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Robots Among Us

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From iRobot.com
From iRobot.com

In 1973, the now nearly-sainted Michael Jackson first popularized the dance "The Robot" with the Jackson Five’s hit “Dancing Machine.” In 1984, the first Terminator movie hit theaters, with humans pitted against robots from the future.
In 2009 — right now — robots are, in fact, moving into more and more facets of life, from cleaning gutters to making war.
My guest today, iRobot CEO Colin Angle, says robots won’t take over the world, but they will merge with us. In fact, he says, they already are.
This hour, On Point: iRobot’s co-founder, and the future of the robotic world.
You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

Guest:

We're joined in our studio by Colin Angle, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of iRobot. iRobot produces – among other products – the popular floor-vacuuming “Roomba” robot, and the military “PackBot” robot, in wide use by the U.S. Armed Forces. Colin is one of the world’s leading experts on mobile robots, and formerly worked at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

More:

You can watch a number of videos of iRobot products on the company's YouTube channel. Here are a couple we liked: a prototype of the iRobot Warrior and a "flying" iRobot PackBot.

This program aired on July 9, 2009.

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