GE Ventures led the latest funding round, joined by other major investors Wellington Management Company, Goldman Sachs and previous investors such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' fund, Bezos Expeditions.

Dr Brooks said at present only 10 per cent of manufacturing companies use robots.

"I looked at the barriers to more industries using robots … so that we can do what we've been doing with consumer electronics for years and make them easier to use," he said.

"The robots don't do every task but they're better for repetitive, simple tasks. The original robot was good at packing and repacking but this is more a machine which can interact with the other machines and do light assembly."

Dr Brooks is short-listed for the Advance Global Australian Award in Advanced Manufacturing.

'No one wants these jobs'

In 1990 Dr Brooks co-founded iRobot, a listed company which produced an automated vacuum cleaner called Roomba as well as robots used by the US military to disarm explosives.

He was also the founding director of MIT's computer science and intelligence laboratory and an adviser to Australian body NICTA. He has won multiple awards in robotics and innovation.


During his time creating Roomba, Dr Brooks said he was constantly being told that the infinite supply of labour would die out, inspiring him to form Rethink Robotics.

"Over time – and we're talking decades – lots of jobs will be replaced by robots," he said. "We've seen that happen in farming … but jobs which require dexterity won't be automated any time soon."

Dr Brooks believes robots will likely take the jobs of "workers in fulfilment", such as factory workers. "A lot of those jobs have been done by immigrants and in third-party centres," he said.

"There's been a push back against immigrants in the United States, but they're really horrible jobs that people don't want. In the US the average age of a factory worker is 56 … No one is lining up to take these jobs."

A 2013 Oxford University study concluded that nearly half of all jobs in the US were at risk of being performed by robots in the future. The study found there was a 99 per cent chance that telemarketers would be automated, a 94.5 per cent chance robots would take the jobs of paralegals and legal assistants and a 93.5 per cent chance for accountants and auditors.

"There will be a push for robots in elder care," Dr Brooks said. "I'm 60 and where are the people going to come from who will provide us services? We'll be IT savvy and we'll want to retain our independence [and] dignity and we'll want to stay in our homes longer."

He said raising capital had been easier this time around because of his experience running four previous companies. "In 1998 iRobot decided to raise capital. That was the boom in the start-up IT movement and we were building physical robots and I had a hard time raising capital," he said.

"But it went public and investors made a lot of money and I did OK. I was in a different position with Rethink Robotics; I'd already had a success and been a well-known professor at MIT."