Marc Raibert: Half a Century of Innovation, and Still Looking Ahead

**Marc Raibert** (0:01)
The hockey stick was a way of showing how good the robot was performing. We were just showing off the balancing capability of the robot. And we weren't being mean in any sense. You know, the robot doesn't have any feelings or ability to feel pain or anything. And people just, especially with humanoid robots, people just assume that it's like a person. And in almost every respect, it's not like a person.

**Brian Heater** (0:36)
Hello, and welcome to the inaugural episode of Automated. I'm Brian Heater, the managing editor at A3, and we're gonna be hanging out for about 45 minutes or so every week with some of the top names in robotics, AI, and automation. This is something my producer, Jan, and I have wanted to put together for a very long time now. It's a show that dives into the cultural, historical, and sociological implications of these technologies that are taking an increasingly central role in our lives. When we were in the planning stages, I put together a short list of the folks that we absolutely had to have on the program. And I'm excited to tell you that we've already recorded episodes with most of them. Marc Raibert was at the top of that list, of course. He and I have spoken a dozen or so times over the years, and I learned something new from him every time. You'll also find that he isn't afraid to give me and my journalistic instincts a bit of crap during our conversation. It's always great and often a bit humbling catching up with Marc. So it was the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, and now it's RAI. How did you settle on that name?

**Marc Raibert** (1:55)
We call it the RAI Institute, Robotics and AI Institute. How do we decide on it? Oh, we did the usual thing where we had made lists and circulated among all the people and came up with a bunch of different ideas and sorted it out to this one. I think it's important that the name had robotics in it, in addition to AI, because it's really how the two of them fit together that we're all about.

**Brian Heater** (2:19)
Yeah, I remember in the very early days, after Rob was announced the CEO and you would announce you were doing this, I think you might have been bouncing a few things off of me because you were kind of going back and forth. And it did initially have Boston Dynamics in the name. Was that a point of, I don't know, confusion?

**Marc Raibert** (2:35)
I think that caused confusion because everybody thought we didn't know if we were just Boston Dynamics. And people know generally that I was at Boston Dynamics for a long time and the founder, same owners, but a separate company. So I thought it was better if we had our own identity.

**Brian Heater** (2:54)
Was retirement ever a serious consideration for you?

**Marc Raibert** (2:57)
During COVID, I thought about it because during COVID, I had already turned over the helm to Rob. And I kind of rekindled some hobbies because I was at home and had time to do that. So I thought about it. But then and now, it still feels like those hobbies would be fun for a while, but not anything like working on robotics, which is my lifelong love.

**Brian Heater** (3:29)
Yeah, you seem to be in a really good position. And I think you're probably in a similar position by the end of your time at Boston Dynamics, the company where you get to fly around, you get to talk to people, you get to sort of be the face and the voice of the Institute.

**Marc Raibert** (3:43)
Yeah, but the real fun is having your hands on the robots or working on the designs and stuff. I mean, you're right. Last year, I spent a lot of time flying around and being the face. This year, I'm trying to do less of that and focus more on the work we're doing. I think that's where the real fun is. I mean, I'm a gadget guy, a builder. So that's what robotics really is for me, sort of the ultimate in building things.

**Brian Heater** (4:14)
I was going to ask, what are Marc Raibert's hobbies outside of, I guess, robotics?

**Marc Raibert** (4:21)
Lately, I've been working on reviving guitar amplifiers from the 50s and 60s. And even I just got one from the 40s. And I kind of got the electronics working again, and building what looks like a period correct cabinet for it, because it came in something else.

**Brian Heater** (4:48)
The guitar amp thing is really interesting to me, because I think probably those are two amps. But working with that half century or 60, 70 year old technology, is there anything that you can still learn that you feel like continues to be applicable for these bleeding edge robots you're building?