Robots

Robotics has evolved so much in the last decade. This link landed up in my in-box courtesy someone who knows I am a certified robot-nut.

Check out these robo pics in particular:

#23: What a terrific idea! No more anorexic, unrealistic "models"... these robots are way better!

#25: Gotta admit, creeps me out. Insect-robot hybrids with the head of an insect and body of a robot?!

#28: Honda and Asimo have done it again, w00t! Thought controlled robots? How incredibly awesome is that!

#33: Stunned to see this one! Looks like Eddie is a descendant of Kismet, one of my favorite robots sitting right here in my backyard at MIT. Kismet was Dr. Cynthia Breazeal's PhD thesis at the Media lab.

Kismet's ancestors are showcased @ the MIT museum. Very exciting to see generations of robots evolve.

It would be a dream come true to commercialize one of these robots, combining my twin passions of robots and entrepreneurship.

CSAIL @ MIT

I was in geek paradise this afternoon, and reveled in it. I visited CSAIL and the coolness of the cutting edge research that's going on at building 34 (I am @ MIT after all, of course I share a love for numbers with my fellow engineers :) took my breath away. The CSAIL lab is my Mecca - I became an engineer because I wanted to build robots and intelligent machines. It was good to be in my element after a long time, and it struck me how much I missed engineering and building cool things. The last time I built something really cool was when I designed a Lego Mindstorms robot to collect the dirty coffee mugs my room mate would leave strewn around our apartment. My co-bot (coffee-robot) would collect all the dirty mugs and move them to a spot I'd marked on the kitchen floor with reflective tape. Seems like a lifetime ago.


We visited Russ Tedrake's lab and saw autonomous flying robots and little dog. Robot locomotion has come such a long way since I was in grad school in 1998. I was incredibly impressed with Little Dog's obstacle detection and circumvention mechanisms. It left me longing to pursue a PhD @ CSAIL after the MBA.. I suspect I would be very happy if I became a lifer at MIT, the place just inspires me.

How any of this relates to entrepreneurship - I wonder if there are formal channels available to commercialize the research that comes out of CSAIL. I intend to find out. Stay tuned for the answer.