36 claims
“they are safe in the presence of humans.”
Rodney Brooks, roboticist, blog author 21 October 2023 Autonomous Vehicles 2023, Part I (rodneybrooks.com)
The warehouse mobile robots built by Brooks's current startup are safe in the presence of humans.
Mixed Partly true and partly false in roughly equal measure.
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Applies to the mobile warehouse robots of Robust AI, Brooks's startup in 2023. True: independent evidence shows the robots were designed and certified or tested to operate safely among people, with no reported injury incidents. Examples are compliance with relevant mobile-robot safety standards (e.g. ANSI/RIA R15.08 or ISO 3691-4), third-party certification, or deployment reports from customers. Mostly true: the safety design and deployment among workers are documented without incidents, but no formal certification is shown. Mixed: the evidence is limited to the company's own description plus pilot deployments. Mostly false: there are documented safety concerns or incidents, or the robots needed segregated zones. False: there were documented injuries or regulatory findings that the robots were unsafe around humans. The company's marketing claims alone do not establish true.
Evidence
- Rodney Brooks Explains What Robust.AI Is Actually Doing IEEE Spectrum · 21 July 2022
“Our robots are deferential to people, instead of acting like they own the place. We want them to be friendly to the people who work there.”
- Rodney Brooks Explains What Robust.AI Is Actually Doing IEEE Spectrum · 21 July 2022
“While the pictures and video are a pretty good example of the sort of thing that Robust.AI is looking to deploy, this is just a prototype of Carter”
- Robust.AI chooses Aptiv PULSE sensor for Gen 3 Carter mobile robot - The Robot Report The Robot Report · 25 June 2026
“As part of this next phase of collaboration, Aptiv will obtain PL(d) certification for PULSE across relevant industrial safety use cases.”
- Robust AI’s Carter Pro robot is designed to work with, and be moved by, humans | TechCrunch TechCrunch · 17 November 2024
“For Carter, that means more than just becoming a passive piece of equipment, but rather sensing the force being applied and adjusting accordingly.”
- raw AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai)
“Carter has a control stanchion with a handlebar (bright orange on Carter Pro) and uses both active and passive force sensing, so a worker can simply grab it and push, slow, or reposition it by hand, and the robot yields and adjusts rather than fighting the person or triggering a hard safety stop.”
- Saddle Creek Deploys Robust.AI’s Carter Collaborative Robots to Enhance Warehouse Operations and Efficiency Business Wire (issued for Robust.AI) · 13 November 2025 Own record
“Reduced congestion for smoother, safer floor operations”
- Saddle Creek Deploys Robust.AI’s Carter Collaborative Robots to Enhance Warehouse Operations and Efficiency Business Wire (issued for Robust.AI) · 13 November 2025 Own record
“Our solutions prioritize seamless, safe human-robot collaboration to drive higher productivity across picking, putaway, value-added service and material handling.”
Reasoning
The evidence describes how the Carter robots were designed to work around people: they are "deferential to people" (E1, a Brooks quote), and they use force sensing so a worker can push or reposition them by hand (E4, E5). In 2022 the robot was still described as a prototype (E2). The deployment and safety benefits are reported only in a press release issued for Robust.AI (E6, E7), which is not independent of the company. No item shows the robots meeting a safety standard such as ANSI/RIA R15.08 or ISO 3691-4, any third-party certification, or a record of incidents. E3 concerns certification for a supplier's sensor and dates from 2026. This matches the criteria's "mixed" case, where the evidence is limited to the company's own description plus deployments.
Cite this claim
Rodney Brooks, “The warehouse mobile robots built by Brooks's current startup are safe in the presence of humans.” (said 21 October 2023). Verdict: mixed. Reliability API, claim c_a768100c8edb, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_a768100c8edb
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts and scores are made. The same data is on Hugging Face under CC BY 4.0.