Over a year after signalling its intentions to dump the robotics demonstration company Boston Dynamics, Alphabet/Google has finally found a buyer: SoftBank. SoftBank acquired ARM Holdings for around $32 billion in 2016. Google also offloaded another robotics company, Schaft:
Google's ambitions for Boston Dynamics were never really clear. Before being acquired, the robotics company was mostly funded by DARPA—the US military's research division—with the express purpose of creating militarised robots. Within a year of being picked up, though, Google announced that it would no longer pursue any DARPA contracts, presumably to focus on possible commercial uses for the bots. No commercial robots ever emerged.
SoftBank, however, has had success with commercialising robots—specifically the small humanoid robot Pepper.
Also at The Verge, The Guardian, TNW, CNN, CNBC, and TechCrunch.
Previously: Pentagon Scientists Show Off Robot And Prosthetics
Google's Noisy "BigDog" Robot Fails to Impress U.S. Marine Corps
Google's Latest Boston Dynamics Robot Takes a Stand
Boston Dynamics Produces a Wheeled Terror as Google Watches Nervously
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @07:02AM (3 children)
Boston Dynamics should never have been acquired by anybody. If it has to be owned, the logical choices are:
General Dynamics
Lockheed Martin
Northrop Grumman
Raytheon
Boeing
GE
Caterpillar
BAE
iRobot
Buying the company, avoiding military contracts, directing them to do cute battery-powered things with wheels, and then selling them off to a non-US company... that just shows contempt for America.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 11 2017, @10:51AM
Better than making robots with contempt for Americans.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 11 2017, @01:43PM
SpaceX ?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday June 12 2017, @12:22AM
Exactly. Good defense contractors, despite their often-boneheaded mistakes, know they have to make money and have well-paid teams of industry experts thoroughly evaluate all potential acquisitions. In case you're wondering why such an awesome startup was never acquired by real defense contractors, you should ask yourself why bipedal Metal Gear-style robots haven't been implemented yet -- they're ridiculously complicated with more moving parts (which are points of failure) and can be tripped and tied up with strong-enough cable. Sure, they look really cool, but they're fresh-meat in combat situations.
Boston Dynamics developed those machines because they could, machines for their own sake. Definitely valuable from a research standpoint, ridiculous from an applications standpoint.