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100 Modern Robotics

all, the way living organisms work—many specialized cells forming
organs and systems that together make a complex life-form.
Meanwhile, Brooks has an assured place as one of the key inno-
vators in modern robotics research. He is a founding fellow of the
American Association for Artificial Intelligence and a fellow of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has
participated in numerous distinguished lecture series and has served
as an editor for many important journals in the field, including the
International Journal of Computer Vision. Besides being an articu-
late spokesperson for the possibilities of advanced robots changing
human perception and society, Brooks has even portrayed himself
in a movie directed by Errol Morris and titled Fast, Cheap, and Out
of Control, named for one of his scientific papers.

Chronology

1954 Rodney Brooks born in Adelaide, Australia
1966 Brooks builds a machine that can play tic-tac-toe
1968 Brooks is inspired by the HAL 9000 computer from the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey

1975 Brooks earns master’s degree in pure mathematics from
Flinders University of South Australia

1977 Brooks goes to Stanford University to study computer science
and artifi cial intelligence

1981 Brooks receives Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford
University

1984 Brooks joins the faculty at MIT and works on robot vision
and navigation

1985 Brooks demonstrates a “behavior-based” robot at an interna-
tional conference
1988 Brooks and his group begin to design walking robots

1990 Brooks founds iRobot Corporation with Colin Angle and
Helen Greiner