Rodney Allen Brooks (born December 30, 1954, in Adelaide, Australia) is an Australian roboticist, computer scientist, cognitive scientist, mathematician, engineer, artificial intelligence researcher, author, and entrepreneur, though South Azerbaijani Wikipedia identifies him as an American scientist.^[1,6,7] He completed his education at Flinders University and earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

In his academic career, Brooks served as a Panasonic Professor of Robotics, a Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science, and Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was also director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) from 2004 to 2007.^[7,1] Starting in 1986, he authored seminal publications that challenged classical artificial intelligence, most notably proposing the subsumption architecture and popularizing the actionist (behavior-based or behaviorist) approach to robotics.^[1,31,6] Opposing systems that depend on complex internal world representations under the sense-plan-act scheme, he argued that "the world is its best representation" (intelligence without representation), allowing robots to exhibit behaviors analogous to simple life forms like insects; in his 1990 paper "Elephants Don't Play Chess", he maintained that robots should be capable of sharing an environment with humans, incorporating cognitive and abstract symbol representation abilities. His research has spanned computer vision, ACRONYM, intelligent robotics operating in unstructured environments, and the study of human intelligence through humanoid robot projects like Cog, earning him recognition as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science as well as honors including the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award, and the 2014 Engelberger Robotics Award in Leadership.^[1,6,7]

As an entrepreneur, Brooks co-founded and served as Chief Technical Officer and former director of iRobot Corp.—which implemented his subsumption architecture in devices such as the Roomba vacuum cleaner and the PackBot—and went on to co-found, chair, and serve as CTO of Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics), as well as co-founding Robust.AI in 2019 where he serves as Chief Technical Officer.^{[7,6,28,27,29,1,5]} Beyond the scientific and business communities, he is also recognized for appearing in the film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, which starred him and his robotics work.

Rodney Allen Brooks was born in 1954 in Australia. He studied mathematics at Flinders University of South Australia, earning a Master's degree (M.A.) in pure mathematics.^[6] In 1981, he obtained his doctorate (PhD) in computer science from Stanford University under the supervision of Thomas Binford.^[8,30]

Brooks held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as a faculty position at Stanford University, before joining the MIT faculty in 1984. At MIT, he was the Panasonic Professor of Robotics and served as director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), previously known as the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, from 1997 to 2007. A classic representative of embodied artificial intelligence (embodiment), his research focuses on constructing simple yet intelligent robots that can move freely in dynamic and complex environments, as well as investigating complex human intelligence through humanoid robots. In his 1990 paper, "Elephants Don't Play Chess", Brooks argued that robots can only accomplish everyday tasks in an environment shared with humans if their higher cognitive abilities, including abstract thought emulated by symbolic reasoning, are based on interaction with the environment complemented by proprioceptive sensors necessary for hand-eye coordination (an actionist or behavior-based robotics approach).^[9]

In addition to his academic teaching and writing activities, Brooks co-founded iRobot in 1990, serving as its CTO, co-founded Heartland Robotics, where he served as CEO and CTO, and co-founded Robust.AI in 2019, where he serves as CTO as of October 2020.^[32] In 1997, Brooks played himself and was featured with his work in Errol Morris's film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, which portrays four men with unusual professional activities and is named after his paper "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of the Solar System".^[4,5] In 2004, Brooks was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to the foundations and applications of robotics, including establishing consumer and hazardous environment robotics industries.^[10,12] He is also a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Brooks, a native of Adelaide, Australia, received a bachelor's degree in pure mathematics in 1975 and a master's degree in mathematics in 1978 from Flinders University in South Australia. In 1981, he earned a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University, where he also served as a faculty member until 1984. He also held research positions at Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1984, he joined the faculty at MIT, where he later served as director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1997 to 2007 and is currently a professor emeritus. His research focuses on developing intelligent robots to operate in unstructured environments and understanding human intelligence through the construction of humanoid robots.

In 1991, Brooks co-founded the company iRobot, which specializes in manufacturing robots for household, industrial, and military applications, serving as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO) until 2008. He currently serves as chairman and Chief Technology Officer at Heartland Robotics.

Brooks was involved in founding the International Journal of Computer Vision and has served as an editorial board member for academic journals including Adaptive Behavior, Artificial Life, Applied Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Robots, and New Generation Computing. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a Fellow and former member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a former member of the Australian Academy of Science.

In 1986, Brooks published a paper on the Subsumption Architecture (SA) and proposed the concept of "intelligence without representation," which had a major impact on the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. In 1990, he published an article titled "Elephants Don't Play Chess," in which he argued that symbolic artificial intelligence—which learns to plan actions through representing world information using symbols and the relationships between them—is capable of learning behavioral strategies in analytical games such as chess, but fails to explain the behaviors of simple and complex animals alike. In this article, Brooks presented the "physical grounding hypothesis," according to which intelligence arises from a combination of parts, each of which is well-connected to the physical world and operates within it. This approach views every intelligent system as constructed of parts that each contain a behavior, receiving information from the surrounding world and responding in ways that affect it, with more complex and interesting behaviors achieved through the interaction between these parts.

As an expression of this idea, Brooks outlined the concept in intelligent robotic systems design known as the Subsumption Architecture, in which the system is composed of several layers such that each layer is responsible for performing a specific task and is influenced by sensory input relevant to that layer and by output received from the layers above it. Brooks' approach to building robots that can move flexibly in changing environments lies in dividing the behavioral repertoire into many behavioral patterns computed in parallel, from which the respective appropriate one is automatically selected. Instead of connecting different computation blocks in series (perception, cognition, action) with a central component responsible for planning, the robot constructs no representation of its environment, but acts directly according to its sensor data through interactions between the layers. For each behavioral pattern, only a fraction of the incoming sensor data is relevant, which greatly simplifies computation. The selection of the behavior actually executed is determined by the sensor data, making no distinction between self-perception (such as battery status) and perception of the world. When a behavioral pattern reaches its activation threshold, it suppresses the execution of all other behavioral patterns. Such an architecture allows real-time reactions, but is not capable of learning.

Initially, the Subsumption Architecture was ignored by the mainstream of artificial intelligence, and Marvin Minsky criticized it, remarking that it was "90% correct for earthworms, but for humans, it is a different story." However, in 1991, Brooks received an award at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), after which criticism reportedly weakened. Because the Subsumption Architecture allows robots to be constructed with simple systems, its application to space robots was considered. Subsequently, Brooks developed autonomous mobile robots with his students and carried out the "Cog Project" to study intelligence by developing an upper-torso humanoid robot. Furthermore, at iRobot, founded in 1991, a six-legged walking robot called "Genghis" was developed and equipped with the Subsumption Architecture. In 1997, Brooks appeared in a movie that took its title from his own paper. His advised students around this time included Yoky Matsuoka, as well as the developer of the communication robot "JIBO." In June 2024, Brooks stated that humans overestimate generative AI's abilities.^[15]

Brooks experimented with off-the-shelf components, such as Fischertechnik and Lego, and tried to make robots self-replicate by putting together clones of themselves using the components. In the late 1980s, Brooks and his team introduced Allen, a robot using subsumption architecture. At iRobot Corporation, which was founded in 1990, Brooks served as Chief Technology Officer and a board member. The Roomba vacuum cleaner, released in 2000, was equipped with the subsumption architecture. The same algorithm was also installed in the PackBot, which was deployed in the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, and the Afghan War. His robots include mini-robots used in oil wells explorations without cables, the robots that searched for survivors at Ground Zero in New York, and the robots used in medicine doing robotic surgery.^[9] Among his supervised students around this time was Aaron Edsinger, who was developing humanoid robotics.

On August 23, 2008, a documentary film titled "Rodney's Robot Revolution" was released in Canada. In the same year, Brooks left iRobot and founded Rethink Robotics, serving as Chairman and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As of 2012, Brooks' work focused on engineering intelligent robots to operate in unstructured environments and understanding human intelligence through building humanoid robots. Introduced in 2012 by Rethink Robotics, an industrial dual-arm robot named Baxter was intended as the robotic analogue of the early personal computer, designed to safely interact with neighbouring human workers and be programmable for the performance of simple tasks. The robot stops if it encounters a human in the way of its robotic arm and has a prominent off switch that its human partner can push if necessary. Costs were projected to be the equivalent of a worker making $4 an hour, and Rethink Robotics also sold the collaborative robot Sawyer.^[13] In addition, Brooks was involved with a Toyota Motor Corporation subsidiary that researches AI.^[8] In 2018, Rethink Robotics closed its business.

In 2019, he co-founded Robust.AI. In 2024, Robust.AI introduced Carter, a mobile robot.^[14]

Brooks is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, a founding member and Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and a corresponding member and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and a Fellow and member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2023, he became a Fellow of the Computer History Museum.

In 1991, he received the Computers and Thought Award from the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. His later recognitions include the IEEE Inaba Technical Award in 2008, the Joseph F. Engelberger Award in the Leadership Category in 2014, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award in 2015, the C&C Prize in 2021, and the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2023. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Flinders University in 2016, and from both Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of Queensland in 2017. He also holds honorary lecturer positions at Stanford, Minnesota, and Dartmouth universities.

Brooks authored and edited several books and conference volumes, including Artificial Life: Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (MIT Press, 1996) and Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI (MIT Press, 1999), which was reviewed by K. Warwick in the Times Higher Education Supplement in September 2000. His later books include Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us (Pantheon, 2002, ISBN 0-375-42079-7) and Robotics Research: Results of the 12th International Symposium ISSR (Springer-Verlag, 2007). He also contributed a chapter to the 2018 book Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building it by American futurist Martin Ford (Packt Publishing, ISBN 978-1-78-913151-2).

His notable scientific papers include "A robust layered control system for a mobile robot" (IEEE Journal of Robotics and Automation, 1986), "A Robot that Walks; Emergent Behaviors from a Carefully Evolved Network" (Neural Computation, 1989), and "Intelligence without representation" (Artificial Intelligence, 1991, alternative ISBN 0-8058-1518-X). He also published "The Relationship Between Matter and Life" (Nature, 2001) and "Robots at work: towards a smarter factory" (The Futurist, 2013). His broader research and publications encompass model-based computer vision, path planning, uncertainty analysis, robot building, active vision, autonomous robots, microrobots, microactuators, planetary exploration, representation, artificial life, humanoid robots, and compiler design. In addition, Dr. Brooks was a co-founding editor of the International Journal of Computer Vision and has served on the editorial boards of Adaptive Behavior, Artificial Life, Applied Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Robots, and New Generation Computing.

Brooks has also featured in various media publications and interviews, such as "The Deep Question" in Edge (1997), "Robot risk 'is worth it'" on BBC News (2002), and "Scientist: Military Working on Cyborg Spy Moths" on Fox News (2007). In December 2015, he was interviewed as CTO of Rethink Robotics by the Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, and in October 2016, ROBOTEER covered his dismissal of AI threat theories, in which he argued that AI would take 500 years to reach human level.

This content is taken from the article "Rodney Brooks", created by users of the English Wikipedia and checked on 7 September 2017. It is categorized under Scientist.

Rodney Brooks maintains an official home page titled "Rodney Brooks - Robot, AI, and other stuff." His institutional profiles include biography pages as a roboticist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), an affiliated institution website, and a dedicated listing of his publications. Additional organizational resources include the website for the MIT Cog Shop and Cog Project, as well as the official website for Rethink Robotics.

Brooks's written works and coverage include his seminal paper "Intelligence Without Reason," which offers criticism of the Von Neumann computing architecture, the FoR&AI piece "The Origins of 'Artificial Intelligence'" from April 27, 2018, and a BBC article. His featured presentations and media include the TED talks "Robots Will Invade Our Lives" (February 2003) and "Why We Will Rely on Robots" (February 2013), as well as "Rodney's Robot Revolution" (2008). Brooks has also participated in interviews, including "The Deep Question" by Edge, a Talking Robots podcast interview titled "The Past and Future of Behavior Based Robotics," and an EconTalk podcast interview on artificial intelligence released on September 24, 2018.