Google has bought Boston Dynamics, a firm that makes robots for the US military that can run faster than Usain Bolt. The move marks Google’s eighth robotics firm purchase in just 6 months, as the internet giant looks to expand into the real world with augmented reality glasses, self-driving cars and now even cyborgs. Project […]
Google has bought Boston Dynamics, a firm that makes robots for the US military that can run faster than Usain Bolt.
The move marks Google’s eighth robotics firm purchase in just 6 months, as the internet giant looks to expand into the real world with augmented reality glasses, self-driving cars and now even cyborgs.
Project leader Andy Rubin, the man behind Google’s Android operating system, has not revealed what the company plans to do with the technology.
The initiative is one of Google’s famous ‘moonshot’ projects and Rubin said that any product development is still several years away.
Previously, Boston Dynamics has made research robots for the Defense Adanvanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the US government agency responsibly for developing new military technologies.
Google would not say how much they paid for the company and will not be releasing financial information. They said the company will fulfill all current government contracts, but that Google will not be taking on any more military work.
Boston Dynamics was founded in Waltham, Massachusetts by ex-MIT professor Dr Marc Raibert in 1992.
Since then, they have been developing animal-like robots that can travel faster than the fastest human, and even cover difficult terrains like snowy hills and icy roads.
Slipping and sliding: The Boston Dynamics robot named Big Dog can cover all types of terrain, and is pictured maintaining balance even on a sheet of ice
One of the projects they’re currently working on for DARPA is the creation of a robot that can operate in a natural disaster, like the nuclear power plant meltown in Fukushima, Japan.
Another robot named ‘Cheetah’ was designed for maximum speed, and was filmed running on a treadmill at speeds up to 29mph which is one mph faster than the world’s fastest man – Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. That beat the previous record of 13.1 set by a robot in 1999.
