According to the hope and horror of science fiction, Baxter is a new manufacturing robot for a company called \"Rethink robots\", which is a huge disappointment.Although there are two Olympic Gamesswimmer-Baxter\'s arms are long, and both eyes and eyebrows have a series of expressive digital renderings with no legs and no words.It cannot engage in dialogue in the doomsday rebellion, it cannot be a human pass, and it cannot confront the master.But Baxter\'s creators are working hard for another revolution.They hope the robot can improve productivity in the United States, and it is good at blind repetitive tasks that are common on most assembly lines.S.Manufacturing companies and help them retain jobs that would otherwise be moving overseas.Wage countries like China.In Boston, rethinking was the idea of Rodney Brooks, a pioneering robotics expert who may have introduced robots from sci more than anyone elsePeople have science fiction stories in their living rooms.Brooks is a former director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.Founder of IRobot, manufacturer of vacuum and improvised explosive devices in RoombaDisarm American workaholic PackbotS.military.Both machines have redefined the word \"robot\" with a narrow scope of responsibility and a simple user interface.The deep-Red and charcoalGray Baxter will be available next month as a result of last week\'s rethink of the company\'s nearly four years of work from stealth mode.With five cameras, a sonar sensor that detects 360-degree motion around a robot, and enough intelligence to learn new tasks within an hour, baxter was designed to work safely with humans, and do simple work, such as picking items from the conveyor belt.$22,000 per unit, also cheap enough, so it was worth 8-Hour shift, equivalent to $4-an-hour worker.\"We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars doing this work in China,\" Brooks said .\".\"We want companies to spend here in a way that makes American workers more efficient.Traditional AssemblyLine robots are fast, nimble, but stupid, costing up to $200,000 and then more custom software.They do something very well but need a well-built environment.Most people don\'t know if a person is wandering around, so they are often isolated in cages far away from their employees.But Baxter is sitting on a four.Gurney, can be put down anywhere on the factory floor.Its eyes are fixed on a spinning computer screen that can greet any approaching worker.To teach Baxter a new job, humans grab its arm, simulate the desired task, and then press the button to program in the mode.When the robot does not understand what a person is trying to tell it in training, it raises its head with a puzzled expression.The original idea was that even unskilled workers, Baxter was easily trained and there was no need to make a manual for rethinking.But Brooks hopes no one will use it.Another core idea behind Baxter is that it will eventually be able to upgrade like a smartphone.The company plans to update Baxter\'s software for free every few months to make more complex behaviors like twoThe ability to operate manually and press buttons on other machines.Early next year, Rethink will also release a set of programming instructions so that developers and academic researchers can come up with their own tasks and attachments for the machine.Rethinking the origins of robots dates back to 1990 generations, when Brooks was heavily involved in the process of making iRobot a global brand.He says he has an unwelcome taste of the reality of the global supply chain, for example, as oil prices rise, the cost of shipping products overseas increases.He also recalled visiting his home country, Australia, and was surprised to find an advertisement for the counterfeit Roomba, which was made by a Chinese manufacturer who may be from iRobot himself.Brooks argues that rethinking, initially known as the heartland robot, is a way to try to change the American economyS.Manufacturer and keep jobs in the country.Over the past four years, Rethink has raised $62 million from companies such as venture capital firm Charles River Ventures and Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos investment firm Bezos solutions.IRobot has a small and threatened company.For the past few months, Rethink has been quietly testing Baxter with potential customers.Pioneer Plastics, an injection molding company in Connecticut, has tested tasks performed by robots, such as packing finished molds into boxes and planning to buy one this fall.\"It allows our people to use their minds more than their hands, which is really what you want,\" said Chris badnick, president of Pioneer .\".Brad Stone is a senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek.E-Postage: bstone12 @ bloomberg ).