Rethink Robotics

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The collaborative-robot pioneer behind Baxter and Sawyer, now defunct after several shutdowns and restarts.

Rethink Robotics was founded in Boston in 2008 as Heartland Robotics by Rodney Brooks — an iRobot co-founder and MIT professor — and Ann Whittaker. It launched the dual-arm robot Baxter in 2012 and the single-arm Sawyer in 2015, both built around low cost, hand-guided teaching, and a “soft” response when they bump into a person; the research edition became a staple platform in robot-learning labs through the 2010s. Sales fell short of expectations, and the company shut down and sold its assets in October 2018; Germany's HAHN Group bought the patents, trademarks, and Intera software and kept selling Sawyer. HAHN's subsidiary Rethink Robotics GmbH closed in August 2024; a new company relaunched with new products that September, but it shut down again in 2025.

ExampleThe robot arm modeled in the Meta-World simulation benchmark is a Sawyer.

Also called: Heartland Robotics
Related: Rethink Robotics Baxter · Rethink Robotics Sawyer · Collaborative Robot · Kinesthetic Teaching · Series Elastic Actuator (SEA)
Sources: Rethink Robotics - Wikipedia
As of: 2025