Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Colin angle he's the CEO and co-founder
of iRobot a robotics company that for 29
years has been creating robots that
operate successfully in the real world
not as a demo or on a scale of dozens
but on a scale of thousands and millions
as of this year
iRobot has sold more than 25 million
robots to consumers including the Roomba
vacuum cleaning robot the Bravo floor
mopping robot and soon the Terra
lawn-mowing robot 29 million robots
successfully operating autonomously in
real people's homes to me is an
incredible accomplishment of science
engineering logistics and all kinds of
general entrepreneurial innovation most
robotics companies fail iRobot has
survived and succeeded for 29 years
I spent all day at iRobot including a
long tour and conversation with Colin
about the history of iRobot and then sat
down for this podcast conversation that
would have been much longer if I didn't
spend all day learning about and playing
with the various robots in the company's
history I'll release the video of the
tour separately Colin iRobot its
founding team its current team and its
mission has been and continues to be an
inspiration to me and thousands of
engineers who are working hard to create
AI systems that help real people this is
the artificial intelligence podcast if
you enjoy it
subscribe on YouTube give it five stars
and iTunes supported on patreon or
simply connect with me on Twitter at Lux
Friedman spelled Fri D ma a.m. and now
here's my conversation with Colin angle
in his 1942 short story runaround from
his iRobot collection as a Asimov
proposed the Three Laws of Robotics in
order don't harm humans obey orders
protect yourself so two questions first
does the Roomba follow these three laws
and also more seriously what role do you
hope to see robots take in modern
society in the future world so the three
laws are very thought-provoking and
require such a profound understanding of
the world a robot lives in the
ramifications of its action and its own
sense of self that it's not a relevant
bar at least it won't be a relevant bar
for decades to come and so if Roomba
follows the three laws and I believe it
does you know it is designed to help
humans not hurt them it's designed to be
inherently safe and we design it to last
a long time it's not through any AI or
intent on the robots part it's because
following the Three Laws is aligned with
being a good robot product so um so I
guess it does but it does by not by
explicit design so then the bigger
picture well what role do you hope to
see robotics robots take in our what's
currently mostly a world of humans we
need robots to help us continue to
improve our standard of living we need
robots
because the average age of humanity is
increasing very quickly and simply the
number of people young enough and spry
enough to care for the elder growing
demographic is inadequate and so what is
the role of robots today the role is to
make our lives a little easier a little
cleaner maybe a little healthier but in
time robots are going to be the
difference between real gut wrenching
declines in our ability to live
independently and maintain our standard
of living and a future that is the
bright one where we have more control of
our lives can spend more of our time
focused on activities we choose and so
honored and excited to be playing a role
in that journey so you give me a tour it
showed me some of the long histories now
29 years that I iRobot has been at it
creating some incredible robots who
showed me Pat bot he showed me a bunch
of other stuff that led up to Roomba
that led to Brava and Terra so let's
skip that incredible history in the
interest of time because we already
talked about it I'll show this
incredible footage
you mentioned elderly and robotics and
society I think the home is a
fascinating place for robots to be so
where do you see robots in the home
currently I would say once again
probably most homes in the world don't
have a robot so how do you see that
changing woody things the big initial
value add that robots can do so iRobot
has sort of over the years narrowed in
on the home the consumers home as the
place where we want to innovate and
deliver tools that
we'll help a home be a more
automatically maintained place a
healthier place a safer place and
perhaps even a more efficient place to
be and you know today we vacuum we mop
soon we'll be mowing your lawn but where
things are going is when do we get to
the point where the home not just the
robots that live in your home but the
home itself becomes part of a system
that maintains itself and plays an
active role in caring for and helping
the people who live in that home and I
see everything that we're doing as steps
along the path toward that future so
what are the what are the steps so if we
can summarize some of the history of
Roomba the you've mentioned and maybe
you can elaborate on it but you
mentioned that the early days were
really taking a robot from something
that works either in the lab or
something that works in the field that
helps soldiers do the difficult work
they do to actually be in the hands of
consumers and tens of thousands hundreds
of thousands robots that don't break
down over how much people love them over
months of very extensive use so that was
the big first step and then the second
big step was the ability to sense the
environment to build a map to localize
to be able to build a picture of the
home that the human can then attach
labels to in terms of you know giving
some semantic knowledge to the robot
about its environment okay so that's
like a huge two big huge steps now maybe
you can comment on them but also what is
the the the next step of of making a
robot part of the home sure so the goal
is to make a home that that takes care
of itself
takes care of the people in the home and
gives a user and experience of just
living their life in the home is somehow
doing the right thing
lights when you leave cleaning up the
environment and we went from robots that
were great in the lab but we're both too
expensive and not sufficiently capable
to ever do an acceptable job of anything
other than being a toy or curio in your
home to something that was both
affordable and sufficiently effective to
drive you know be a threshold and drive
purchase intent now we've disrupted the
entire vacuuming industry the number one
selling vacuums for example in the u.s.
our room bows so not robot vacuums but
vacuums and that's really crazy and
weird and yes we need to pause and
that's incredible that's this is
incredible that a robot is this is the
number one selling thing that does
something yep everything as essential as
vacuuming so we're it's still kind of
fun to say but they just because this
was a crazy idea that that just started
you know in a room here we're like do
you think we can do this hey let's give
it a try but but now the robots are
starting to understand their environment
and if you think about the next step
there's two dimensions I've been working
so hard since the beginning of iRobot to
make robots are autonomous that you know
they're smart enough and understand
their task enough they they can just go
do it without human involvement now what
I'm really excited and working on is how
do I make them less autonomous
meaning that the robot is supposed to be
your partner not this automaton that
just goes and does what a robot does and
so that if you tell it hey I just
dropped some flower by the fridge in the
kitchen not can you deal with it
wouldn't be awesome if the right thing
just happened
based on that utterance and to some
extent that's less autonomous because
it's actually listening to you
understanding the context and intent of
the sentence mapping it against its
understanding of the home it lives in
and knowing what to do and so that's an
area of research it's an area where
we're starting to roll out features you
can now tell your robot to clean up the
kitchen and it knows what the kitchen is
and can do that and that's sort of 1.0
of where we're going
the other cool thing is that we're
starting to know where stuff is and why
is that important well robots are
supposed to have arms right data had an
arm Rosie had an arm yeah Robbie the
robot Hatter I mean brother you know
they are physical things that move her
around in an environment they're
supposed to like do work yeah and if you
think about it if a robot doesn't know
anything where anything is why should it
have an arm but with this new dawn of
home understanding that we're starting
to go enjoy I know where the kitchen is
I might in the future know where the
refrigerators I might if I had an arm be
able to find the hand I'll open it and
even get myself a beer obviously that's
one of the true dreams of robotics as
Deb robots bringing us a beer while we
watch television but um you know I think
that that new category of tasks where
physical manipulation robot arms is a
just a potpourri of new opportunity and
excitement and you see humans as a
crucial part of that
so you kind of mentioned that and I
personally find that a really compelling
idea I think
full autonomy can only take us so far
especially in the home so you see humans
is helping the robot understand or give
deeper meaning to the spatial
information right it's it's a
partnership the robot is supposed to
operate according to descriptors that
you would use to describe your own home
the robot is supposed to in lieu of
better direction kind of go about its
routine which ought to be basically
right and lead to a home maintained in a
way that it's learned you like but also
be perpetually ready to take direction
that would activate a different
set of behaviors or actions to meet a
current need to the extent it could
actually perform that task so I gotta
ask you I think this is a fundamental
and fascinating question because iRobot
has been a successful company and a rare
successful robotics company so Anki
geebo Mayfield robotics with a robot
curry sci-fi works rethink robotics
these were robotics companies that were
founded and run by brilliant people but
all very unfortunately for at least for
us roboticists that and all went out of
business recently so why do you think
they didn't last longer why do you think
it is so hard to keep a robotics company
alive
you know I say this only partially in
jest that back in the day before Roomba
you know I was a I was a high-tech
entrepreneur building robots but it
wasn't until I became a vacuum cleaner
salesman that we had any success so
though I mean the point is technology
alone doesn't equal a successful
business we need to go and find the
compelling need where the robot that
we're creating can deliver clearly more
value to the end user than it costs and
it's this is not a marginal thing where
you're looking at the skin like it's
closed maybe we can hold our breath and
make it work it's clearly more value
than the the cost of the robot to bring
you know in the store and I think that
the challenge has been finding those
businesses where that's true in a
sustainable fashion
you know the the when you get into
entertainment style things you could be
the cat's meow one year but 85% of toys
regardless of their merit fail to make
it to their second season it's just
super hard to do so and so that that's
just a tough business and there have
been a lot of experimentation around
what is the right type of social
companion what is the right robot in the
home that is doing something other than
tasks people do every week that they'd
rather not do and I'm not sure we've got
it all figured out right and so that you
get brilliant roboticist with super
interesting robots that ultimately don't
quite have that magical user experience
and thus the that value benefit equation
remains ambiguous so you as somebody who
dreams of robots you know changing the
world what's your estimate why how big
is the space of applications that fit
the criteria that you just described
where you can really demonstrate an
obvious significant value over the
alternative non robot bought a solution
well I think that we're just about none
of the way to achieving the potential of
robotics at home but we have to do it in
a really eyes wide open
honest fashion and so another way to put
that is the potentials infinite because
we did take a few steps but you're
saying those steps is just very initial
steps so the Rumba is a hugely
successful product but you're saying
that's just the very very just the very
very beginning it's the foot in the door
and you know I think I was lucky that in
the early days of robotics people would
ask me when are you gonna clean my floor
it was something that I grew up saying I
got all these really good ideas but
everyone seems to want their floor clean
and so maybe we should do that Betty
your good ideas earned the right to do
the next thing after that so the good
ideas have to match with the desire of
the people and then the actual cost has
to like the business the financial
aspect has to all mash together yeah I
during our partnership back a number of
years ago Johnson wax they would explain
to me that they would go into homes and
just watch how people lived and try to
figure out what were they doing that
they really didn't really like to do but
they had to do it frequently enough that
it was top of mind and and understood as
a a burden hey let's make a product or
come up with a solution to make that
pain point
lesyk less challenging and sometimes we
do certain burdens so often as a society
that we actually don't even realize like
it's actually hard to see that that
burden is something that could be
removed so it does require just going
into the home and staring it wait how do
I actually live life what are the pain
points yeah and it getting those
insights is a lot harder than it would
seem it should be in retrospect so how
hard on that point I mean one of the big
challenges of robotics is driving the
cost to something driving the cost down
to something that consumers people would
afford so people would be less likely to
buy a Roomba for cost $500,000 right
which is probably sort of what a Roomba
would costs
several decades ago so how do you drive
which I mention is very difficult how do
you drive the cost of a Roomba or a
robot down such that people wouldn't
want to buy it when I started building
robots the cost of the robot had a lot
to do with the amount of time it took to
build it and so that we build our robots
out of aluminum I would go spend my time
in the machine shop on the milling
machine cutting out the the the parts
and and so forth and then when we got
into the toy industry I realized that if
we were building at scale I could
determine the cost of the rope instead
of adding up all the hours to mill out
the parts but by weighing it and that's
liberating you can say wow the world is
has just changed as I think about
construction in a different way the 3d
CAD tools that are available to us today
the operating at scale where I can do
tooling and injection mold an
arbitrarily complicated part and the
cost is going to be basically the weight
of the plastic in that part is
incredibly exciting and liberating and
opens up all sorts of opportunities and
for the sensing part of it
where we are today is instead of trying
to build skin which is like really hard
for a long time spent creating
strategies and and ideas around how
could we duplicate the skin on the human
body because it's such an amazing sensor
the instead of going down that path
why don't we focus on vision and how
many of the problems that face a robot
trying to do real work could be solved
with a cheap camera and a big-ass
computer yeah and Moore's Law continues
to work the cell phone industry the
mobile industry is giving us better and
better tools that can run on these
embedded computers and I think we passed
a an important moment maybe two years
ago where you could put machine vision
capable processors on robots at consumer
price points and I was waiting for it
happed to happen we avoided putting
lasers on our robots to do navigation
and instead spent years researching how
to do vision based navigation because
you could just see it where these
technology trends were going and between
injection molded plastic and a camera
with a computer capable of running
machine learning and visual object
recognition I could build an incredibly
affordable incredibly capable robot and
that's gonna be the future you know on
that point with a small tangent but I
think an important one another industry
in which I would say the only other
industry in which they're true
there is automation actually touching
people's lives today is autonomous
vehicles mm-hmm what the vision each is
described of using computer vision and
using cheap camera sensors that's
there's a debate on that of lidar versus
computer vision and sort of the Elon
Musk famously said that lidar is a
crutch that really in camera in the long
term camera only is the right solution
which echoes some of the ideas you're
expressing of course
in terms of its safety criticality is
different but what do you think about
that approach in the autonomous vehicle
space and in general do you see a
connection between the incredible
real-world challenges you have to solve
in the home with Roomba and I saw a
demonstration of some of them corner
cases literally and autonomous vehicles
so there's absolutely a tremendous
overlap between both the problems you
know a robot vacuum and a Thomas vehicle
are trying to solve and the tools and
the types of sensors that are being
applied in the pursuit of the solutions
in my world my environment is actually
much harder than the environment and
automobile travel we don't have roads we
have t-shirts we have steps we have a
near infinite number of patterns and
colors and surface textures on the floor
especially from a visual perspective
yeah wait William looks it's really
tough is an infinitely variable on the
other hand safety is way easier on the
inside my robots they're not far you
heavy
they're not very fast if they bump into
your foot you think it's funny and you
know and autonomous vehicles kind of
have the inverse problem and so that for
me saying vision is the future
I can say that without reservation for
autonomous vehicles I think I believe
what you know I'm saying about the
future is ultimately going to be vision
maybe if we put a cheap lighter on there
as a backup sensor it might not be the
worst idea in the world
so the something so much hi thanks so
much higher that's you much more careful
thinking through how far away that
feature is right right and but I think
that the primary
environmental understanding sensor is
going to be a visual system visual
system so on that point well let me ask
do you hope there's an AI robot robot in
every home in the world
one day I expect there to be at least
when I robot robot in every home you
know we've we've sold 25 million robots
so we're in about 10 percent of US homes
which is a great start but I think that
when we think about the numbers of
things that robots can do you know today
I can vacuum your floor mop your floor
cut your lawn or soon we'll be able to
cut your lawn but there are more things
that we could do in the home and I hope
that we continue using the techniques I
described around exploiting computer
vision and low cost manufacturing that
we'll be able to create these solutions
at affordable price points so let me ask
on that point of a robot in every home
that's my dream as well I'd love love to
see that I you know I think the
possibilities there are indeed infinite
positive possibilities but you know in
our current culture no thanks to science
fiction and so on there's a serious kind
of hesitation anxiety concern about
robots and also a concern about privacy
and it's a fascinating question to me
why that concern is amongst a certain
group of people as as intense as it is
so you have to think about it because
it's a serious concern but I wonder how
you address it best so from a
perspective of a vision sensor so robots
that move about the home and sense the
world how do how do you alleviate
people's privacy concerns how do you
make sure that they can trust
iRobot and the robots that they share
their home with I think that's a great
question
and we've really leaned way forward on
this because given our vision as to the
role the company intends to play in the
home
really for us make-or-break is can our
approach be trusted to protecting the
data and the privacy of the people who
have our robots and so we've gone out
publicly the privacy manifesto stating
we'll never sell your data we've adopted
GDP are not just where GDP are is
required but globally we have ensured
that any that images don't leave the
robot so processing data from the visual
sensors happens locally on the robot and
only semantic knowledge of the home with
the consumers consent is sent up we show
you what we know and are trying to go
use data as an enabler for the
performance of the robots with the
informed consent and understanding of
the people who own those robots and
you know we take it very seriously and
ultimately we think that by showing a
customer that you know if you let us
build a semantic map of your home and
know where the rooms are well then you
can say clean the kitchen if you don't
want to robot to do that don't make the
map it'll do its best job cleaning your
home but it won't be able to do that and
if you ever want us to forget that we
know that it's your kitchen you can have
confidence that we will do that for you
so we're trying to go and be a sort of a
data 2.0 perspective company where we
treat the data that the robots average
of the consumers home as if it were the
consumers data and that they have rights
to it so we think by being the good guys
on this front we can build the trust and
thus be entrusted to enable robots to do
more things that are thoughtful you
think people's worries will diminish
over time as a society broadly speaking
do you think you can win over trust not
just for the company but just the
comfort of people have with AI in their
home enriching their lives in some way I
think we're an interesting place today
we're less about winning them over and
more about finding a way to talk about
privacy in a way that more people can
understand I would tell you that today
when there's a privacy breach people get
very upset and then then go to the store
and buy the cheapest thing paying no
attention to whether or not the products
that they're buying honor privacy
standards or not
in fact if I put on the package of my
Roomba
the privacy commitments that we have I
would sell less than I would if I did
nothing at all and that needs to change
so it's it's not a question about
earning trust I think that's necessary
by not sufficient we need to figure out
how to have a comfortable set of what is
the grade a meet standard applied to
privacy that customers can trust and
understand and then use in the buying
decisions
that will reward companies for good
behavior and that will ultimately be how
this moves forward and maybe be part of
the conversation between regular people
about what it means what privacy means
if you have some standards you can say
you're gonna start talking about who's
following them who's not have more
because most people are actually quite
clueless about all aspects of artificial
intelligence of data collection so on it
would be nice to change that for people
to understand the good that AI can do
and it's not some some system that's
trying to steal all the most sensitive
data yep do you think do you dream of a
Roomba with human level intelligence one
day so you've mentioned a very
successful localization and mapping of
the environment being able to do some
basic communication to say go clean the
kitchen do you see and you're maybe more
bored moments once you get the beer to
sit back with that beer and have a chat
on a Friday night with the Roomba about
how your day one
so true your latter question absolutely
- your former question as to whether
robot can have human level intelligence
not my lifetime you can have you I think
you can have a great conversation a
meaningful conversation with a robot
without it having anything that
resembles human level intelligence and I
think that as long as you realize that
conversation is not about the robot and
making the robot feel good that
conversation is about you learning
interesting things that make you feel
like the conversation that you had with
a robot is
a pretty awesome way of learning
something and it could be about what
kind of day your pet had it could be
about you know how can I make my home
more energy-efficient it could be about
you know if I'm thinking about climbing
Mount Everest what should I know and
that's a very doable thing you know but
if I think that that conversation gonna
have of the robot is I'm gonna be
rewarded by making the robot happy but I
couldn't have just put a button on the
robot you could push in the robot would
smile and that sort of thing so I think
you need to think about the question in
the the right way and and robots can be
awesomely effective at helping people
feel less isolated learn more about the
home that they live in and fill some of
those lonely gaps that we wish we were
engaged learning cool stuff about our
world last question if you could hang
out for a day with a robot from science
fiction movies books and safely pick
safely pick its brain for that day who
would you pick data data from Star Trek
I think that a data is really smart
data's been through a lot trying to go
and save the galaxy and I'm really
interested actually in emotion and
robotics and I think he'd have a lot to
say about that because I believe
actually that emotion play is an
incredibly useful role in doing
reasonable things in situations where I
have imperfect understanding of what's
going on in social situations on there's
been perfect information in social
situations also in competitive or
dangerous situations
that we have a motion for a reason and
so that ultimately this my theory is
that as robots get smart and smarter
they're actually going to get more
emotional because you can't actually
survive on pure logic because only a
very tiny fraction of the situations you
find ourselves and can be resolved
reasonably with logic and so I think
data would have a lot to say about that
and so I could find out whether he
agrees what if you could ask data one
question you would get a deep honest
answer to what would you ask what's
Captain Picard really like okay I think
that's the perfect way to end the call
and thank you so much for talking today
I really appreciate it my pleasure
you