Google wants to rid itself of humanoid robots.
The search giant is looking to sell Boston Dynamics, the robotics company that it purchased in 2013 amid a big push into creating a viable robotics business unit, according to a report on Thursday by Bloomberg News.
Unlike the more consumer-friendly types of robots on the market like the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, Boston Dynamics’s human-like robots were tailored for military purposes. The company scored millions of dollars of funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Marine Corps, for example, to create a four-legged agile robot that could haul cargo over rough terrain.
The company was also noteworthy for its series of videos displaying humanoid robots strolling through snow without stumbling and standing back up after being knocked down. The videos were impressive to watch and demonstrated how advanced robotic technology has come in the past few years.
However, Alphabet (GOOG), the parent company of Google, has had a difficult time making a business out of the machines.
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Alphabet executives could not figure out how to make a revenue-generating business out of selling the humanoid robots, and determined that there won’t likely be “a marketable product in the next few years,” according to the Bloomberg report.
Amazon and Toyota were said to be two possible buyers as both are making a heavy push into robotics.
Amazon, for example, purchased the robotics maker Kiva in 2012 to improve its warehouse and shipping facilities. Toyota has also been hiring multiple robotics and artificial intelligence experts as part of a $1 billion investment into AI and robotics technology.
Alphabet executives were also reported to be fearful that Boston Dynamics’s humanoid robots could be concerning for the company’s public relations and marketing image. The report cites a Google spokesperson’s internal email, noting the company was “starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs.”
Google’s robotics division has been subject to much speculation from analysts and media reports about whether the search giant could create an actual business around robots. The robotics division reportedly suffered a major blow when its leader Andy Rubin, the co-founder of Google’s Android operating system, left the company in 2014.
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The Bloomberg report also describes further tensions in Google’s robotics division over the difficulty of keeping all of its several robotics projects and relevant acquisitions on the same page. Boston Dynamics was singled out as a company that had trouble working together with Google’s other robotic groups in California and Tokyo.
Coins2Day reached out to Google, Amazon, and Toyota for comment and will update this story upon response.
