Jeff Bezos loves robots, with Amazon.com shelling out $775 million for Cambridge, Massachusetts robot maker Kiva Systems earlier this year. But that’s not the billionaire’s only robot love in the Boston area. Bezos also an investor in Heartland Robotics, which just announced today that it has raised $30 million in financing and has changed its name to Rethink Robotics.

According to the press release, Rethink Robotics is “developing a new generation of robots to improve productivity in manufacturing environments.”

“The robots will be intuitive to use, capable of autonomously sensing and adapting to their environment, versatile, and flexible,” the release continues. “They’ll be easy to buy, train, and deploy and will be much less expensive than traditional industrial robots.”

Jeff Bezos

And, for that matter, we presume much cheaper than humans.

In addition to Bezos, the cash was provided by Sigma Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and others. Founded in 2008 by Rodney Brooks, a co-founder of iRobot and former Director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the company has raised $57 million to date.

It hasn’t unveiled much about what it’s up to yet. The company’s news section claims that it is operating in stealth mode, which they admits “sounds vaguely creepy for a company that makes robots.”

 

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