Boston Dynamics is an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon that can run faster than 40 mph.
Big Dog is a company that makes a four-legged robot that can climb hills and travel easily through snow.
Schaft is an award-winning Japanese robot design firm has built a robot that walks upright like man, climbs ladders and can perform routine cleaning tasks like cleaning debris and connecting hoses.
Google, the company that owns the Internet’s most popular search engine, has recently bought all of these robotics companies and five others in the past year. And many people are wondering why.
Google Isn’t Talking
“They are very careful,” Richard Mahoney, director of robotics at SRI International, a nonprofit tech incubator based in Menlo Park, California, told National Public Radio. “They haven’t disclosed what they are doing.”
Mahoney, who also serves on the board of directors at Redwood Robotics, one of the companies Google purchased, said he and others in the robotic industry linked to the Internet giant, were required to sign nondisclosure agreements to prevent information about the company’s robotic intentions from being made public.
“If I had information that wasn’t proprietary, I would share it,” Mahoney said. “But right now they are being pretty careful about what they are telling people.”
Much Speculation as to What Google Is Up To
Even though Google and its associates are being tight lipped, that doesn’t mean that speculation isn’t rampant. Among the theories out there include everything from the company working on a full autonomous self-aware robot like Star Wars’ C-3PO to the company expanding into industrial automation to providing a way to expand it’s Google Maps app by using robots to travel into remote locations.
“The deal (with Boston Dynamics) is also the clearest indication yet that Google is intent on building a new class of autonomous systems that might do anything from warehouse work to package delivery and even elder care,” according to the New York Times.
What’s most likely, however, is that Google has simply recognized the growing applications for robots in everyday life. Robots are becoming more sophisticated and can now include such features as elaborate sensors, high-memory chips and lightweight batteries.
They also are getting smaller. Paola Santana, co-founder of Matternet, said her company is developing tiny lightweight delivery drones that fly. they are about the size of an iPhone and can deliver packages without the use of roads.
Another robot — the URB-1, created by Unbounded Robotics — is a robot that uses wheels and can use its arm to reach around and grab things when moving around making deliveries in offices, warehouses and factories. When its moving, its about the size of R2D2, C-3pO’s companion, but when it comes to a halt its spine extends and it grows taller. Sort of like ET.
Google also is developing a self-driving car.
Google already has an ubiquitous presence on the Internet. Perhaps some day in the near future it’s robot army also will be as ever present in real life.