The human race鈥檚 fascination with robots has been prevalent since the moment we dreamed them into existence.
Many have attempted to imagine what futuristic machines will look and act like, but none seem to have quite the drive and financial backing as Google.
鈥淭his is definitely a sign of the maturity of the field, and a sign of the broader interests of industries towards robotics," says Martial Hebert, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, about Google expensive interest in robots. "This is also a sign that robotics is moving towards broader base applications that benefits people.鈥�
Just as with other sectors, the tech giant seems to want a hand in every aspect of the robotics process.
has been busy building the top half of robots, including human-like heads and torsos. gives the hardware the gift of 3-D sight using advanced . specializes in robot arms. is responsible for creating . And has tasked itself with building wheels for more basic robots that only require wheels to move.
Google is also interested in military-grade robots, as its purchase of showed. Known for creating several all-terrain robots, Boston Dynamics' most famous venture to date has been its robot 鈥渄og,鈥� .
Google, like other tech giants, has seen massive potential in drone technology, as well. The company first showed an interest in the high-flying machinery with its of (which creates high altitude drones that are also being utilized in ) as well as its investments in (which designs components for commercial drones), and (which uses drones to collect high-resolution aerial data).
Another interesting acquisition to note is , which Google picked up for half a billion dollars last year. It's a start-up with a focus on , but has big dreams regarding big data and 鈥渦nlocking the human story by approaching daily global activity as the world鈥檚 largest data science problem.鈥� The start-up's products focus on analytics platforms, imaging chains, and satellites, which all work together to make data collection from space more reliable and cheaper.
But what is the hardware without the software?
鈥淚 think we should always see robotics as a whole, not as a piece," Mr. Hebert says. "This is generally important, in the end, to have a trust-able robotics system, and a trust-able robotics system involves, again, all the parts. From the hardware to the intelligence, I don鈥檛 think you can ever completely separate them."
Which is probably why Google has taken the time and effort to invest in some of the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence.
