Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks founded iRobot, which led the boom in consumer robot vacuums and was just sold to Amazon for $1.7 billion.
In this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later. While he may not be a part of the robotic future anymore, there is no history of the cobot that can be written without Baxter. Rethink bet on an approach that used elastic actuators — a technology one of Brooks co-founders was an expert on — which allowed the robot to perform "force sensing," an approach the company backed because it would make the robots safer around human coworkers. Rethink's design would also make the robots low cost, getting rid of standard industry reliance on motors and related parts.
In a statement provided to TechCrunch at that time of its demise, Rethink said, "We were early to market with a very innovative product that was ahead of its time, and unfortunately, we did not achieve the commercial success we had expected."