
Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm - beambot
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-06/alphabet-executives-canceled-launch-of-a-google-robotic-arm
======
mabbo
As someone who spent many years working on Amazon Picking software... I'm
pretty sure there's a few companies that would just hand over a dumptruck full
of money if those things actually worked as intended. It's such a hard problem
space.

Either Google didn't have it working well enough to sell widely (without
embarrassment) or else they're pants-on-head crazy.

~~~
blasteye
Big issue is that Google's market cap is huge, the amount of money they make
is massive as well. For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a
huge potential to make lots of $$$. Hence why lots of projects get killed.
Making 300 million a year isn't enough money to move the needle at google.

I fully believe that's why alphabet was created. Allow the `bets` to not use
the google branding and name, and stealthy create new companies that produce
millions of revenue, but just not billions.

~~~
jessriedel
> For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to
> make lots of $$$.

Then why not just sell the tech and team to someone else, or market the device
under a different brand name?

~~~
happyslobro
Right, let's dedicate a new department to that. And, just in case other
departments start expecting similar leeway, let's make this department clearly
separate from the others.

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Retric
IMO, Google suffers from the curse of Oil in corporate terms. As long as they
milk their core product they can do just about anything and look competent.
Which allows a horribly dysfunctional leadership to thrive.

~~~
GrumpyYoungMan
> _As long as they milk their core product they can do just about anything and
> look competent. Which allows a horribly dysfunctional leadership to thrive._

Until one day, reality reasserts itself and things start melting down. It
occurred at IBM, its occurring at Microsoft, and it will occur at Google,
Amazon, and the rest of the tech giants.

------
Theodores
I was sort of hoping the 'toothbrush test' would involve the robot being able
to clean your teeth...

Years ago my father worked in robotics. The product was a very simple robot
that took a piece out of a die-casting machine and placed it on a conveyor
belt. There was nothing to program of any complexity, this arm had a fixed
trapezium with different length sides that performed all the required motion,
some sines/cosines/tangents involved to get the fixed path right. Most of the
bits for the robot came from the R+S components catalogue, so usual industrial
control gear, all 'tried and tested' with warranty, not 'home made'.

However, did it go well? The robot only had to do one job right but it rarely
did. It probably only ever was one robot, customers were not exactly two-a-
penny for this machine, even though it was in theory a very good machine. It
would require on-site attention every week and some weekends. There was no
fundamental design flaw, the heat had been considered, but it was a constant
war of attrition on the reliability front. I would have to ask how that ended,
all I know is that it was doomed, just not an economically viable adventure.
Yet this was the simplest of robots for the simplest of tasks, solving a known
problem that seemed to make sense to solve.

The main business survived the venture into robotics (sold to the same
customers) but a loss had to be accounted for, people were laid of and the
industrial unit vacated. A lot of hard work was put into it and the whole
company was behind it. But it failed, reliability and support just could not
be done economically.

So what are robot arms to be for outside of manufacturing, where Google wants
to be with their customers?

If Google did get into the sales of these robot arms and 'learn along the way'
there really is a risk that support for customers, 'beta customers', might be
as all-consuming as it was for my father with his very simple robot. Then
there are no resources to actually develop or iterate the product. You need to
have the original creators debugging and fixing the robots in the field and
there is a high likelihood that this work would take 10x the amount of
available resources making actual development nigh on impossible. Much better
to take the long route and get the product right before bringing it to market
and avoid the trap.

Building robots is okay if that is your core business or if you have some
massive factory that needs them. Here the cost benefit analysis can be done,
things tested and deployed complete with a team of engineers to keep
everything running. If selling adverts is your main business then maybe not.

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beambot
Pity. Sounds like they had a real product with a real, demonstrated business
model (akin to Universal Robotics). Google needs to embrace a bit more of the
"just fscking ship" attitude for its moonshots.

(The brand protectionism is really starting to hurt their ability to be
scrappy.)

~~~
throwaway40483
This "we must protect our brand" is really weird. If you look at the sentiment
here on HN, it's pretty much "Oh great, Google is in the news again. I wonder
which product they're sunsetting today". Maybe Google only invoke this for
their HW products and not their SW.

~~~
nullc
They've now optimized the process to the extent now that they can cancel them
before they launch. Seems like an advance over things thus far. :)

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danvoell
Pure speculation here. I can't imagine that the "toothbrush test" is accurate
here. There is a large market for robotic arms. And if Google's robot creates
any advantage over existing robots in manufacturing, Google could go up or
down stream in the verticle.

My guess is that it hasn't been tested enough and/or hasn't cleared the top
level of safety in the market. One incorrect swing of a robotic arm could
severely injure someone and that is a huge liability for Google's name.

~~~
burkemw3
From the article, the second half of the toothbrush test is 'used daily by
billions of people'. Can you show the robotic arm market that large?

With self driving cars, I believe Google is showing willingness to develop
things that could severely injure someone.

disclosure: I work for Google. I have not been involved in toothbrush test
discussions and do not work on robotics nor cars.

~~~
modeless
Sure. In the future (~20 years) I expect that a robot around the price of a
luxury car will be able to perform tasks such as laundry, cooking, and
cleaning (not just vacuuming but nearly all types of cleaning). These robots
will be used in workplaces and homes, and the eventual market size is
definitely in the billions. These robots will need arms, of course. These arms
will be sold by a company that releases a small-volume product early and
iterates, not by a company that waits until they have a billion-person product
before releasing anything.

~~~
bduerst
To be fair - this 20-year-prediction-to-home-robots has been happening since
the Jetsons aired in the 1960's.

If anything, the Roomba proved that there is small niche-market demand for
robotic automation in the home, and economies of scale for goods follows the
demand. Consumers simply aren't going to spend the equivalent of buying a new
car for something that can be done by a minimum-wage maid service.

~~~
elsewhen
"Consumers simply aren't going to spend the equivalent of buying a new car for
something that can be done by a minimum-wage maid service"

a leased new car costs the consumer a few hundred dollars a month, which is
the equivalent of say 30 or 40 hours of minimum wage labor. a robot that
cleans floors, prepares food, washes clothes, folds laundry, cleans windows,
serves meals, puts dishes away, feeds the dog, waters plants etc. could work
24/7 (with swappable batteries). i'm not convinced that consumers wouldn't pay
that if the technology could get there.

of course we are far from a robot that can do all of that, but in my opinion,
the prize to the company that can deliver this is massive.

~~~
bduerst
Consumers don't lease appliances, and they're certainly not going to pay
$500/mo + maintenance for something that they and/or a maid can do.

It's an inferior service, the same reason the Roomba didn't put Dyson or
Hoover out of business.

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fred_is_fred
Google does not do a great job at products which interact with the physical
world.

------
microtherion
When I first read "Robotic Arm" and "Toothbrush Test", I imagined something
like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki7lqI6XE2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki7lqI6XE2s)

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lostdog
Surely they'll have no problem with open sourcing it then, right?

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Pica_soO
If every Household had such a collaborative Arm on roof-rails they could
toothbrush the world.. but no, google is gone.

Replaced by another cautious giant, forced to buy inventors from outside,
instead of growing them within. Really sad. Everyone sets there ten-year-till-
they-are-gone clock, on this re-mark.

