Rivian CEO says the future will be more WALL-E than The Terminator

Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe tells Masters of Scale host Jeff Berman that the future of robotics looks more like WALL-E than The Terminator. Rather than humanoid machines, he predicts a broad spectrum of purpose-built robots. We’ll see everything from self-driving lawnmowers to dexterous factory arms, all seamlessly integrated into everyday products and manufacturing.

Transcript

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Of course, I think it's much more like WALL-E. We often, when we think of robotics, we naturally think of robots that only look like humans. But there's going to be a broad spectrum of, call it like mechatronic evolution. You're going to have robots that are very specific for cleaning your house and they'll be approachable, but they don't necessarily look like a human. You'll have robots in a manufacturing plant that have human characteristics, like, let's say, highly dexterous hands and arms. But we'll have form factors that redefine how we think of, like, a robot that can do human-like skill in a manufacturing plant is what MIND is working on. You'll have robots that can do agriculture, cut your lawn. When you think about a robot that cuts your lawn, you could have a humanoid robot that pushes a lawnmower, or you can have a lawnmower that's just driving itself. In much the same way that when we talk about robots as cars, we've now imagined them in a way that you put cameras and sensors around the periphery of the vehicle and the vehicle becomes the robot versus getting a robot that looks like a human to sit in the driver's seat and drive it like a human. We're just going to see robotics integrate into almost every physical product in some way or form, whether it's in the manufacturing of that product or it's in the product itself.