You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Rodney Brooks, famous for the Roomba, argues the humanoid robot craze in Silicon Valley is doomed to fail.Credit...Aaron Wojack for The New York TimesHe’s the Godfather of Modern Robotics. He Says the Field Has Lost Its Way.Rodney Brooks, famous for the Roomba, argues the humanoid robot craze in Silicon Valley is doomed to fail.Credit...Aaron Wojack for The New York TimesDec. 14, 2025Updated 10:05 a.m. ET“I like to look at what everyone is doing, find some common thing that they’re all assuming implicitly,” Rodney Brooks said, “and negate that thing.”The pioneering roboticist was speaking directly to camera in the 1997 Errol Morris film “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control,” which juxtaposes interviews of Mr. Brooks, a lion tamer, a topiary gardener and a researcher who studies naked mole rats. “Four men,” Mr. Brooks said recently, “who were each trying to control nature in their individual way, and all of us were failing.”In the film, Mr. Brooks was describing an early breakthrough. In the 1980s, limitations on computing constrained robot development. Watching insects, he realized they possessed little brainpower but were far more capable than his robots, and that mimicking animal biology was smarter than trying to control every aspect of a robot’s behavior through code. His successes led him to predict robots “everywhere in our world.”ImageMr. Brooks is perhaps best known for his work on the Roomba, which brought robots into many people’s homes.Credit...Aaron Wojack for The New York TimesAt 70, the former M.I.T. lab director and co-creator of the widely-selling Roomba robot vacuum lives in that world. But now, Mr. Brooks, who has spent his career making intelligent machines a part of everyday life, finds himself playing the skeptic.Today's entrepreneurs promise robots that not only look human — or human-ish — but can do everything a person can.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
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Rodney Brooks, the Godfather of Modern Robotics, Says the Field Has Lost Its Way
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