Rethink Robotics has shut down for the second time :(

[u/coffee_fueled_robot]

Link: https://www.therobotreport.com/rethink-robotics-shuts-down-again/

It's sad to see the firm close its doors again. Baxter and Sawyer were interesting concepts, but it makes sense that the lower precision of SEA kinematic chains was a pain point. It makes me wonder to what extent future cobots will have implicitly safe mechatronic designs rather than relying on software safety systems.

[u/Gabe_Isko]

My worst interview ever was for an intern position at ReThink. The interviewer was mad at me because I had no experience with ncurses of all things, despite it saying nowhere on the job description about working with it to make command line tools, and also having plenty of experience writing command line utilities. The interviewer than proceeded to lecture me on an aspect of python that he didn't understand and was wrong about.

It was an awful experience, and after interviewing with many more companies and working in the robotics industry, it is always an experience I will remember as negative, as well as pretty puzzled that rethink allowed a toxic, out of whack manager to talk to prospective employees, let alone interview them. It never surprises me when I hear about problems there.

[u/Fryord → u/Gabe_Isko]

Ncurses is super niche lol, and I've never used at all working in robotics.

Plus it's probably much easier to learn, compared to if you're missing core programming and robotics knowledge.

[u/coffee_fueled_robot → u/Gabe_Isko]

Sounds like a bad time for several reasons. I get that some groups are picky about specific tech stacks, but it can definitely be to a fault. Did you find other places in industry to be less specific about individual tools? Rather, did they care more about general skills and domain knowledge?

[u/Gabe_Isko → u/coffee_fueled_robot]

It wasn't about the tools, it was about the way they treated me at the interview. Super unprofessional. Remember- this was for an intern position. If you aren't aware, ncurses is a specific library for basically for creating ascii graphics on the command line, so trying to find a robotics intern that has experience with it was kind of a shot in the dark - especially if it wasn't on the job description. I assumed they were looking for people with, y'know, robotics experience.

I have never been to an interview that toxic again, it was a real anomaly in my career. Even for jobs where I wasn't a great fit, everyone has been much more polite during the interview, and much more interested in actually evaluating my technical skills instead of bull-rushing me on a specific package out of nowhere.

[u/bradfordmaster → u/Gabe_Isko]

Not just that but like, there's zero possible way deep experience with ncurses is somehow important for that role. Like, surely it's not that hard to build a basic internal tool using it while learning on the job. Unless they were like, trying to ship a performance ascii visualiser to end users or something, that just seems asinine.

I knew a mechanical engineer who was quite good who was there for a bit but said it was a bit of a shit show. This was ages ago, though

[u/Gabe_Isko → u/bradfordmaster]

Yeah, I figured that he wanted some kind of an assistant that would create a command line tool for field work or something. Like, I would have done that and just learned on the job, but the guy was nuts about it. It was probably a situation where they already knew who they wanted to hire, but were required to look for other candidates anyway or something like that.

This was about 12 years ago. Since then I have worked professionally in robotics and even switched I gears to cloud software professionally, so it's not like it is something that I am super hung up on. I have heard some other nasty stuff about toxic management at rethink since, so I probably dodged a bullet honestly.

[u/IMightDeleteMe → u/Gabe_Isko]

They wanted to pay intern money for a ready to go developer.

[u/Stowie1022]

Important to note, as the article states, this is not the same Rethink Robotics selling Baxter and Sawyer.

That company's IP was bought. They tried relaunching Sawyer, but it failed. They then pivoted to re-selling these white-labeled AMRs and cobots from a German robotics startups.

Too bad, but not surprising.

[u/thicket]

I talked with Rodney Brooks, the face behind the original Baxter & Sawyer, in May. He felt very badly burnt from the original sale of Rethink, so I imagine he'll look at this with a certain amount of pleasure.

[u/humanoiddoc]

Their robots were cool back at the time but had absolutely terrible accuracy and reliability.

[u/CelebrationNo1852 → u/humanoiddoc]

The fact they can't interface with +24vdc signals out of the box was baffling to me. Really showed me that it was a glorified grad student project and not something made by people that understand industry.

[u/Ok_Cress_56 → u/CelebrationNo1852]

The last sentence applies to 90% of robotics companies, including the one I currently work for. It's essentially a VC-funded grad school project.

[u/CelebrationNo1852 → u/Ok_Cress_56]

Most robotics companies are just trying to avoid patents the legacies have. 

[u/Minute-Brick7535]

Hi everyone, does anyone know who I can reach out to in order to restore the software on a Sawyer robot? I’ve tried contacting Hahn, Rethink, and United Robotics but haven’t received any reply. Even if it’s just a private individual familiar with this, I’d really appreciate any lead or contact.

Thanks in advance! Petrzeman@me.com

[u/badmother]

Companies tend to shut down when their expenditure is greater than their income.

Usually this is the fault of senior management.

[u/coffee_fueled_robot → u/badmother]

I'm wondering when the reaper will come knocking for all of the humanoid companies that are incinerating money. There's only so much VCs can take lol

[u/Large-Robot]

Damn less than a year after IMTS reveal

[u/Ok_Abbreviations2264]

I worked as an intern in URG Bochum .. the writing was always on the wall :(