From Research Rockets to One Million Robots

It’s not healthy to dwell on hypotheticals. It can, however, be helpful to consider how decisions have shaped our journeys over the decades. Sometimes these things come down to something as simple as raising your hand when the teacher asks if anyone in your middle school class is interested in computers.  

“I just saw Star Wars,” Tye Brady reminisces. “I'm interested, so, I raised my hand. Another kid raises his hand, and it turns out this teacher was on the board for a technical high school in the county. I grew up in a one stoplight town, and this technical high school had a DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) PDP-8.” 

Herein lies the hypothetical. Where would Brady be, had he not raised his hand in that 70s middle school classroom? Most likely not here, recording this episode of Automated. That’s not to suggest, of course, that appearing on my robotics podcast this week constitutes some high-water mark for Amazon Robotics’ chief technologist.  

It is, however, easy to imagine a life playing out differently, had the young man not found himself at a technical high school after having been recently won over by a silver and blue astromech droid from a galaxy far, far away.    

“We show up and there's a computer box that hasn't been used in six months,” Brady continues. “So, we look to our teacher and like, hey, what's going on? He was like, I don't know, let's bust out the manual and start to figure this stuff out. Over the next three months, I kind of figured out how to do a little bit of programming, how to write my name. I was hooked.” 

What we have just covered comprises the contents of “miracle number one.” Its sequel arrived ahead of another major crossroads for Brady. 

“Miracle number two is that I couldn't afford college,” he says. “Folks that were giving back to Boston University allowed me to go to school on a scholarship. I came to Boston knowing how to program, and I loved aerospace. I wanted to put robots in space. It turns out that combining my skills in software and my love of computers with more of a mechanical degree was really helpful in the realm of robotics.” 

Brady notes that he had applied to — and been rejected by — MIT, before landing at BU, but a career full of strange and fortunate left turns found him at the legendary engineering school in a staffing role. For eight years, he worked as principal spacecraft engineer, one of those job titles that’s so cool it sounds like it was dashed off for a movie script under tight deadline.  

“It was really an incredible time. What I learned most and probably the deepest thing that I learned is just to be good to yourself and have confidence,” Brady says. “I took a class every semester I was there. You can take classes for free. Finally, a professor asked, ‘Didn’t I see you a couple of years ago?’ I'm like, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Haven’t you graduated yet?’ I'm like, ‘No, I'm just taking classes because I love it.’ […] He goes, ‘Why don’tt we just get you a degree?’” 

Brady followed his time at MIT with a brief stint running an aerospace consulting firm at the height of the dot com bubble, before making his way to Draper Laboratory. After 15 years at the defense and space R&D lab, Amazon convinced him to pivot from spacecraft to shipping. 

“My journey is kind of rockets to robots, for sure,” says Brad. “I was approached by some of the big tech companies, and I would say, ‘I’m happy doing what I’m doing.’ But when Amazon came, it was a little different. We had the initial conversation and it was about application. It wasn’t just in the digital world. It was about true application. Something I learned at MIT was that forcing the function of true constraints and making something work in the real world.”