Rodney Brooks
@rodneyabrooks.bsky.social
Primarily Robotics and AI. Distinguishing hype-notism from plausibility one press release at a time. rodneybrooks.com/blog people.csail.mit.edu/brooks
Blue Origin today announced major engine and performance upgrades for existing New Glenn rockets, plus a bigger one adding 2 engines to each stage making it 9 & 4. Also independently working on a 3 stage New Armstrong a much bigger and more powerful rocket. New Glenns compared to Apollo's Saturn V.
November 20, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Blue Origin today announced major engine and performance upgrades for existing New Glenn rockets, plus a bigger one adding 2 engines to each stage making it 9 & 4. Also independently working on a 3 stage New Armstrong a much bigger and more powerful rocket. New Glenns compared to Apollo's Saturn V.
Tonight in center Waymo in a phalanx of three with another two rows behind. In 4.5 mile journey across SF it as only the last 14 blocks where there moments where no other Waymos were visible. Before that always one within three car lengths and sometimes up to three others.
November 11, 2025 at 5:06 AM
Tonight in center Waymo in a phalanx of three with another two rows behind. In 4.5 mile journey across SF it as only the last 14 blocks where there moments where no other Waymos were visible. Before that always one within three car lengths and sometimes up to three others.
Gotten my home paper archives down from 24 to just 1 file cabinet (but my total bit archive is > the world's archive level in early '90s). As I further pared down my archives today I came across my Roomba design notes from '98. I remembered the "Clean Team", but not "Cybersuck"! Relevant today...
August 31, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Gotten my home paper archives down from 24 to just 1 file cabinet (but my total bit archive is > the world's archive level in early '90s). As I further pared down my archives today I came across my Roomba design notes from '98. I remembered the "Clean Team", but not "Cybersuck"! Relevant today...
Come January I will have been full time in AI and robotics for fifty years. I've lived through and been part of most of their history, and know their pre-me history pretty well. I'm the old guy in therapy here...
August 18, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Come January I will have been full time in AI and robotics for fifty years. I've lived through and been part of most of their history, and know their pre-me history pretty well. I'm the old guy in therapy here...
2/2 Progress is slow for a long time, and we are not at a humanoid inflection point yet. Here is a picture I took at RoboCup 2014 in João Pessoa, Brazil, on July 24th, 10+ years ago. Two teams, with different types, of three humanoids robots playing soccer autonomously.
June 30, 2025 at 7:44 PM
2/2 Progress is slow for a long time, and we are not at a humanoid inflection point yet. Here is a picture I took at RoboCup 2014 in João Pessoa, Brazil, on July 24th, 10+ years ago. Two teams, with different types, of three humanoids robots playing soccer autonomously.
We're used to optical illusions where we "see" something that isn't there. I'm convinced that generative AI is triggering high order lingual illusions where we perceive reasoning in word strings that isn't really there, and we can't convince ourselves it is not real.
June 18, 2025 at 5:37 PM
We're used to optical illusions where we "see" something that isn't there. I'm convinced that generative AI is triggering high order lingual illusions where we perceive reasoning in word strings that isn't really there, and we can't convince ourselves it is not real.
Yesterday thought I saw an ex-Cruise self-driving car cruising the streets of San Carlos CA, with human driver, with sensors spinning, but no orange paint. Later I found it recharging. Same license plate, same name "Birdie", as I found in an old news story. Who is operating it now, and why?
May 30, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Yesterday thought I saw an ex-Cruise self-driving car cruising the streets of San Carlos CA, with human driver, with sensors spinning, but no orange paint. Later I found it recharging. Same license plate, same name "Birdie", as I found in an old news story. Who is operating it now, and why?
More from my day job/passion at Robust.AI. Tobias Meyer, CEO of DHL, at their annual shareholder meeting in Bonn, today, talking about how robots are critical to the future of logistics, with robots from Robust.AI, Boston Dynamics, and Locus. We're already fully deployed with DHL in two countries.
May 2, 2025 at 3:12 PM
More from my day job/passion at Robust.AI. Tobias Meyer, CEO of DHL, at their annual shareholder meeting in Bonn, today, talking about how robots are critical to the future of logistics, with robots from Robust.AI, Boston Dynamics, and Locus. We're already fully deployed with DHL in two countries.
Here is how I have been comparing the two big hype phenomena in AI and robotics, in my recent talks. Spoiler alert: the hype is unfounded.
April 12, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Here is how I have been comparing the two big hype phenomena in AI and robotics, in my recent talks. Spoiler alert: the hype is unfounded.
I see tens of Jaguar based Waymos in SF every time I leave my house. They've been talking about their 6th gen Waymo Driver for a few months and this morning I saw it in the wild for the first time. 13 cameras, 4 lidars, 6 radars plus array of external audio receivers. An image from their blog:
March 20, 2025 at 6:58 PM
I see tens of Jaguar based Waymos in SF every time I leave my house. They've been talking about their 6th gen Waymo Driver for a few months and this morning I saw it in the wild for the first time. 13 cameras, 4 lidars, 6 radars plus array of external audio receivers. An image from their blog:
Yeah maybe. I meant ones that do real work. But if we allow Aldebaran then we must allow "My Real Baby", which is where I learned to build low cost robots (at Jetta in Shenzen, before Shenzen was Shenzen, in the 90's).
February 27, 2025 at 3:07 AM
Yeah maybe. I meant ones that do real work. But if we allow Aldebaran then we must allow "My Real Baby", which is where I learned to build low cost robots (at Jetta in Shenzen, before Shenzen was Shenzen, in the 90's).
I don't know where this came from, but it is very funny. [If you don't get the reference search for `AI six fingers'.]
December 11, 2024 at 6:02 PM
I don't know where this came from, but it is very funny. [If you don't get the reference search for `AI six fingers'.]
We are seeing loud rumblings of this already in the incoming administration, and also from Elon Musk. We will see much much more in the coming months. Figure out how to be ready.
November 27, 2024 at 7:04 AM
We are seeing loud rumblings of this already in the incoming administration, and also from Elon Musk. We will see much much more in the coming months. Figure out how to be ready.
We all should try to be aware of how we judge others, and how we all carry biases in those judgements.
November 12, 2024 at 4:29 PM
We all should try to be aware of how we judge others, and how we all carry biases in those judgements.
I'll be showing a lot of things you haven't seen before on Oct 16th at RoboBusiness at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
October 5, 2024 at 5:44 PM
I'll be showing a lot of things you haven't seen before on Oct 16th at RoboBusiness at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
Things are going really well at Robust AI. Fully holonomic robots are the future for warehouses and factories. Mecanum wheels not so much. Learn more on October 16th.
September 30, 2024 at 9:45 PM
Things are going really well at Robust AI. Fully holonomic robots are the future for warehouses and factories. Mecanum wheels not so much. Learn more on October 16th.
Three Presidents. My Presidents.
July 21, 2024 at 6:49 PM
Three Presidents. My Presidents.
Stuff happening in Spaceland. Odyssey landed on the Moon (with drama). Congrats! Blue Origin's New Glenn finally vertical at Cape pad 36C. 99,000lbs to LEO, compared to 50,000 for Falcon9 expendable, 38,800 for reuse. New Glenn numbers will adjust after flight and for reuse, but competitive entry.
February 23, 2024 at 7:55 AM
Stuff happening in Spaceland. Odyssey landed on the Moon (with drama). Congrats! Blue Origin's New Glenn finally vertical at Cape pad 36C. 99,000lbs to LEO, compared to 50,000 for Falcon9 expendable, 38,800 for reuse. New Glenn numbers will adjust after flight and for reuse, but competitive entry.
Cheering for Intuitive Machines Lunar landing scheduled for Thurs. iRobot's original biz plan was to land on the Moon, then Mars, 30+ years ago. We had a launch commitment for the Moon for a little while, and vertically soft landed a test six legged robot at Edwards. Hard tech takes many attempts.
February 21, 2024 at 5:55 AM
Cheering for Intuitive Machines Lunar landing scheduled for Thurs. iRobot's original biz plan was to land on the Moon, then Mars, 30+ years ago. We had a launch commitment for the Moon for a little while, and vertically soft landed a test six legged robot at Edwards. Hard tech takes many attempts.
An interview I did earlier in the year with Glenn Zorpette, editor of IEEE Spectrum, is now out. ieeetv.ieee.org/channels/iee...
November 4, 2023 at 4:28 AM
An interview I did earlier in the year with Glenn Zorpette, editor of IEEE Spectrum, is now out. ieeetv.ieee.org/channels/iee...