Since December of last year, Google has purchased at least six companies either buildings robots or creating technologies used in the development of robotics.
Former Google Android lead and current Google Robot Guru Andy Rubin's list of acquired companies reads a bit like a baseline robot kit:
Redwood Robotics for robot arms
Holomni for robot wheels
Bot & Dolly for robotics cameras
Boston Dynamics for creepy and cool mobile robots
DeepMind Technologies for artificial intelligence
Meka Robotics for humanoid robots
Industrial Perception for computer vision (which may or may not be for robotics)
While we know Google has interest in self-driving cars, the robot end-game is unclear. Sure, you can build an army of C-3POs, but for what?
Well, robots are excellent at repetitive tasks, like changing the settings on millions of computers so that they have Google.com as their home page and Google as their default search engine. Would these Google Robots invade homes to make the change or would Google offer it as a service? Send us your computer and our robots will "fix" them.
No one knows. Until then, I offer you the comic guesswork above.
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