Boston-based Rethink Robotics has taken a different track with Baxter, a lightweight humanoid manufacturing robot that can easily be trained to perform a variety of repetitive tasks.

It’s a good bet that the field of robotics is poised to follow a similar path; we are, in all likelihood, at the leading edge of an explosive wave of innovation that will ultimately produce robots geared toward nearly every conceivable commercial, industrial, and consumer task. That explosion will be powered by the availability of standardized soft