Baxter the robot is now even more ready for life "outside the cage."
That's how Jim Lawton, chief marketing officer for Boston-based robot maker Rethink Robotics, describes Baxter's new software update, called the Robot Positioning System.
Traditionally, industrial robots were "confined in cages" and bolted down to the floor, while using specific location coordinates to identify objects for any given task.
Now, Rethink Robotics' new software update allows its manufacturing robot Baxter to become mobile (at the request of a human, of course) and quickly move around from task to task in minutes instead of days or weeks. The robot is also now able to identify objects even after they've been bumped or shifted accidentally or on purpose.
Watch video below of Baxter's new software update in action.
"It can detect when something has shifted, reorient itself, and continue to do its task, and all that can be done without anybody reprogramming it or tweaking any code," Lawton said in an interview.
The robot can do that because of the new positioning software, as well as cameras in its hands and in its head.
Lawton said he doesn't know of any other industrial robot that has this advanced positioning technology integrated into it. The technology has been in the works for months, though the robot's technology has been slowly advancing toward this moment since the development of Baxter in 2008.
"We've programmed the robot's operating system to think about objects and the orientation of those objects relative to one another as opposed to absolute coordinates in space, and that dates back to the original inception of Baxter," Lawton said.
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