Credit: Photolibrary
FOR RODNEY BROOKS, the path to becoming one of the world's foremost roboticists began in the backyard shed of his childhood home. It was Glenelg, Adelaide, in the 1960s, the space race was in full swing and Brooks and Scott Johnston, his mate from around the corner, spent endless hours in that shed trying to blow things up.
Brooks' father, a former telephone technician who worked at Woomera, Australia's long-range missile testing facility in the desert 500 km north of Adelaide, brought home leftover rocket equipment to aid their childhood fantasies.
Their aim was to make solid fuel rockets, but mostly they made smoke bombs. Using their own recipe, they produced vast quantities of hydrogen and learnt that a garbage bag full would rattle the windows of the neighbours' house when exploded.
They spent all their pocket money buying junk from a local equipment recycler, built a hovercraft that didn't hover and an oscilloscope - a shock from which once caused Brooks to pass out, requiring his brother to revive him.
"It's not that we ever succeeded in finishing any of these lofty projects," says Johnston, now a high school physics teacher. "More that we had to problem-solve and improvise relentlessly." Skills that have been vital for Brooks as he's evolved from backyard boy wonder to 'bad boy' of the robotics world.
According to his colleagues, no one has been more successful at seeing into the future of robotics, at defining new ways to build, think and bring robots into everyday life than Brooks.
He's described variously as a "robot revolutionary" a "gigantic presence in the robotics field" and a "renaissance man" with a "hugely powerful mind". He's no tin man without a heart either; friends describe him as a "classic connector", an "emotional and romantic man".
He has been twice married, is passionate about his children (Brooks is father to four - three biological children and a stepdaughter, all now in their twenties) and his dogs (he's the owner of two Yorkshire terriers whom he says have taught him more about robot behaviour than being a parent ever has). He also has a soft spot for all the robots he's had a hand in creating and reels off their names like members of his extended family. He has a heightened empathy for machines - he winced watching the film Robocop when the robot went belly up, because so many of his own robots have done the same.
Former students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, which Brooks recently left after 24 years of teaching, describe him as a mentor "not just as a scientist but also a citizen". One says he thinks of Brooks with the same affection as his favourite uncle.
A great raconteur, a hush always fell over the crowd when the Panasonic Professor of Robotics entered the room. His classes were popular because they were fun, students say. He's also a provocateur; he once ran a series of lectures called "God and Computers" which caused great controversy on the MIT campus - many of his former students remember them as the most interesting and thought provoking lectures they attended at the institute. He's the author of a host of books, including a science fiction novel that's yet to see the light of day.
