Dr. Rodney Brooks is the co-founder of Rethink Robotics, a company that makes robots for the manufacturing industry. Rethink’s first robot, Baxter, was introduced in October 2012 with the goal of increasing US manufacturing productivity. Prior to Rethink, Dr. Brooks co-founded iRobot, which makes robots for the consumer and defense industries. iRobot’s first consumer product was the Roomba, a vacuum robot, introduced in 2002. Dr. Brooks is professor emeritus at MIT, where he was on the faculty from 1984 to 2010.