Chennai: Google is on a robot shopping spree! The Internet search giant silently scooped up seven robotic companies in the last six months. The tech giant on Friday confirmed its acquisition of Boston Dynamics, yet another company that specializes in robotics and one that has close ties with the U.S. military, reports New York Times. Not a lot is known about what Google plans to do with these robots, but this acquisition comes at a time when other tech companies are experimenting with robots of their own (Amazon’s delivery drones).
Boston Dynamics is a privately held engineering company that is best known for building military-grade robots that look as if they are straight out of a science-fiction movie. Most of this company’s projects are co-developed and funded by the U.S. military and none of its robots have been sold commercially but it is known for pushing the boundaries of off-road robotics technology. Clearly, everyone at Google is excited about prospect of what Boston Dynamics brings to the table.
Boston Dynamics’s catalog lists nine impressive and unique robots. Among those is a four-legged robot called Cheetah, which can run at 29 miles per hour making it the fastest legged robot in the world. WildCat is Cheetah’s agile successor that can move without the power chord but it is not quite as fast yet. BigDog is a noisy, gas-powered walking robot that can climb walls and is remarkably agile for a robot that can travel through rough terrain such as ice and snow. The company is currently supplying humanoid robots named Atlas to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
This new robotics division is headed by Andy Rubin, the former head of Google’s Android, now the most widely used smartphone operating system. Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page said in a statement, “I am excited about Andy Rubin's next project. His last big bet, Android, started off as a crazy idea that ended up putting a supercomputer in hundreds of millions of pockets. It is still very early days for this, but I can't wait to see the progress.”
Google has declined to give specifics about the products they are working on, but Andy Rubin said he does not expect the initial development to go on for years, indicating that we can start seeing Google’s commercialized robots in the next few years.
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