The rise of the machines began in Chatswood last month with the launch of the first interactive commercial robot for hire in Australia.

Chatswood start-up Robological is pushing the boundaries of technology and hopes to “democratise” robots.

After more than a decade working on robotics at universities, Robological chief executive officer Damith Herath and chief technology officer Zhengzhi Zhang decided to take their ideas into business.

A few months ago they welcomed a new member to their team — Baxter, the first industrial robot to be designed to work safely with humans.

Mr Herath said industrial robots needed programmers and were usually caged for safety reasons.

“That was how robotics has been for the last 50 years,” Mr Herath said.

But the Baxter robot can work without a cage and can be trained without writing a single line of code.

media_camera Baxter the robot is for hire.

Mr Herath said this new generation robot was a bit like the first personal computers in the 1970s.

“(Baxter) is like the Apple One or a Commodore 64 of the PC era,” he said.

“It does basic stuff and we provide two services, anyone can hire the robot ($35 per hour) and we can program it to do more complex tasks. We build tools to make it see and understand.”

Their tools have been so impressive that Mr Herath and his company is headed to Seattle next week as the only Australian company in the finals of the Amazon picking challenge. The internet giant chose 25 teams from around the world who built their own robot hardware and software to attempt the challenge of picking items from shelves.

Tuning the robot to see the world so it could understand what it’s looking at was no simple task, Mr Herath said.

“For example, seeing the difference between a chocolate box or a cookie box and where it is on the shelf,” he said.

“The robot needs to figure out how to pull it out from the shelf too.”

His answer to people who are cynical about robots taking over jobs is to look at them like new tools that increase our skills. “We see it as way of increasing efficiency. We want to democratise robotics,” he said.

■ Baxter was released in America by Rethink Robotics, a start-up company founded by Rodney Brooks

■ It is different from other industrial robots because it can learn and operates without a safety cage

■ Baxter can be taught how to perform a task by having his hands moved; he memorises the movements and can then repeat the task

■ Chatswood technology consultancy Robological own and rent out the commercial version of Baxter (about 10 other Baxters in Australia are being used for academic and research purposes). Details: info@robological.com