Abstract
During the last 25 years computers have gone from being locked up in special rooms to mass market acceptance--most of the computers in our homes are now invisible in appliances.  Robots are 25 years behind, but are starting to break into the commercial market place.  I will discuss the technical challenges, the ways in which robots might be used, how we will interact with them, and the impact it will have on our society. The talk includes pictures and videos of deployed systems and systems under development.

Biography
Rodney A. Brooks is Director of the 230 person MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is the Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science. He is also Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of 125 person iRobot Corp.  He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981.  He developed the behavior -based approach to mobile robots which iRobot Corp is now commercializing.  During the last decade he has concentrated at MIT on humanoid robots and social interactions.  His new research projects are aimed at building "living machines", machines whose natural description will be that they are alive in the same sense as animals or plants.

http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/brooks
http://www.irobot.com