
Google Acquires Seven Robot Companies, Wants Big Role in Robotics - eguizzo
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/google-acquisition-seven-robotics-companies
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dljsjr
One of the acquisitions (SCHAFT, Inc.) is a competitor in the current DARPA
Robotics Challenge, and out of all of the teams that have shown off progress
videos, SCHAFT has shown the greatest level of competence in handling the
tasks as they're going to be structured at the Trials in Homestead in a few
weeks. Very similar to what they did with the top team from the last DARPA
Grand Challenge (self-driving cars).

~~~
TheLegace
There is a great documentary talking to the guys who engineered the robot.
Interesting story they are a couple of research students at University of
Tokyo wanting to develop the robot for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, but there
is a rule at the University that no military funded projects are allowed. So
these guys are doing it independently, pretty awesome guys I wish them the
best. In the documentary[1], you can see how SCHAFT robot works in detail.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKiXM7bUypk&t=25m0s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKiXM7bUypk&t=25m0s)

~~~
dljsjr
The work they've done is definitely impressive. Really looking forward to
seeing the robot do its stuff in person down in Homestead.

Though Atlas is definitely nothing to sneeze at. I've become pretty fond of it
since the summer :-)

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Wohlf
From my roots in a Michigan automotive city, the first thing this makes me
think about is the massive amount of jobs this will eliminate if successful.
We will need drastic changes in social policy to make up for it, and I have
absolutely no faith in the government and voters to make it happen. I find the
idea of replacing millions of labor and service jobs with cheap robotics
before the world is ready to accept the consequences terrifying.

~~~
jpatokal
If a job is so simple, repetitive and brainless that it can be automated, it's
in humanity's best interest that it gets automated, and people are freed to do
something more useful. Yes, this will suck if you're 50 years old and get laid
off the assembly line, but we've been automating jobs out of existence for a
few centuries now and the overall consequences have not been particularly
terrifying.

~~~
JeremyNT
There is not enough history to give us the context for what this means.

People like to bring out truisms of horse and buggy drivers, but we're getting
to the point where we're thinking of automating entire classes of jobs out of
existence rapidly, not just specific tradesmen one at a time. Where in the
past manual labor has been automated, it has tended to happen slowly,
increasing efficiencies in niches and eliminating some tasks completely. This
has freed people to engage in - by and large - other sorts of manual labor,
those which were not so trivially automated.

What happens when the very notion of "manual labor" is itself abolished?
There's no historical precedent for that.

Automation will likely not eliminate all manual labor in our lifetimes, but I
imagine it will eliminate enough of it to break capitalism for large portions
of the population. We need to start considering what that means sooner, rather
than later.

~~~
droopyEyelids
Well stated. A phrase that comes to mind is that "Over time, a quantitate
change becomes a qualitative change."

Take Moore's law for example. The doubling of transistors/halving of their
expense first allowed more efficient computation in the original manner, but
now that qualitative change has started to alter the very nature of
computation- omnipresent computation in all man made devices doesn't mean our
spreadsheets run faster, but rather humanity exchanges information and
communicates in an entirely different manner than it did a generation ago.

Likewise, I believe we'll see the gradual automation of 'useless' jobs change
from an event we can work around by retraining or switching careers to an
obsolescence of the vast majority of human labor. There are some nagging
statistics about unemployed engineers that I believe back my assumption,
especially considering that engineering positions should be the new careers
people retrain to.

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grey
I'm surprised I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but at I/O during his Q&A
Larry Page talked a fair bit about how he wants to see manufacturing get more
streamlined, Maybe this could be related?

> _Smartphones, Page said, are “relatively expensive,” with the raw material
> costs — glass and silicon — is “probably like $1, or something like that. I
> think glass is 50 cents a pound. Phones don’t weigh very much. So I think
> when I see people in industry making things, I ask this question, how far
> are you off the raw materials costs. So as an engineer, trying to go to
> first principles, what is the real issue? What’s the real issue around our
> power grids, or around manufacturing? I think a lot of people don’t ask
> those questions, and because of that, we don’t make the progress we need to.
> If you’re going to make a smartphone for a dollar, that’s almost impossible
> to do. But if you took a fifty-year view, you’d probably make the
> investments you need to, and you’d probably even figure out how to make
> money. So, I encourage non-incremental thinking.”_

[http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2013/05/15/google-c...](http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2013/05/15/google-
ceo-page-address-developer-conference-takes-qa/) (The first transcript I could
find)

~~~
gregpilling
I manufacture things out of steel. Steel costs 50 cents a pound for sheet and
$2 a pound for welding wire. The freight to ship it to my distributors is
another 50 cents a pound, and the advertising and marketing cost is about $2 a
pound.

So ultimately I agree with Page. The cost of manufacturing anything goes on
along a 1/x curve over time, and approaches the raw material cost. Its the
other costs that don't do that, like engineering talent, marketing spends,
warehousing, shipping.

------
hershel
Recently google also created a company to develop software for the
construction industry, which they claim will reduce 30%-50% of the cost of
construction[1].

The most likely scenario for that to happen is through pre-fabricated
construction, meaning most of the construction happens in a factory. This fits
perfectly well with robotics.

[1][http://www.construction-manager.co.uk/news/googles-cloud-
bas...](http://www.construction-manager.co.uk/news/googles-cloud-based-genie-
set-torpedo-bim/)

~~~
huherto
I can imagine a scenario, they would be like 3D printers for houses. You
provide the materials (think big legos), and the robots (X-copters may be)
assemble everything.

~~~
criley2
Anyone else remember the video of the Chinese prefab 30-story hotel that went
up in like 30 days?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYFef_HRxRQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYFef_HRxRQ)

~~~
fudged71
Reminds me of this [http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-
tips...](http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-tips-over-in-
shanghai/)

------
cryptoz
NYT piece by John Markoff:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-
mon...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-money-on-
robots-using-the-man-behind-android.html)

~~~
swalsh
Google's not an ad company, they're an AI company. Ads just support them as
they develop the tech. Articles like this keeps reinforcing that world view
for me.

~~~
programminggeek
Nope, Google is an Ad company, they sell ads via tech, but you take away the
ads, and Google can't afford to do tech.

Almost every product and service they do is to sell ads either directly or
indirectly. Even Google Apps is about selling ads. How? Well, if small
businesses don't have decent tech infrastructure, they aren't likely going to
be using AdWords as much are they and they'll use traditional ads like Yellow
Pages.

In case you aren't aware, Yellow Page ads and newspaper ads charge hundreds or
thousands of dollars per month for minimal effective exposure. Google ads can
be much more effective, but good luck selling toe people who can't even get
decent email accounts setup for their business. Yeah, $5/user/month is decent
money when you have 50+ employees on the system, but that's peanuts compared
to the $5,000-10,000+ a month that company is likely paying in advertising.

Google desperately wants those kinds of accounts and whether they are building
a browser, an operating system, an email service, a social network, or a self
driving car, it's always going to come back to selling advertising to
businesses because that is worth far more than just about anything else Google
can do to make money.

Google, like Microsoft and Apple completely understands where they make their
money and what business they are in, even if they do a lot of things to make
techies happy.

It's the ads. Always the ads.

~~~
RogerL
We know where the revenue comes from. The point is that google's _tech_ is, in
many important ways, AI.

It's like McDonalds. A hamburger company? Not really. It makes a lot more
sense to consider them a real estate company. Hamburgers are just the way they
create value for the real estate. This is not just my whacked interpretation,
but is something the CEO said in an interview awhile ago, and a perspective
taught in many MBA programs.

Yes, companies make money from their revenue. It is often far more interesting
and useful to look at how they create the value that generates that revenue.
In the case of Google, Larry Page has been quite clear about his ambitions for
Google, and selling ads is not the end of that ambition, it is merely the
current income source.

~~~
toomuchtodo
My grandfather was responsible for sourcing all of the real estate for Jewel-
Osco's expansion in Northern Illinois from the early 70's until the mid 90's.
He said the same thing: McDonalds is a real estate company that happens to
sell burgers.

~~~
canvia
I always heard it as McDonalds is a soda company that happens to sell burgers.
They break even on the food but bank 90%+ profits on the beverages. The real
estate angle makes sense on a longer timeline.

------
kev009
Hypothesis? The web market is becoming more saturated and lower margin.
They're fishing around for something sufficiently hard (capital intensive to
keep agile players out) that will have bigger long term payoffs.

------
adamb_
You've got to hand it to Google: They have vision.

~~~
rfnslyr
Don't mistake money + engineers for vision!

~~~
VMG
You're saying they're no different than Oracle?

~~~
rfnslyr
How are they different? They both do shitty things.

~~~
VMG
Who doesn't?

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radarsat1
Well this explains why I was contacted twice. My expertise is in robotics and
each time I asked them why they were interested, since I wasn't aware of much
robotics work at Google (other than self-driving cars.) First time I asked the
recruiter to email me so I could contact him at a more appropriate time -- I
was at work -- and never hard from him. Second time was by email, and I
responded but never got a reply. Oh well. I just don't understand why they
would get my hopes up and then never respond -- anyone know how Google
recruiters work?

~~~
gcb0
nah. you will learn that the recruiters that google uses barely know your
name. let alone your background.

~~~
radarsat1
Figured it was something like that. Was surprised to be contacted out of the
blue, but I figured if I ever really wanted to work there I'd probably have to
be the one doing the contacting.

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mariusz79
It looks to me that Google is desperately trying to replace their ad business
with something new.

~~~
Daishiman
... or they just have vision, like companies of old times used to (HP, Xerox,
IBM).

IBM has done basic science research like few companies ever have and nobody
can claim they're planning to replace their current lines of business with
electron microscopes or Watsons.

------
tonyplee
We might have Motorola phone that's "Make in USA by GoogleBot" soon. Google
probably can overtake Foxconn and it can scale up/out to build $90, $60, $40
Android phone.

~~~
jpadkins
Foxconn already has 20k robots in production roles
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043026/foxconn-to-speed-
up-r...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043026/foxconn-to-speed-up-robot-
army-deployment-20000-robots-already-in-its-factories.html)

Google is actually not in the lead (yet).

~~~
samolang
I would assume that Google is aiming to increase the quality of robots, not
just the quantity.

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ef4
Google has become self-aware and is quietly assembling its robot army.

~~~
salient
That whole "Larry Page disappearing for a month" thing was probably when they
replaced him with a real Android to take control of the company. Now that I
think about it, his latest speech at Google I/O - when he "returned" \-
sounded pretty robotic, too.

------
beauzero
Ok...that's cool. Somehow I think this will become something serious and
plausible vs. the cyber Monday drone package stunt.

~~~
riggins
_this will become something serious_

I agree. It seems to me that robots have the potential to have a greater
impact than the internet, social, mobile. And that's not to diminish the
profound change those innovations have brought about.

It just seems that the ability to act in the physical world will bring
incredible, profound changes.

~~~
scrabble
This is possible.

Robots will certainly bring huge change some day. The problem is that it is
definitely going to come before our social structures are ready for it.
There's going to be a real hard time adapting to the fact that a very large
number of jobs will no longer requires humans to do them.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Robots will also be pretty useful to quell any and all unrest, so I'm sure
it'll all balance out..

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state
Although this is somewhat unrelated, I have to say: my main concern upon
seeing that Bot & Dolly / Autofuss were part of this list is what will happen
to Front ([http://www.autofuss.com/news](http://www.autofuss.com/news)). I
find myself there nearly every day for coffee, along with a batch of other
familiar hacker faces.

I'm excited for the parent companies, and mostly find it funny that an
acquisition may affect something I would usually think of as totally
unrelated.

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MildlySerious
I love the speed at which they're pushing technology forward, but I'm also
pretty worried that they're taking the lead in any industry that'll be a game
changer in the future. They're getting seriously far ahead of everyone else.
Even if they shut down everything for a single day these days, chaos would
ensue. I wouldn't want society to be even more dependent on a single company..

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ape4
Google knows Android phones aren't really robots, right? ;)

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31073
I had something for this. Something about killing Miles Dyson.

------
znowi
Yes, I can see that: droids on the streets and our homes conducting
surveillance for Google and NSA :)

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lispm
So the NSA problem is already solved?

~~~
eliben
How is NSA's large-scale spying on the world, that's been going on in full
scale since the 1950s, Google's problem?

~~~
lispm
They could engineer their products in such a way that they don't collect all
this data and don't transfer it to servers in the USA. They could also stop
cooperating with the NSA, they could also respect privacy of their users, etc.

Google has a lot of things to do. Robots would not be high on my list.

~~~
eliben
> don't collect all this data

So you don't want GMail to actually collect your email?

> stop cooperating with the NSA

Ah, you mean they should start breaking the US law?

~~~
lispm
I don't want my Mail to be stored in the USA, nicely unencrypted for the NSA.

Sure not.

Since GMail has this NSA problem, I'm not using it.

> Ah, you mean they should start breaking the US law?

Which law? The law the NSA is bending every day?

Google can do a lot to support security and privacy of foreign user's data.
They don't do anything. Actually they do everything to undermine it and to
make it easy for the NSA to access this data.

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dreamdu5t
Enough of the PR. Get back to me when you've got a robot I can use instead of
concept videos. This goes for drones, self-driving cars, and other robots.

