
Why Google Wants to Sell Its Robots: Reality Is Hard - antman
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/why-google-wants-to-sell-its-robots-reality-is-hard
======
argonaut
Out of all the reasons I've read in the media, I really only see one
legitimate (non-FUD) possible reason for Google selling Boston Dynamics: they
didn't integrate into the company well. Not building the products Google
envisions, and not working with Google's other robotic divisions, both seem
like really glaring issues that would motivate splitting off Boston Dynamics.

Google has many divisions working on unprofitable long term research projects,
so clearly that's not the reason. I don't think it's fear of humanoid AI -
this doesn't seem like something the founders of Google would fear.

~~~
joshmarinacci
This. Another article that was more in depth said that the other robotics
companies Google bought were being integrated into other divisions. Boston
Dynamics is the only one being sold off. For whatever reasons they didn't mesh
well with the rest of Google.

~~~
sschueller
It is possible that Boston Dynamics is still very tight with military
contractors and technologies which may prevent separation. Google made it
clear it does not want these contracts and associations.

What if a chip/software chunk in Atlas was made by Raytheon and any
modification needs to shared back? Or access is not even possible.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> Google made it clear it does not want these contracts and associations.

They did? Google still does DoD contracts for supplying Google Maps among
other things. I figured they didn't care.

~~~
msl09
Just my personal opinion, but I think Boston dynamics robots show a lot of
potential in the near future for military uses, however seeing big dogs in the
battle field could generate pretty bad PR for Google, a company whose motto
is, still, do no evil.

~~~
increment_i
I'm inclined to agree. Google probably does not want to be the company that
creates Terminators for the Pentagon. Watching the last BD demo on YouTube,
watching that humanoid stomp through the forest, I couldn't help but joke how
terrifying it would be to see one of those things holding a machine gun.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> I couldn't help but joke how terrifying it would be to see one of those
> things holding a machine gun.

Funny thing is I would be far less terrified of it than a human if it were
holding a machine gun because its human-like movement is so incredibly slow I
would feel like I actually had a chance (even if I didn't).

However, if they embedded the machine gun into the bot itself (which I think
is far more likely) then you could have instant targeting which shifts the
terrifying back to the bot. It would also not look like it even has a gun
depending on how they incorporated it and it could fire in multiple directions
at once.

Ah, the future of war. So efficient and terrifying.

~~~
Kliment
There are already automated "click to kill" turrets. They have a thermal
camera and a gun, do automated target detection and automated killing. It's
only due to customer demand that they have a human in the loop clicking the
kill button. Having been within the firing range of one of those, it's a
really terrifying feeling.

~~~
hellbanner
Which company makes these?

~~~
sirkneeland
I think Samsung has a division that makes them for the ROK military (not being
facetious, but possibly being incorrect)

~~~
onetimePete
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AKZC-5dFWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AKZC-5dFWQ)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1)

------
mixmax
"To develop robots, you have two options: You can either simulate an
environment and robot with software and hope the results are accurate enough
that you can load it into a machine and watch it walk."

This is much harder than you'd think.

Here's a fun story from 15 years ago when a friend of mine tried to do some
simple AI:

His goal was to have a humanoid shape created is software learn how to walk
using simple AI. The idea was that it would obey some basic laws (gravity, the
limits of its joints, etc.), do something random, check whether or not it was
closer to the goal of walking, tweak its parameters, and iterate. The chosen
goal was not to fall over.

He set up the program, let it run over the weekend and let it do millions of
tries. Hopefully when he came back to the office it would have learned how to
walk, or at least stand up without falling.

His disappointment was huge when he came into the office: The simulated robot
was sitting down with its knees bent, thus having achieved the goal of not
falling over.

~~~
JimmyAustin
I've heard a similar story about small self driving cars.

The cars would drive around using a random algorithm, then copy and tweak the
algorithm of the longest running car when they crashed. The researcher left
the room to let the cars work, only to come back and find that each of the
cars had deduced that the perfect solution was to remain perfectly still.
After all, if they didn't move, they couldn't crash!

~~~
ghostDancer
The only winning move is not to play - WOPR A.k.a. Joshua

~~~
komali2
That's the story story of a game-learning program that found the best way to
"not lose" at tetris was to pause right before a brick extended above the top
of the level, and leave it paused indefinitely.

------
AndrewKemendo
I don't know if is because the author is trying to be accessible, or genuinely
doesn't understand AI but the writing eregiously understates the difficulty of
human level machines.

If I had to summarize what the article said: "Google tried these robots but
are selling them because it turns out to be hard to make robots that are as
capable as humans." Which is like saying "it turns out that making humans
immortal is really hard."

I doubt that is why Google is selling BD. My guess is that it was a
combination of things: BD was a cost center with no commercialization roadmap,
someone on the board got spooked about stupid AI risks, with the alphago wins
it might start looking too scary for the public.

I think it was a terrible idea for Google, but is great for the robotics world
as the behemoth is scaling back totally taking over the world.

~~~
mappingbabeljc
Hi there, author here -- mostly trying to be accessible. And I think in the
tech community it is well understood that robotics is hugely difficult, but it
seems like general public pretty much equates progress in software AI with
progress in robots, which is clearly not the case. We thought it might be
helpful to highlight this to people who aren't hugely technical.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Thanks and it makes good sense in that context.

That said, I do fundamentally believe that there are some things that the
"general public" will never wrap their heads around. Feynman had a great take
on this when trying to explain why he can't just describe magnetic forces [1].
I'd be curious to hear your take on that.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjmtJpzoW0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjmtJpzoW0o)

~~~
mappingbabeljc
I'm an optimist in this area - people like Wait But Why and XKCD (eg -
[https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/](https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/)) - show
that most complex subjects can be explained in simple language that most
people with an average education can understand. (An aside: I recently wrote
an article about the use of D-Wave quantum computers on Wall Street and that
experience gave me a sense of how tremendously difficult it can be to simple
summarize an inherently technical topic. I estimate it took about five hours
of study to be able to write a couple of accurate sentences I felt comfortable
with.) Whether the general public has the inclination to take the time to
understand this stuff is another question entirely!

------
vermontdevil
They also admitted autonomous cars are going to take much longer than
anticipated. Up to 30 years.

Perhaps the car situation and this are forcing them to rethink some of their
plans.

~~~
rayiner
Obviously. People who think general purpose self driving cars are just a few
years out ignore the basic tenant of engineering: the last 10% is 90% of the
work.

And with stuff like supersonic planes or Mars travel, the last 10% may take an
indefinite amount of time.

~~~
robotresearcher
I'm pretty optimistic that supersonic planes are possible.

------
vannevar
I think Google simply concluded that BD's hydraulics-based approach was a
technological dead end, and that there was little to be gained from trying to
retool the existing, highly-specialized team. And once the DoD said they
wouldn't use it, there was no customer on the horizon to offset the ongoing
cost. So there was no short or long term reason to keep it.

------
julie1
DARPA Robots are full 2.1D autonomous. Cars have far less degrees of liberty
and their "environment" is heavily subsidized.

Why are drones (3D evolution) and electric train (1.xD evolution) easy to
build?

Well in the case of drones makers don't care about limiting the movements so
rules of feedbacks are easy. In case of train, it is even easier.

It is all about the size of the decision tree and the number of
input(sensors)/output(effectors) that are coupled you need to control. There
probably is a metric to give you the domain of "accessible" low hanging fruits
of automation that can be set according to the domain.

General purpose automates are at best expensive, at worst a scam (see the
mechanical Türk).

One way to make bots efficient is to specialize them. Hence the Jacquart
mecanic computer that created the industrial revolution of 1830 and set the
workers on fights and created the conditions for WWI.

I guess no one saw the problem of efficiency still exists even with infinite
R&D budget.

The problem of robots is by requiring quite a lot of investment for their
deployment they set an unfair competition between people being backed up by
capital and innovative self made man without capital.

That was the reason to be of the Luddites.

------
bsbechtel
I haven't bought completely into all the AI hype, so take this with a grain of
salt, but I feel like on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being human, we are at a 3
or 4. Boston Dynamics is trying to do things at level 8 with tools still stuck
at the lower levels of AI. If there is a massive economic opportunity for AI
tech that's available now, it's figuring out how to get it out of SV and
making it useful for small businesses across the country. There are literally
thousands of tasks that can be done faster and better using AI, but the
problem is to use AI, you need someone skilled in basic programming to spend a
week teaching themselves the basics before they can even begin to think about
solving real business problems. Simplifying AI tools to the point where
someone with basic excel/web browser skills can learn and apply this tech to
their business operations in a few hours' time will be key to unlocking this
opportunity.

~~~
Omnus
I'm sure "machine learning for MBAs" will be a thing very soon if the current
trajectory holds.

Using a scale of 1-10 to rate the "human-ness" of AI belies the complexity of
the situation. Computers are already better than humans at a huge number of
tasks. In other areas, they haven't reached the level of an infant, or even a
mouse.

~~~
storgendibal
Already a thing :) Actually, Chicago Booth's MBA program has always been very
heavy on statistics and now they have an ML class as well.

~~~
bsbechtel
I'm not talking about teaching ML or AI to MBA's, I'm talking about making the
technology easy enough to use that it is accessible to practically anyone. ML
can have lots of benefits to many small businesses where parts of their
operations are highly repeatable, but variable enough that they can't
necessarily be automated away. Figuring out how to use ML in cases like this
can improve quality control, efficiency, and a host of other factors, but
owners of many small businesses don't have the technical skills or time to
invest in learning AI. What they do have is a few thousand dollars to invest
in something that could make their business better, but there needs to be a
Wordpress or Excel of AI to bring the technology to them.

------
karmacondon
I have a hard time believing that Google sold Boston Dynamics because they
didn't want to be associated with military applications or with "evil" AI.
Boston Dynamics had deep relationships with the government and clear military
applications when Google decided to acquire them. I don't see how the PR
situation would have changed between now and then.

This seems like a case of a merger/acquisition that just didn't work out.
Hopefully it's for the best. The military robots that BD makes have the
potential to save a lot of lives and do good, in combat and non-combat
situations. Ultimately, Google/Alphabet is an advertising company. Maybe it's
better for Boston Dynamics to go their own way. They can still maintain a
relationship with Google and other companies to share AI knowledge and
technology.

~~~
lrem
> The military robots that BD makes have the potential to save a lot of lives
> and do good, in combat and non-combat situations.

This statement somehow felt more scary than all the terminator jokes...

------
rileymat2
"Google’s decision to try to shed its Boston Dynamics robotics group
highlights a fundamental research problem: software is far easier to develop
and test than hardware. "

This is an interesting statement, because I assumed that it was the software
that ran the robots that was hard to get right.

------
elcapitan
I could see a market for a Google Hydraulic Robodog that follows me when
jogging, fending off and biting aggressive real dogs until I call it with "Ok
Google, don't be evil!".

~~~
ktRolster
Yeah, but would there be a market for it when the robots cost as much as a
car?

~~~
elcapitan
Having a self driving car follow me to fend off the dogs doesn't work on my
running path though.

------
iamleppert
From the article:

"But Boston Dynamics’s creations were not quite as advanced as people assumed.
The main problem the company had solved was getting its machines to move in a
realistic manner, said a person familiar with the company’s technology, but
full autonomy is far away. Marc Raibert, the founder of Boston Dynamics, said
as much in an interview with IEEE Spectrum in February, when he acknowledged
that in the videos, a human steered the robot via radio during its outside
strolls."

So basically what they created was fancy R/C toys, not real autonomous and
potentially beneficial robots that could do real work? Creating realistic
movement is a hard problem, and the associated electronics and algorithms to
move from point A to point B, but it's hardly novel.

Maybe this coupled with the fact a few others have mentioned the company was
poor at working with other divisions is the reason why they want to sell it?

~~~
icebraining
Have you seen the robots they developed? Reducing it to "moving from point A
to B" is misleading, in my opinion, even if technically true. They essentially
developed machines that could move in difficult terrains, often where humans
themselves couldn't.

My favorite is the Sand Flea, a small car which can jump 9 meters (30-feet)
into the air:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo)

------
JetSpiegel
"X is hard" is the new Considered Harmful. The newest thought-terminating
cliché.

~~~
ant6n
Not using clichés is hard.

------
markhadfield
Also, just as when BMW bought Landrover, the sold it two years later. Google
has learned what they needed to learn from Boston Dynamics, and I assuming had
a chance to syphon off any talent they wanted too. Time to move on with the
key assets.

~~~
15thandwhatever
Similar how Google did with Motorola Mobility.

------
s_kilk
"...but full autonomy is far away. Marc Raibert, the founder of Boston
Dynamics, said as much in an interview with IEEE Spectrum in February, when he
acknowledged that in the videos, a human steered the robot via radio during
its outside strolls."

This seems kinda sketchy to me. It's possible we'll fall into a Robotics
Winter, similar to the AI Winter due to these over-inflated claims of
advancement.

~~~
zurn
I looked up the quote: "Raibert said that for the outdoor scenes, a human
provides general steering via radio while the robot uses its stereo and LIDAR
sensors to adjust to terrain variations. ATLAS also does its own balance and
motion control. "

This kind of navigation level steering is an easy problem compared to stable
walking over rough terrain and recovery from kicks and shoves.

~~~
s_kilk
Maybe, but the videos (and surrounding media) were presented in a way which
implied the robot was autonomous, finding it's own path through the terrain.

It may not be intentionally misleading, but still misleading.

~~~
ktRolster
Compare it to that Watson/Carrie Fischer commercial, where Watson is presented
as being able to carry on a conversation. It can't really do that, but that's
also misleading.

------
chriskanan
I wonder what Google's thinking was when they bought Boston Dynamics if they
are now selling them because of the long timeframe. Trying to accelerate the
timeframe, helping to make the robots autonomous using their other AI groups,
and being ready to launch when the technology is ready are the reasons I
thought they made this acquisition.

~~~
maxerickson
They may just have wanted to get a good clear look at the state of their
technology and then having done so, decided that it wasn't interesting.

They could also be keeping the interesting bits for themselves.

------
roye
The mention of groups of robots learning together by exposing themselves to
the real world and sharing lessons is very interesting to consider. I wonder
if this is inspired by ants searching for food and leaving scent trails. Are
there success stories of this approach in robotics already?

------
Animats
The comment "the division’s leader, Jonathan Rosenberg, said the company
needed 'to have a debate on hydraulics.'" is significant. Google also owns
Schaft, which has an all-electric humanoid with water-cooled motors that are
heavily overdriven for brief periods using ultracapacitors to get a power
boost. Boston Dynamics' robots are hydraulic, using proportional valves
controlled by high speed servoloops. This works, but it has lots of
disadvantages. The energy efficiency is poor when you don't need full power.
There's no energy recovery. The system is bulky for a humanoid. For the pony-
sized BigDog, it made sense. Early industrial robots were hydraulic, but
that's now rarely seen except in very large robots. Electric motors and their
controls have improved enormously in recent years.

I was expecting, after the Google acquisition, to see a new humanoid robot
about now with Schaft's drive system, Boston Dynamics' balance system, and
Google's image understanding system. That was the good outcome. Apparently
Boston Dynamics does not play well with others, and that didn't happen.

Notice that Google isn't selling Schaft. I hope that they're doing OK. They're
people from Tokyo University and from Honda's ASIMO project who felt things
were moving too slowly. But they're in Tokyo, and Google may have problems
managing remote teams.

As for "reality is hard", a good humanoid robot is mechanically at least as
complicated as a car. Look how much engineering effort it took to develop good
cars. Today, small teams can build a car, but that's because the problem and
technology are well understood and you can buy many parts off the shelf.

Google has no track record in hardware with moving parts. Their autonomous
vehicles have great software, but the hardware is purchased and bolted on.
(Really bolted on; they do not bother to integrate the sensors into the
vehicle shell, unlike every auto manufacturer that's done self-driving.)
They're still using those rotating Velodyne scanners, which are a mechanical
system that should have been replaced years ago. Flash LIDARs and MEMS LIDARs
exist. Even the Google StreetView cars look clunky, and their backpack
StreetView thing needs a redesign from GoPro.

I can see the cultural problems between Google, with no track record in
mechanical engineering and a very young workforce, and Boston Dynamics, with
good mechanical engineers and a 67 year old CEO. On the other hand, Google
should not have bought all those robotics companies and expected them to make
money Real Soon Now. Look at automatic driving. It's been 11 years since the
DARPA Grand Challenge, when we first saw that it could really work. Nobody has
a production vehicle on the road yet. It's a long haul with a big payoff. This
isn't like the ad business.

If anybody from Google is reading this: you still have Schaft. Don't fuck that
up. Thank you.

------
mtgx
So it's even more far-fetched than a "Moonshoot" project? Will Google even get
to keep the technology it created so far, or will it all be sold as IP and
they won't be able to re-use any of it for other projects?

~~~
roye
It could be that the standard for moonshots changed with the formation of
Alphabet. That's the impression I got from yesterday's press coverage.

------
rokhayakebe
So Google quits because the problem is too hard? Clearly this is not the
reason.

~~~
pekk
Google doesn't deserve this kind of deference. As a corporation, they will
abandon a problem if predicted expenditures outweigh predicted returns.

------
mchahn
> The main problem the company had solved was getting its machines to move in
> a realistic manner

Why? Who cares about the aesthetics? The only thing that matters is if they
can get the job done while being safe.

~~~
robotresearcher
If the robots are to work around or with people their movements are important.
People are very good at predicting and understanding each other's behaviour,
which is useful for safety and coordination. This may be secondary to just
getting around but it's a serious consideration and area of research in
interactive robots.

~~~
robotresearcher
Dupe, sorry. Delete timed out.

------
return0
I think it's a shrewd logical decision. Google wouldn't sell robots just like
they won't sell cars, because licensing the software is more lucrative. Same
old MS-IBM story really.

------
iamcreasy
I tweeted Elon Musk asking if he wants to buy Boston Dynamics.

~~~
hnmcs
Watch out guys, we've got a stalking horse over here.

------
foobarbecue
Weird title. Should be "Why google decided not to sell robots" rather than
"Why google wants to sell its robots."

------
johnm1019
> "In order to make AI work in the real world and handle all the diversity and
> complexity of realistic environments, we will need to think about how to get
> robots to learn continuously and for a long time, perhaps in cooperation
> with other robots," said Levine.

SkyNet is coming.

