Google parent puts robot maker Boston Dynamics up for sale
Boston Dynamics makes some impressive robots—ranging from SandFlea, which can jump 30 feet in the air, to LS3 (Legged Squad Support System), which can carry a 400-lb load for 20 miles. What it’s not making, apparently, is sufficient revenue to please Google parent Alphabet Inc., which is putting the operation up for sale.
Google acquired Boston Dynamics and a seven other robot companies in 2013, which were folded into Google’s Replicant group. Last December, Replicant, except for Boston Dynamics, was folded into the Google X advanced research group.
Now, Bloomberg reports, executives at Alphabet concluded that Boston Dynamics would not be generating significant revenue soon. Further, the Globe reports, there “…was a reluctance by Boston Dynamics executives to work with Google’s other robot engineers in California and Tokyo….”
Write Brad Stone and Jack Clark at Bloomberg, “Tensions between Boston Dynamics and the rest of the Replicant group spilled into open view within Google, when written minutes of a Nov. 11 meeting and several subsequent emails were inadvertently published to an online forum that was accessible to other Google workers. These documents were made available to Bloomberg News by a Google employee who spotted them.”
There were also concerns about anthropomorphic robots such as Atlas, which was featured in a video released last month. Stone and Clark quote Courtney Hohne, a director of communications at Google and the spokeswoman for Google X, as saying, “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.”
Stone and Clark cite Toyota and Amazon as possible buyers of Boston Dynamics.
