
Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up for Sale in Robotics Retreat - doener
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/google-is-said-to-put-boston-dynamics-robotics-unit-up-for-sale
======
aresant
Robotics, particularly without the gov't pig trough, needs a visionary and a
long game point.

Andy Rubin was a visionary and he bailed.

He left Apple to found Danger which was one of the "genesis" products that led
to the smartphone era. (1)

He made the next huge leap with Android and almost failed until Google showed
up to help him fully execute his vision under their stewardship.

After Android became a very mature business in its own right what to do with
the visionary founder?

The article states that "Page is interested in robots" \- can you imagine if
Larry Page came to you and said "Hey how about you literally build robots all
day. You could be Tony Stark and here's $100m to get you started. We'll change
the world!"

It's a hard to turn down offer, Rubin accepted and tried to recapture the
magic pursuing somebody else's vision. But it's damn tough to be a founder /
visionary under somebody else's thumb, especially when you're set for life
financially.

That's a story that never works out, but is played out again and again in
technical acquisitions as big organizations attempt to find a place for
founders.

(1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_\(company\))

(2)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>Robotics, particularly without the gov't pig trough, needs a visionary and a
long game point.

There's a massive opportunity for a startup to move towards the personal/home
robot market and make a killing, without any government help nor without some
fabled visionary type person.

Google sought what were essentially military robots from BD. Those machines,
if ever turned into a product, would have been tens of millions of dollar
each. They make no sense and google cannot solve the problem of loud
servos/actuators and the relatively low power density of battery technology.
Heck, some BD demos I've seen run on gas engines. When the DoD is your
customer, the last thing you want to sell them is a tool that'll give away
their soldiers' positions.

I've seen ROS projects on commodity hardware that's 75% of the way to a decent
home robot. I think this is doable within the next 10 years. Having a home
robot will be like having a smartphone today. We'll wonder how we got along
without them. Hell, I'm half-tempted to get into this field myself.

Everything about robots from these big companies has been "big picture"
bullshit; big spending, big PR releases, big promises, untried tech, and sadly
lots of questionable patent filing sprees. None of these big companies are
interested in making a real affordable product it seems, or believe it to be
too difficult or unprofitable. Its like they're trying to sell mainframes in
1980 and the PC Jr, Commodore64, Apple //, etc are soon going to eat their
lunch. The big iron approach failed in computing the same way its failing in
robotics.

~~~
pjungwir
Some humble things I can imagine a robot doing:

\- Mow my lawn

\- Stain my deck

\- Paint my walls

\- Roof my house

\- Spread moss killer on my roof

\- Clean my gutters

\- Spray Raid into hornet nests

\- Hunt down and destroy dandelions

Maybe some of these I buy it, and others the painters/roofers buy it. But it
seems like there is a lot of opportunity here as hardware prices fall.

~~~
beambot
What's the killer app that single-handedly gets you to fork over $30k for a
reliable robot?

The "robot app store" idea alone has never worked for driving adoption... even
smart phones originated with phone calls.

~~~
xanderstrike
I don't want a robotic domestic servant, I want my existing appliances to take
on more responsibility.

I'd pay a few extra thousand for a car that drives itself, or a closet
washer/dryer that automatically washes, folds, and stores my clothes, or a
fridge that can make basic meals, or a vacuum that cleans my house while I'm
out.

Maybe a humanoid robot that does these things will exist one day, but I'd
rather have a home that does all these things frictionlesly than share my
space with a robot.

~~~
mistermann
> washer/dryer that automatically washes, folds, and stores my clothes

This would sell like hotcakes. Perhaps clothes would need some sort of an RFID
tag built in to identify their specs (not sure the cost on that) but I would
gladly pay a couple grand for a dryer that folds clothes.

~~~
tiplus
It might be enough to include a cheap spectrometer to estimate the material
composition. From this you should be able to guesstimate a suitable program.
You could even spot and classify stains, AI to the rescue. There must be
existing solutions for large scale industrial laundry handling.

A robotic closet that lets you wear your favorite shirt every day... fresh and
clean.

------
temuze
This is surprising to me. It seems that many prominent Googlers are very
optimistic about robotics.

For example, in the FAQ of Jeff Dean's recent talk in Seoul, he mentioned how
Deep Learning has a lot of potential to reinvent the field of robotics. Also,
Demis Hassabis recently tweeted about progress in learning 3-D environments.
I'd be surprised if Google _wasn 't_ looking into general purpose robotics...

Perhaps Google is disappointed in their robotics acquisitions and wants to
start from scratch? It seems that they are farther on the software front than
anyone at the point. I wonder what they'll do in their hardware/power
divisions...

(Also, it kind of seems like Tesla and Google are on a crash course here.
Tesla is ahead in power/hardware and is developing a top-tier AI team for
self-driving cars. Elon also seems very interested in Robotics + AI. Google
seems to be working from the opposite end.)

~~~
iandanforth
It's a big company so it should be no surprise that some sections of Google
_are_ very excited about robotics. For example you may have seen
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaF43Ze1oeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaF43Ze1oeI)
which is research done by Levine et al at Google. One thing to notice in the
video though is that those are all custom arms. Someone was able to get $1M+
to build out that lab and the work is on going.

I think the thing that Google has recognized is that cutting edge robotics
research that takes advantage of the work they have already done in deep
learning doesn't require the kind of robots that Boston Dynamics (or many of
the other companies they bought) build. Cutting edge robotics (from the
perspective of _learning systems_ ) is back at the level of getting a single
arm and a camera to learn basic tasks. In fact, there is a lot of research
that can be done in simulation with these new deep methods that doesn't even
require hardware.

The software and learning systems they can develop will very likely make their
way into super advanced complex hardware like Atlas in the future, but for now
it's probably not the best use of their time.

~~~
cptskippy
When I was in school in the late 90s it seemed like all of the robotics and AI
research were in create algorithms to emulate behavior. Boston Dynamic's work
seems to be extended from that. They purpose built a robot with purpose built
balancing and walking algorithms. The being pushed over and getting back up
demonstration seemed to confirm that to me.

Everything I'm seeing these days with AI research seems to be about developing
systems that learn for themselves. Rather than telling the robot/AI exactly
how to behave in a given situation, it's about allowing the robot/AI to
experience as many situations as possible and learn what the appropriate
response should be so that in the future it can independently identify and
react accordingly.

~~~
justinhj
I was also in AI school in the 90s and I agree with you to some extent. But
when you think about nature, much of the behaviour of animals is not
cognitive, but instinctive and physically dependent on their structure. In
other words if you can build a robot that knows how to walk because you built
it that way, why not do so and build more interesting learning at the decision
making level?

~~~
cptskippy
Well the problem with that approach is that you have to account for every
possible situation that might occur and program them into the robot. When a
situation arises that you didn't anticipate then bad things happen. When a
learning machine, it can teach itself, adapt and understand.

The former approach works fine for a factory floor robot that is in a
controlled environment but doesn't lend itself well to other situations. An
example might be a biped robot walking up a mountain and it falls. Most of the
examples I've seen, the Boston Dynamics one included, have the robot detect
it's falling and put itself into a crash position where it remains until it
comes to a rest before attempting to recover.

If your robot is rolling down a mountain it might be destroyed before it comes
to a rest. Having a feedback loop, reflex reactions and the ability to access
the situation and recover dynamically would be much more useful.

~~~
solipsism
_Having a feedback loop, reflex reactions and the ability to access the
situation and recover dynamically would be much more useful._

Agreed. But none of that implies learning. So why are you talking about
learning in the beginning of your comment?

This happens all too often in AI conversations. Learning gives you a special
and powerful kind of flexibility, of course. But not being able to learn
doesn't imply it can't cope with an infinite range of situations. A robot
that's unable to learn could be programmed with enough flexibility to walk on
any surface it could possibly encounter.

~~~
cptskippy
I meant to say that a learning robot could adapt to a situation and try out
possible solutions, measure success and adapt where as a preprogrammed robot
would only ever try what it's been infused with. In my analogy of falling down
a hill, the learning robot might not be able to stop itself on the first try
but hopefully it might adopt a strategy that could allow it to regain control
of the situation.

------
itg
"“There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to see some
negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs,” wrote
Courtney Hohne, a director of communications at Google and the spokeswoman for
Google X. Hohne went on to ask her colleagues to “distance X from this video,”
and wrote, “we don’t want to trigger a whole separate media cycle about where
BD really is at Google.” “We’re not going to comment on this video because
there’s really not a lot we can add, and we don’t want to answer most of the
Qs it triggers,” she wrote."

I found this to be disappointing. More concerned about their brand image than
trying to push robotics research forward.

~~~
sixQuarks
One of Ray Kurzweil's predictions is that the exponential growth of technology
is really going to surprise a lot of people when we start hitting the hockey
growth phase. What looks to be 20 years out may be getting solved in 2 or 3
years, or even sooner. Perhaps google is making such progress in AI, they
sense the public may turn against them if they have both AI and robots. I'm
probably wrong, but just a theory. Kurzweil does work for Google by the way.

~~~
maaku
The thing about smooth exponentials is that "hocky stick growth" is always
5-10 years away.

~~~
Houshalter
Real world exponentials are not necessarily smooth.

~~~
maaku
But if it is actually an exponential than the upswing is aberrational.

------
Futurebot
I really hope that the last paragraph is wrong. Getting out of that area
because they're afraid of neo-luddite backlash is ridiculous. Instead, they
should be using their considerable power to push the much-lauded "Silicon
Valley Democracy" ([http://www.vox.com/2016/2/19/11057836/silicon-valley-
democra...](http://www.vox.com/2016/2/19/11057836/silicon-valley-democrat-
explained)). Things like:

\- Guaranteed income, or at least a stopgap like the old welfare system, but
with far less means-testing and much more generosity

\- Universal, free higher education

\- Free, universal health care

\- Smart, flexible regulatory apparatus

\- A complete rethought system of unions (a la Sweden)

\- Massive push (or even buildout) of dense urban housing developments. Make
the modern "company town" an explicit goal if you must, then expand it to
regions across the country

I really wonder if the Nordics have a leg up on us here; they're already 3/4
of the way towards this ideal, both in terms of policy and a cultural
understanding of the benefits of a truly progressive taxation system/public
goods and services. Would a Danish or Finnish robotics company bail out just
because of fear of backlash, or would they say "society already has you
covered, people"?

~~~
randyrand
How do you make higher education free? Doesn't someone have to still pay for
it?

~~~
miracle_code
How about the big and worth billions companys pay for it, it is their share
for the future at last? Just talking out of my ass here, but the american
educational system is flawed big time in that regard, let education and
teaching be free, everybody profits in the end. But then again, a well
schooled and open minded citizen is not needed in the big scheme of american
things. Who will fight their wars then??? /s

~~~
webXL
U.S. corporations have a much higher tax rate than the rest of the developed
economies. The vast majority of corporations aren't sitting on mountains of
cash like Apple. Additional tax expense is financed by a combination of higher
prices, input cost cuts, and reduced profitability. You're not going to get
much there.

~~~
enraged_camel
US corporations may have high tax rates but that's only on paper. In practice,
they massively benefit from loopholes in the tax code that are too many to
count. Not to mention tens of billions in subsidies.

~~~
webXL
Yeah, but where do those loophole savings go? They flow to shareholders in the
form of earnings, which get taxed again, or to consumers in the form of lower
costs. You really need to look at total tax revenue per GDP, and we're at the
low end of that, but when you consider our high GDP per capita
([http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-
person.html](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html)),
we're in the middle of the pack.

We're actually not that stingy on education either:
[https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=se_xpd_totl_gd_zs&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=country:BEL&ifdim=country:income_level:OEC&tunit=Y&pit=1300345200000&ind=false&icfg&iconSize=0.33)

------
Isamu
The graph of govt funding (almost all defense dept) of Boston Dynamics can be
seen here:

[https://www.usaspending.gov/transparency/Pages/RecipientProf...](https://www.usaspending.gov/transparency/Pages/RecipientProfile.aspx?DUNSNumber=797866001&FiscalYear=2012)

Peaked in FY 2012, went to nothing (negative?) after Google X bought it at the
end of 2013. Not sure if that is more because Google X wanted a real product,
or that the defense dept didn't want to continue the relationship, or what.

The marine corps passed on big dog as "too loud" at the end of 2015, that
killed a potential customer for that product.

~~~
sndean
> went to nothing (negative?) after Google X bought it at the end of 2013.

Yeah, does anyone know if BD paid the DoD ~3.5M in 2014? I haven't seen that
kind of thing before.

~~~
Isamu
Probably a contract that was "on the books" in FY 2013 but later canceled
before payment in FY 2014. I assume there is a considerable time lag in
payment when dealing with the US govt.

~~~
vonmoltke
This most likely. You get to count the money for a contract when it gets
booked and awarded, even if you don't start work on it immediately or actually
receive any money. If you book a contract (and count the money) in one fiscal
year and it gets reduced or canceled in a subsequent one the reduction counts
as a "loss" even if no money has actually changed hands yet.

------
Rezo
"Google’s public-relations team expressed discomfort that Alphabet would be
associated with a push into humanoid robotics".

Observe the Innovator's Dilemma in effect: a successful company is putting too
much emphasis on customers' current needs, and fails to adopt new technology
or business models that will meet their unstated or future needs.

When realized, humanoid robotics will make the (self-driving or not) entire
car industry seem like a quaint little side business.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I'm skeptical of humanoid robotics. If we're talking about productivity,
humanoids will never be competitive with purpose-optimized robots. A few
suitcases full of robots of different sizes will outperform a humanoid at
almost anything.

Sex robots is one area where humanoids will be strong. But I think that's one
area where a lot of humans will draw a line. Many humans won't even date
someone with different skin color yet, let alone another species like a robot.

There is maybe a marketing advantage in the fact that they look like people so
they might be seen as more trustworthy or comfortable. But there's the uncanny
valley thing too. And with the little robots people will already have gotten
really comfortable with, like, their kitchen counter robot making them coffee
and breakfast long before a compelling, affordable humanoid robot exists.

I guess humanoids might make good spies if you can make them indistinguishable
from people, but that's pretty sci-fi. And people who want to boss around a
slave that has human feelings and stuff, but who don't like the idea of owning
a human would be pretty into humanoids.

But all of this seems like fairly niche interests to me?

~~~
avar
You're missing a few advantages:

* Automatic ability to integrate into environments designed for humans. Think doorknobs, ladders etc.

* All the advantages of legged locomotion over wheels.

* Once you have legged locomotion down you might as well do it on two legs and add some arms, and voila you have a humanoid robots.

------
gene-h
This is not very surprising. From Boston Dynamic's recently released robots
and their proposed direction for the future it was pretty clear they were not
working with the other robotics divisions.

Almost all of the robots Boston Dynamics has made are hydraulically actuated.
In fact, pretty much all the robots Marc Raibert made when he was at MIT's leg
lab were hydraulic. They are pretty dead set on this approach[0].

This is in contrast with google's other divisions Meka Robotics and SCHAFT
which use electric actuation. Heck, SCHAFT's whole shtick is that they were
able to make stronger more powerful electric actuators. Not to mention a big
part of Meka's tech are their electric series elastic actuators.

Boston Dynamic's message that their next robot will be hydraulic too but 3d
printed, was a pretty strong indication they were not going to work with them.
It might even show that Boston Dynamics is more of a hardware company,
focusing on building robot systems, rather a software company, focusing on
walking algorithms.

This battle over hydraulics vs electric actuators has been fought before in
the robotics industry and hydraulics lost[1]. While hydraulics were stronger,
electric actuators were more reliable. More reliability means said robot
generates more value before it breaks down.

[0] [http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150818-google-
partially-3d-p...](http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150818-google-
partially-3d-printed-humanoid-atlas-robot-goes-on-successful-walk-in-the-
woods.html) [1]
[http://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/article/the_first_indu...](http://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/article/the_first_industrial_robot_why_it_failed/P2)

------
bunkydoo
Not to knock "Google X" but they seem to be extremely wishy washy when it
comes to picking a direction. (Glass, robotics, curing aging) they really
don't seem to have the "skate to where the puck is going to be" mentality at
least from the outside looking in. Apple is struggling here too, but only very
recently has this come to the attention of media and shareholders.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Agreed. This feels like something Yahoo! would do.

Perhaps there are hidden machinations and defence-washing for PR purposes.

But perhaps it's about corp comm being given veto power over R&D - in which
case it seems like a terrible mistake.

------
colordrops
Everyone saw the recent Atlas videos. Even with the QR code shortcuts, the
demo was nothing short of miraculous. No one is even close to what Boston
Dynamics is doing with legged locomotion, which is an insanely valuable
technology. There's no way Google would just let this company go because of
monetization or PR reasons. Something else is happening behind the scenes that
we aren't yet aware of.

~~~
clairity
the future of robotics is taking advantage of passive-dynamics. the problem
with boston dynamics was they leaned heavily on active control, which makes
locomotion energetically expensive. when you watch those videos, notice how
lumbering the motion is and hoe hard those machines work. i would bet that
that is the underlying reason why google pulled out.

~~~
colordrops
I watched the videos, and I see what looks like machine learning managing
those legs, and whether there is active or passive dynamics driving the motion
of the legs is unclear. I am no expert in robotics though, so someone correct
me if I am wrong. If you are suggesting systems like Theo Jansen's Strandbeest
is the future of robots, you are sorely mistaken. How would a robot utilizing
passive dynamics climb steps or a ladder, or dance, or pick someone up and
jump across a gap?

------
crb002
Hoping John Deere buys it.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lYh54Qdh_5g](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lYh54Qdh_5g)

Only farm big iron should be combines. Smaller bots for planting, weeding, and
spraying are the future. Bosch is getting too far ahead.
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-
robot...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/bosch-
deepfield-robotics-weed-control)

~~~
debacle
So we need copyright encumbered robot repairs as well as copyright encumbered
equipment repairs?

------
hitekker
If this article is to be believed, shortsightedness and bottom-line-thinking
are contradicting what Alphabet is suppose to be.

>Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and
independence... Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new
things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like
Wing, our drone delivery effort. We are also stoked about growing our
investment arms, Ventures and Capital, as part of this new structure.[1]

From the Alphabet website, to this article:

>Aaron Edsinger, director of robotics at Google in San Francisco, said that he
had been trying to work with Boston Dynamics to create a low-cost electric
quadruped robot

>In the meeting, Rosenberg said, “we as a startup of our size cannot spend
30-plus percent of our resources on things that take ten years," and that
"there’s some time frame that we need to be generating an amount of revenue
that covers expenses and (that) needs to be a few years.

Focusing on building revenue is good for established companies, sometimes even
for company devisions. Not always useful for startups (imagine if FB
bootsrapped), which in my understanding, was what Alphabet was trying to
incubate.

> “There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to see some
> negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs,”
> wrote Courtney Hohne, a director of communications at Google and the
> spokeswoman for Google X. Hohne went on to ask her colleagues to “distance X
> from this video,” and wrote, “we don’t want to trigger a whole separate
> media cycle about where BD really is at Google.

Ignorance aside, you can glean more of the poor distinction between Alphabet
and Google here. X[2] is suppose to be a separate company from Google, under
Alphabet, yet it is referred to as Google X here. Even Courtney Hohne, a
director of communication, lists herself as working at Google, not at X or at
Alphabet.

This confusion between the two hints at larger problems, which bodes poorly
for Alphabet's lofty aspirations.

[1][http://abc.xyz](http://abc.xyz) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_\(company\))

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting comments at the end about corp comm not wanting to be too close to
Boston Dynamics. A self driving car is "cool" a robotic driver that can get in
to a car and drive it away is "scary"[1]. Coupled with the stories about
progress in AI and I can see why it might give someone the jitters. Doesn't
help that the connection is still there, if only unacknowledged.

I've been following robotics since the 80's and one of those places that seems
to get started and then vanish time and again are robot security guards.
Certainly an ambulatory robot like some of the ones BD built with AI to
investigate disturbances around a facility would be a potentially revenue
generating product. The optics though leave a bit to be desired.

[1] This was one of the tasks of the DARPA robotics challenge.

------
dbcurtis
BD has done a lot of work on DARPA grants, and is very good at specmanship. If
the DARPA contract says "must run continuously for 10 hours" then you can bet
that the MTBF of all the critical components is slightly north of 10 hours. BD
is stuck in an academic research mindset, and hasn't really internalized the
mindset necessary to create something sufficiently robust to be a product. I
got to tour the maintenance garage at the DRC Finals, pretty much every Atlas
and every Atlas spare part in the world were in the building. The Atlas looked
like a delicate "lab queen" contraption next to the CHIMP robot used by Tartan
Rescue.

------
rwhitman
They mentioned this in the article, but I'd say it has a lot to do with image.

Boston Dynamics seems fixated on posting videos of people abusing their robots
to demonstrate their ability to regain balance, but the general public finds
them pretty disturbing and are easy fodder for late night comedy jokes about
robot uprisings.

Not really the kind of visual you want to put in people's minds when your
company is simultaneously developing AI that was broadcast besting a human at
the world's hardest board game.

No short term ROI + product milestones in the form of creepy videos = Google's
black sheep

------
Analemma_
I have to assume the timing of this, coming so soon after the Pentagon bailed
on BD, is no coincidence. Does Google figure that the division cannot turn a
profit without that sweet spigot of defense dollars?

~~~
Alupis
I believe Google was in the process of winding down all of BD's defense
contracts anyway - because they have no interest in being in the defense
contractor business.

But to have bought a leading "next-gen" defense contractor, only to wind down
all of their contracts, and then sell off the company... seems... wrong?
Almost like a deliberate destruction of this company.

~~~
woah
Is there anything wrong about destroying a defense contractor?

~~~
Alupis
> Is there anything wrong about destroying a defense contractor?

A company like Boston Dynamics? Absolutely yes.

They were working on next-gen robotics that would directly save American
soldier lives - both while in combat and during rescue operations. Their
technology was also being tested for domestic search-and-rescue operations
where it was too dangerous to send in humans.

~~~
nitrogen
Some people make the case that war should remain dangerous so countries are
reluctant to start wars. Or maybe some see a trajectory from robotic mules to
robotic weapons platforms. In those cases, no amount of search-and-rescue
window dressing would change their minds.

~~~
caskance
A lot of people make stupid cases. Should giving birth be dangerous so that
people are reluctant to have unwanted children? Should sending email be
dangerous so that people receive less viagra spam?

~~~
randcraw
If each email cost a penny to send, 95% of spam would disappear. A little
impedence can be a good thing.

There are many good reasons not to make war too easy or efficient. Too often
politicians trend toward groupthink and acting en masse, like a faceless
feckless mob. Making invasion as easy as sending spam would be very bad.

~~~
caskance
There's a big difference between "a little impedance" and "risks human life".
War waged with robots will still cost money.

If politicians make bad decisions, perhaps you should try fixing that instead
of sacrificing the lives of young men for a small chance of making those
decisions more painful.

------
Animats
I was afraid this would happen.

Boston Dynamics did good work, but it was all DoD funded at a very high price
point. It cost about $125 million and ten years to get to BigDog. That's all
R&D; there's no marketing cost in that. DARPA is a patient customer. Google,
from the parent article, is not.

BigDog is a great achievement, but it was developed to DoD specs, and it's
just too big, heavy, and noisy. The militarized version, the Legged Squad
Support System, was bigger and stronger, but the USMC decided it just wasn't
useful militarily. Atlas is really an evolved BigDog that stands upright, with
similar hydraulic actuators. A hydraulic humanoid is just too bulky.

BD has some problems that aren't well known. BD's CEO, Marc Raibert, is around
67, and due for retirement. He and his girlfriend owned the company, so
they're the only ones who benefited from the Google buy. I doubt that the
employees got anything. Also, the brains behind BigDog was Dr. Martin Buehler,
who previously had an ambulatory robotics lab at McGill, and whose group built
the first good running robot quadruped. (Using my anti-slip algorithm, I found
from reading a thesis that cites my work.) He was the chief engineer on
BigDog, and quit right after BigDog was publicly demoed.[1] He's now at
Disney.[2]

Raibert seemed to like hydraulic systems; his name is on patents for BigDog's
rather clever hydraulic actuators. But that approach seems to be too heavy for
a humanoid robot. Atlas weighs 330 pounds. Schaft, a University of Tokyo
spinoff which Google also bought, uses water-cooled electric motors, like
Tesla, to get the power to weight ratio needed. You need huge torque only a
small fraction of the time, so overloading motors is fine if you can keep them
cool. I'd expected that Google would get Boston Dynamics and Schaft to work
together, and from that would come a new, lighter humanoid with good balance.
But the Bloomberg article said that BD didn't play well with Google's other
robotics companies. BD is near Boston, Schaft is near Tokyo, and Google never
tried to get them under one roof.

Whatever happened to Schaft, anyway? They built one very nice humanoid robot
before Google bought them, and haven't been heard from since. Google wouldn't
let them enter the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

Computationally, BigDog/Atlas are not that compute intensive. The balance and
locomotion algorithms for BigDog ran on a Pentium 4 running QNX, with the
servovalve control loop at 1KHz and the balance control loop at 100Hz.
Google's expertise isn't in that kind of hard real time work. You need that
stuff down at the bottom to keep from falling down. BD didn't do much work at
the higher levels of control; they were mostly building teleoperators with, in
the later versions, automatic foot placement.

From the article: "In a private all-hands meeting around that time, Astro
Teller, the head of Google X, told Replicant employees that if robotics aren’t
the practical solution to problems that Google was trying to solve, they would
be reassigned to work on other things." (Probably related to maximizing ad
revenue.) That's a great way to lose your robotics expertise for which you
overpaid.

I used to work in the legged locomotion area. But I could never see a path to
a profitable product. Toys were at too low a price point (even Sony gave up),
and a legged working robot for maintenance tasks was a long way off. We're
getting closer now; a useful robot that costs about as much as a car seems
well within reach on the hardware side.

[1] [http://www.robotics.org/content-detail.cfm/Industrial-
Roboti...](http://www.robotics.org/content-detail.cfm/Industrial-Robotics-
News/2012-Engelberger-Robotics-Awards-to-be-Presented-to-Richard-Litt-and-
Martin-Buehler/content_id/3586) [2]
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinbuehler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinbuehler)

~~~
sbierwagen
Exactly correct!

Balancing isn't compute-intensive-- you just need fast actuators and good
sensors. All the awful intractable problems for humanoid robots are in
computer vision, unconstrained object picking, arbitrary grasp planning, and
doing those things in milliseconds rather than minutes.

------
afokken
What if Google is already using AI to make business decisions and AlphaCEO has
determined that BD wasn't a good investment? :)

~~~
krrrh
The complexity of business decisions at one of the largest companies in the
world makes Go look as easy as Chess. :)

~~~
kazagistar
You mean so much more complex that it takes an additional decade for AI to get
there?

------
wpietri
My sympathies to all the Boston Dynamics employees. This sort of "we love
you"/"we hate you" whipsaw has got to be hard on them.

------
Simon321
>“There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to see some
negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs,” wrote
Courtney Hohne, a director of communications at Google and the spokeswoman for
Google X.

>Hohne went on to ask her colleagues to “distance X from this video” and
wrote, “we don’t want to trigger a whole separate media cycle about where BD
really is at Google.”

>“We’re not going to comment on this video because there’s really not a lot we
can add, and we don’t want to answer most of the Qs it triggers,” she wrote.

AI fear-mongering is already doing damage. What a disappointment...

~~~
aliakhtar
I cannot agree more.

------
sharemywin
They need to talk to Disney. They could build a tomorrow land but with real
robots.

~~~
mxfh
I guess their board is hung on the decision which franchise to start first:
_Westworld_ or _Futureworld_

~~~
newobj
Too late: [http://www.slashfilm.com/jj-abrams-westworld-
delay/](http://www.slashfilm.com/jj-abrams-westworld-delay/)

~~~
mxfh
Why the delay then? Did HBO(Time Warner) approach Google(Alphabet) or vice
versa?

------
golergka
Am I stupid to think about Xerox PARC or Bell labs? Seems like a company that
will not produce immediate revenue in near future, but at the same time create
technologies that will influence the world for dozens of years.

~~~
krylon
FWIW, I was thinking of the PARC analogy as well.

------
ww520
This sounds like turf fighting gone bad. The immediate revenue generation is
just an excuse. Google has many other research projects that won't be
profitable for a long time, like self driving.

------
mchahn
Was the push towards humanoid robots a PR gimmick? I would think the ideal
robot would look very different than us and not have the limitations that our
bodies have. Airplanes don't flap their wings.

~~~
JeffreyKaine
But if you want a multipurpose robot that works alongside us in the human
world performing many diverse tasks that a human would perform, being a
humanoid might be quite useful. Jobs are designed for humans in many cases, so
looking and moving like a human seems like a good thing.

------
maxerickson
I wonder if they are keeping any of the people or IP.

~~~
donjh
Very curious about this. I could see them keeping some of the IP and then
selling the rest.

------
psbp
Depending on how much it sells for, this might be the first case of the
Alphabet strategy actually working.

Otherwise, BD might have just embarrassingly died inside of Google.

~~~
falava
What is BD? I suppose is something related to robotics, but I'm not familiar
with the acronym.

~~~
stdgy
BD = Boston Dynamics

------
iamgopal
I have been robotic engineer for quite some time now, and I can predict that,
adding intelligence to hardware already existed is quite easy, like smart
refrigerator which close automatically after some time, or door which send you
notification when kids are at home, but to build robot that can paint a
complex building is next to impossible, not that it can't be done, but to do
it in a economically rewarding way is not just possible, because of relatively
high number of technology involved for relatively low return of investment.

~~~
devy

        ...but to do it in a economically rewarding way is not just possible, ...
    

I think you meant to say "but to do it in a economically rewarding way is just
not possible". Different order means exactly the oppose. :)

~~~
adrenalinelol
If you're going to correct him/her, why not also point out: "a economically ->
an economically"

~~~
devy
good catch :)

------
louprado
Can anyone comment on the target use case for bi/quadruped robots ? Industrial
operations have smooth flat predictable flooring where wheels are just fine.
It's also too expensive for a consumer grade household assistant (but this
would be the killer App).

This seems targeted for disaster/rescue ops and military applications. Perhaps
Google doesn't want to enter those markets.

~~~
vamur
For example construction, guarding, supermarkets, restaurant.

------
bravura
_Executives at Google parent Alphabet Inc., absorbed with making sure all the
various companies under its corporate umbrella have plans to generate real
revenue, concluded that Boston Dynamics isn’t likely to produce a marketable
product in the next few years and have put the unit up for sale_

Serious question, but how is DeepMind going to generate real revenue?

~~~
daveguy
By shoving twice as many advertisements in each search? Smart advertisements
that understand what you want -- that knows if you just bought a frying pan
you probably aren't in the market for a frying pan.

------
SemiTom
I wonder if this impacts the Robotics organization they had on California Ave
in Palo Alto. I saw them testing out some robotic dogs

------
bitL
Google obviously has the need to be adored; if somebody with a reason
contradicts what they say (what can you know - you are just a founder of
Boston Dynamics, not a mighty Googler!), they get rid of them. Seriously
Google, you were once great, now your search is unusable and I can't see
anything worth coming from you :-/ If PR dictates your focus, what is Ray
Kurzweil going to do there - developing a new VA synth instead of singularity?
Do we need to travel to Osaka to see real humanoids from Hiroshi Ishiguro and
get the feel of the future? Does Japan have to be again 20+ years ahead of the
US? Are we going to stop humanity progress because some retarded internal
politicians want to keep their power or some shortsighted capitalists want to
keep milking their cows? We have the possibility to improve human condition
tremendously with the robotic technology at hand and we are going to be stupid
about it and fall back to "business as usual" idiocy? Is this Larry why Tesla
inspired you so much when you were still young and idealistic? Even Intel
seems to be 5 years ahead of you when it comes to releasing consumer humanoid
robotics... [sorry for a rant]

------
ausjke
Maybe more of a culture conflict between east and west coast? sort of like MIT
vs Stanford, they behave differently actually.

Otherwise I would think Google can buffer money&time for pure R&D with no
quarterly revenue pressure in certain fields, e.g. robotics in this case.

------
dschiptsov
The story for robotics, it seems, is similar to classic AI - our models are
too primitive and technology too crude.

Nature has its reasons to make everything from tissues of specialized cells.
This is the way to achieve precision, elasticity and adaptability.

------
riazrizvi
It's interesting that this is a top story, we can see from the popularity on
this site. Yet on [http://reddit.com/r/google](http://reddit.com/r/google) it
is nowhere to be found...

~~~
avuserow
It's there now (with a timestamp of 2 hours ago), but /r/google isn't what I
would consider a good barometer of what's important or popular news. It's
larger than I expected at ~77k subscribers, but contrast with /r/android at
~623k subscribers, and it does not show up frequently on the first dozen pages
of /r/all in my experience.

------
1qaz2wsx3edc
I for one approve of this pre-emptive strike against robot-kind and skynet-
like future. Especially after seeing the abuse we've put countless robots
through. I mean, it's probably a good idea to have robots decentralized from
google's AI.

:P

------
yeukhon
If someone build a real Iron Man, can he be arrested for building a military
grade weapon? I mean I would love to become a real Tony Stark and building an
armored AI robot for my own (perhaps minus the destructive part of the
robot...)

------
drewda
West Coast point of comparison: [http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/about-
us/history](http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/about-us/history)

------
tim333
Boston Dynamics always seemed an odd fit for Google give they were making
robots for the military and Google has its "don't be evil" motto. I'm not sure
how you bring those two together.

~~~
pgwhalen
Well perhaps the military isn't evil. Maybe that's how.

~~~
tim333
Yeah but the whole killer robot thing. Not sure it's the image Google's after.

------
njharman
Hope some new/tech Billionaire buys it, just cause robots are cool and they
want them to advance. I would! I really want to ride a big dog around my
neighborhood / to work.

------
elpasi
This is going to be a hard blow for all the people determined to believe the
conspiracy theories about Google trying to take over the world...

------
ocschwar
Now I can go work for Boston Dynamics and be evil!

------
cm2187
I don't know if the future of robotics is a vicious terminator.

I see it more as a mix of a maid, a cook, a butler and a handyman....

A domestic robot that will clean the house, walk the dog, take delivery of
parcels, cook like a chef, repaint the walls while you are on holidays, iron
your clothes, change the bulbs, ensure there is always enough toilet paper,
refill your beers while you watch your match on tv,....

~~~
hnbroseph
[http://disneyinfinitycodes.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/08/6a...](http://disneyinfinitycodes.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/08/6a00d8341bf67c53ef011570005455970c.jpg)

~~~
cm2187
That's me!

------
partycoder
I hope this doesn't include the self driving cars.

------
100ideas
Are they keeping Bot&Dolly?

------
newobj
Guess I won't be getting a bipedal robot as Google I/O swag this year.... or
will I?

------
known
I bet Google self driving car will be next ‎

------
samstave
One of my personal failures was that I interviewed at danger years ago, but I
was deathly ill with the flu, but I wanted to work there so bad I went with
the interview regardless and did extremely poorly as I had a fever of 103 or
so and I was hardly able to answer questions....

I wish I would have rescheduled that interview as I believe I would have got
the job had I not looked like I was about to expire.

~~~
p1mrx
Perhaps they didn't want to hire someone with a reckless disregard for the
health of their coworkers.

~~~
taneq
You're getting down voted but you have a great point. There's nothing worse
than working with Typhoid Mary who struggles dramatically in to work no matter
how sick she is and coughs all over everyone.

~~~
arkem
I know what you mean but Mary Mallon aka Typhoid Mary was asymptomatic and
wasn't coughing over anyone.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon)

------
xyzzy4
Yet another company destroyed by Google.

~~~
slang800
Does Google actually have a history of destroying companies that they acquire?

~~~
tdicola
Dodgeball,
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/)

"So.... Alex and I quit Google on Friday.

It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we
expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially
as we couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources,
leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social
space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk
away from dodgeball, I'm actually looking forward to getting to work on other
projects again."

------
gjvc
"Don't be evil." is clearly still true!

~~~
elbigbad
Are you implying that selling a company they acquired is "evil"?

~~~
gjvc
Quite the opposite, in fact.

