Sawyer

A red industrial one armed robot with a tablet for a face shows off its two gripper fingers attachment.
Sawyer's arms accept a variety of interchangable grippers. Photo: Rethink Robotics

Sawyer is an industrial collaborative robot designed to help out with manufacturing tasks and work alongside humans. You can teach it new tasks by demonstrating what to do using the robot's own arm.

Creator

Rethink Robotics

(Rethink Robotics shut down in 2018; its patents and trademarks were acquired by Germany's Hahn Group.)

Year
2015
Country
United States 🇺🇸
Categories
Features
Sawyer in action. Video: Rethink Robotics

More videos

Rate this Robot

Overall Rating

Would you want this robot?

Appearance

Neutral

Did you know?

Rethink's robots are named after Old English occupations, Sawyer being a sawer of wood.

A red industrial one armed robot with an end effector consisting of of four suction cups extending out from a single unit. The robot has a tablet display head showing expressive eyes and eyebrows.
Getting a different type of gripper. Photo: Rethink Robotics
An industrial one armed robot with a tablet display for a head picks up a metal pipe.
Sawyer working at a metal factory. Photo: Rethink Robotics

History

Rodney Brooks, a cofounder of iRobot and a former director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, founded Rethink Robotics, then called Heartland Robotics, in 2008. His goal was to develop an affordable industrial robot that could automate repetitive tasks in small and medium-size manufacturers, working alongside humans and helping them with tasks rather than taking their jobs. The company worked in total secrecy until late 2012, when it changed its name to Rethink Robotics and unveiled its first robot, called Baxter. In 2015 it introduced Sawyer, which was smaller, faster, and more precise than the earlier model. The robot went on sale later that year. Rethink raised $62 million in venture funding. The company shut down in 2018.

Two people and one Sawyer robot work together in a factory.
Time to get to work, right, humans? Photo: Rethink Robotics
Two red robots stand together. One has one red industrial arm, and the other is larger with two arms.
Sawyer and Baxter, brothers in arms. Photo: Rethink Robotics

Specs

Overview

Train-by-demonstration software and task programming via Intera Studio. High resolution force control, embedded vision, and different gripper kits.

Status

Discontinued

Year

2015

Website
Length
102 cm
Weight
19 kg
Speed
7.2 km/h (arm speed)
Actuators

Series-elastic actuators

Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
7
Materials

Aluminum

Software

Intera

Power

100-V to 240-V AC

Cost
$34,900