I have an Aubo robot in my conference room today, and why I was
able to tune in a 250kg payload 1995-vintage ABB on Tuesday, while these guys
are shutting down.

~~~
balfirevic
> and why I was able to tune in a 250kg payload 1995-vintage ABB on Tuesday

What does that mean?

~~~
markbnj
ABB is a major supplier of industrial robots, so I assume the poster meant
installing/setting up a used 1995 model capable of handling 250kg.

~~~
jacobush
Or tune in a 250kg payload on such a robot - I can imagine the motion
programming might have to be tweaked to swing right. I don't know what such a
heave payload might be - maybe some heavy part to be welded.

------
crsv
Two bridges into a down round on their series E, these guys have been bleeding
money for years. The VCs gave them ten years to find a sustainable path and
they just never took off. This is just how it goes. It’s probably for the
best, and 10 years in any venture is a fair shot.

------
fermienrico
I work in robotics field and I always thought that collaborative robots were
cool in trade show booths but beyond that they had limited use. I've not seen
many of these things used in our industry (semiconductor) or any other friends
who work in various industries.

ABB lead the campaign on these as if they are going to revolutionize
manufacturing lines where humans & machines will work together. That never
happened just like 3D printing never shook the world as it promised it would.

~~~
chrisweekly
> "just like 3D printing never shook the world as it promised it would"

Additive orthopedics are a pretty big deal to people who need, say, an ankle
replacement.

And it's way too soon to say something like that, at least absent a "yet"
modifier.

~~~
jsemrau
While 3D printing found home on a value adding niche, it's still far away from
what could be done with the technology.

~~~
ethbro
Honestly, the biggest thing holding 3D printing back seems to be lack of broad
access to co-op hackerspaces with top-of-the-line machines.

And I don't mean in SF. I mean in Small Town, Kansas, sponsored by the local
high school, library, and whoever else.

Buying one for home use is a dalliance for the upper middle class. But
democratized access to technology would be far more effective.

Sharing an actual structural, metal 3D printer seems so much more useful than
having 20x plastic-only home machines.

~~~
jonathankoren
Of course, there's always Shapeways.

------
syntaxing
Kind of sad to see them shut down. Been following them since the Baxter robot
came out. Unfortunately, the current market just does not have a high demand
for highly flexible robots. Most of the fully automated lines are highly
specialized lines. Company invest hundreds of millions, with the expectation
of maintaining the line for years. It's usually simpler and cheaper to use
standard actuators with multiple stations rather than a complex robotic arm.
However, the couple of applications from Universal Robotics and Kuka is pretty
cool to see.

------
TFortunato
Sad to see them go. I spent just under a year there ~2 years ago doing
embedded systems, right before some big layoffs, and I really had a great time
there.

It's a great group of people, and I wish them all the best. Judging by the
amount of recruiter calls and emails I got today after the news broke
(apparently working off my old resume!), I think these folks will land on
their feet!

------
Animats
The trouble with the thing was that about all it could learn was how to pick
up something from one place and put it somewhere else. That's useful, but
there are already lots of other robots which do that, including ones with fast
vision systems.

Baxter robot, finding and picking up simple un-oriented objects and moving
them.[1] Slowly.

Festo robot, finding picking up simple un-oriented objects and moving them.[2]
Fast.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T91R-TPXwg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T91R-TPXwg)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH_t_1-tl40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH_t_1-tl40)

------
tranchms
I sold Baxter and Sawyer robots. They were shit. The creators had no idea
about market fit. You’re selling this thing to controls and automation
engineers who are familiar with programming on PCs and pendants. ReThink had
this ridiculous face for “emotional feedback” that forced you to also do all
your programming there. It was clunky and kinda cheap (Sawyer was upgraded,
and more solid). Baxter was slow with terrible repeatability. And it did not
come with native ports for external controls or communication. There was no
way to integrate with an existing automated system, no digital IOs or
Ethernet. You had to get a third party distributor to manufacture at their
panel shop and jury rig something together for extra cost.

Not to mention that UX was terrible and clunky and not intuitive. It’s suppose
to be easy to use, easy to program, that anyone can just role it up to an
existing operators position and teach it in five minutes and you’re up and
running. Wrong.

As mentioned, the only interface was the obnoxious swivel screen, and the only
programming controls were... dials with a push button, one located on each arm
and one on the back. Yes, you had to scroll through menus and across pages to
select and modify programs in endlessly confusing menus that literally made
you regret ever getting involved with the company.

Yes, it had some nice collaborative safety features built in, some patented
titanium s joints that flexed for safety like tendons yet maintained nice
accuracy.

But no one cares about your fancey safety features if it’s nearly impossible
to use, and fails to seamlessly integrate into existing systems.

This is a classic mistake. Build something epically fancy, but totally
worthless to 90% of the people that would use it, because it just doesn’t play
well. Learning curve is too high. It’s not plug and play/ fails to understand
industry compatibility requirements, or it’s too niche.

Because I sold these things, I quickly learned they were terrible.

However, Universal Robots were on the right track from the get go. They were
coming from the industrial automation world, they understood market fit. They
made a device that was easy to use, intuitive, that leveraged existing
programming methods and incorporated some collaborative programming technology
in tandem. Maybe their gear mechanisms weren’t as safe, but they passed all
the requirements, so what did it matter in the end? Fancy safety joints were
NOT the most important selling point for collaborative robots. Reducing
downtime to increase output and profits is, and that means easy integration
and quick programming. Not to mention UR was just a robot arm, and not this
wacky monstrosity of a machine and wheeled based (which was optional for
ReThink but not really). And UR was super compatible. It was basically like
conventional single arm robot with servos slowed down and given fancy torque
feedback algorithms and some sensors for safety and tracking.

The guys who started ReThink were out of their depth. Just some academics who
had some success making commercial robots who expected an entire industry to
conform to their fanciful dreams of robots with dopey emoting faces working
along side their human comrads.

Just pissed money away.

And the thing is, they were one of the first, and positioned to be one of the
best. Collaborative robotics is a massively growing field as humans and
machines work in ever closer proximity.

But ReThink totally choked. Had the wrong design engineers, with no industry
experience. They failed to understand industry needs and existing automation
culture and prevailing systems infrastructure.

This company is a classic case study on how to completely botch the
opportunity of a lifetime because of failing to understand existing market
fit.

------
latchkey
Interesting that one of the top articles today is about finding the Apple II
LOGO source code. One of the authors of the code is Patrick G. Sobalvarro, who
also happened to be president of Rethink.

------
noonespecial
>Rethink will now be selling off its intellectual property and patent
portfolio...

Hopefully they sell to someone who intends to put them into practice and not
some troll so these patents don't become another toxic ip spill the industry
will spend the next 20 years navigating around.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Aaaw. That's Rodney Brooks' company! I warmed up to the crazy old coot, thanks
to his recent series of articles on AI and machine learning [1]. It's very
unfortunate that his company tanked.

I hope he starts something new, soon.

____________

[1] [https://rodneybrooks.com/blog/](https://rodneybrooks.com/blog/)

That's a treasure trove of knowledge on AI with a generous dose of personal,
um, perspective, but from a gentleman who has a very, very long career in the
field. Do read his stuff if you fancy yourself "knowledgeable about AI".

------
dang
A related article is at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18143815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18143815).

------
seibelj
Wow they had a lot of positions open before they closed, was always tempted to
apply. Sad for the Boston robotics scene and the larger commercial robotics
industry.

------
ehead
What companies will scoop up all the talent that was there? Can anyone
speculate about what Rodney Brooks will do next?

------
mengibar10
How do they compare to Boston Robotics. My understanding they were pursuing
different use cases. Former is more about doing repetitive work and latter is
more to do movement and carrying stuff. Although Rethink's robot look much
primitive to Boston's robots, however may be what they're trying to achieve is
much more complicated?

~~~
URSpider94
Boston Dynamics is focused on building free-moving legged robots.

ReThink was focused on building industrial robots (think robot arms) that can
easily be trained/retrained to do a wide variety of tasks and that can co-
exist with humans (torque sensors tell them when they’ve hit something
unexpected and tell the arm to stop before it crushes you). The idea was that
smaller manufacturing settings could use them side by side with human workers,
and that a single arm could be retrained frequently as tasks change over time.
This is compared to traditional industrial robots which have to be completely
cordoned off from humans lest they run into them, and which require extensive
programming to execute a new task.

~~~
mengibar10
Thanks for the explanation.

------
transfire
Sad news. It's one of those things that will eventually take off -- and not
too far in the future. So to me it just goes to show that today's markets are
very sub-optimal, overly favoring short-term returns.

------
sabalaba
A CEO's job is to set the overall vision, recruit amazing talent, and make
sure there's money in the bank.

If a company wants to change the world, they can't forget #3. In fact it's
probably the most important because #1 and #2 are not possible without #3.

So, how does one raise $149.5M and fail? The Fatal Pinch.

[https://avc.com/2010/08/what-a-ceo-does/](https://avc.com/2010/08/what-a-ceo-
does/)
[http://www.paulgraham.com/pinch.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/pinch.html)

