Google has acquired the engineering
company that developed Cheetah, the world's fastest-running robot and other
animalistic mobile research machines.
Boston Dynamics, which contracts for the US military, is the eighth robotics
company snapped up by Google this year.
Both the price and size of the project, which is led by former Android boss
Andy Rubin, are being kept under wraps.
However, analysts say the purchases signal a rising interest in robotics use
by consumer internet companies.
Online shopping portal Amazon, for example, recently announced
plans to deploy a fleet of delivery drones.
In
a statement posted on the Google Plus service, Chief Executive Larry Page
said:
"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."
Robot Machines
Boston Dynamics, which does not sell robots commercially, was founded in 1992
by a former professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It consulted for Japanese electronics giant Sony on consumer applications
such as Aibo, a robot dog.
But it mostly develops mobile and off-road robotics technology, funded by the
Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa.
Boston Dynamics road-tests its Atlas robot on rough terrain
Google has said it would honour the existing military contracts with
Darpa.
Boston Dynamics' videos of its walking robots have garnered millions of views
online.
One of them, called BigDog, is remarkably agile for a machine and is able to
move over rough terrain such as snow and ice.
Another, of a four-legged robot named WildCat, shows the noisy machine
galloping down a car park at high speed and pivoting quickly on the spot.
BBC.CO.UK
No comments:
Post a Comment