Jim Lawton, VP, and GM of Robotics Automation at Zebra Technologies met the founder of Roomba, Rodney Brooks, at MIT nearly three decades ago. It inspired a lifetime passion for robots that help humans. Since then, he has influenced generations of robotic automation technology at companies from Rethink Robotics to Zebra Technologies. This is a fascinating discussion that will make you reconsider what robots can do and why humans shouldn’t feel threatened by them.
How Jim cultivated a passion for robots… and why that makes him “the cool dad”
How innovation in robotic technology is helping AMRs, autonomous mobile robots, perform more human-like tasks with less training
Which “dirty, dull, dangerous” tasks are the best candidates for robotic automation
- How new training techniques are reducing the time required to train a robot from 300 hours to a fraction of that which “democratizes automation”
- What’s required to keep humans safe from robots?
- How supplementing humans with robots for a task like picking items from warehouse shelves using machine vision saves 12-15 miles of walking per day while increasing accuracy
- How techniques like SLAM and machine learning are making it easier to program robots to do more complex tasks more accurately with zero or minimal coding
- Which new careers will be created by industrial robots… and which will be eliminated
- Two quick ways to know if a factory using robots and humans is safe
- Why Jim’s passion is using robots to help people be their best selves
