Quote of the day by iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks: "The world is its own best model"
The scientist challenged contemporary orthodoxy around robotics to lay the blueprint for the physical AI boom we expect in the coming years
Rodney Brooks, co-founder of iRobot, famously stated that the world serves as the ultimate model for artificial intelligence. In recent years, the advancement of AI has been heavily focused on creating machines that can learn, think, and interact with the physical world more efficiently. Nearly four decades ago, Brooks wrote a groundbreaking paper arguing that real-world robotics should utilize simpler, layered behavioral systems to comprehend the environment better than complex internal models.
This concept was introduced in his study "Elephants Don't Play Chess," which marked a significant shift in how scientists approached the training and learning process for robots. Brooks proposed that when a robot alters its surroundings, it doesn't need to compute the impact of every change, but rather concentrate on the most significant aspects.
Co-founding iRobot in the same year he published his influential paper, Brooks led the company to develop the first Roomba vacuum cleaner a decade later. However, despite their success, iRobot filed for bankruptcy in December 2025 and was eventually acquired by Chinese company Shenzhen Picea Robotics.
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