Google has acquired robotics company Boston Dynamics, the eighth robot maker to be snapped up by the search giant within the last six months.
A company that has designed and produced mobile research robots for the US military, Boston Dynamics is famed for a number of large, four legged robots that can tackle all manner of terrains and even run faster than humans at 29mph.
Founded in 1992 by former MIT professors, Boston Dynamics is best known for its Cheetah, BigDog and WildCat robots. The company is also working on a humanoid robot dubbed Atlas that is being designed to work in natural disaster areas.
Although Google has yet to confirm how much it paid to acquire Boston Dynamics, the company’s former Android head and current robotics mastermind Tweeted: “The future is looking awesome.”
Earlier this month Google confirmed that it was pushing into the robotics market, with the search turn smartphone giant snapping up a number of robotics specialists.
Confirming that Google has a “10-year vision” for its robot plans, project head Rubin has stated that he sees the robotics industry as “green field” ripe for development.
“I feel with robotics it’s a green field,” he said. “We’re building hardware, we’re building software. We’re building systems, so one team will be able to understand the whole stack.”
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Via: NYTimes
