Google stumbled in robotics - but evidence is mounting that it's getting ready for a big comeback, and it could take on Amazon
- In 2013, Google attempted to build a groundbreaking robotics division, but the effort was scrapped not long after it began.
- Despite that earlier stumble, Google is bolstering its ranks of roboticists at X and Google Brain.
- Some have speculated Google may be building a rival to the "domestic robot" that Amazon is reportedly working on.
Robots may be making a comeback at Google.
Google made a big bet on robotics starting in 2013, when it acquired nine of the sector's top firms in an effort to stake out turf in a burgeoning sector - much the same way that the company is investing now in artificial intelligence. After just two years, however, Google scrapped the project, known internally as Replicant. The thinking in the industry was that while Google continued to operate several robotics divisions, any grander ambitions were dead.
But the signs now are that the robotics units at Google Brain and X - the search giant's artificial intelligence unit, and the "moonshot factory" formerly known as Google X, respectively - are much revived. It's not clear what, exactly, this revamped Google robotics project could look like, but one source tells us the robotics-industry gossip is that Google is working on a rival to the "domestic robot" that Amazon is reportedly building.
In June, Google Brain brought back Ryan Hickman, who helped lead some of Google's earliest robotics efforts, going back to 2010. According to Hickman's LinkedIn page, he's now in charge of product and operations "on a new robotics effort." And as far back as December, X hired Liz Murphy, formerly an autonomous-robotics expert at Apple. Hickman and Murphy did not respond to questions from Business Insider about this story.
Meanwhile, in recent months, X, the experimental hardware lab and Google's sister company under Alphabet Inc., has posted a spate of new robotics-related positions on its site. Most of the ads start this way: "We believe there are many problems in the world in which robotics could play a significant role in making it easier, faster and safer for people to get things done."
A source at a respected university told Business Insider that Google has been recruiting some of the nation's most talented robotics students.
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In a statement to Business Insider, a spokesperson for X confirms that the company has been hiring roboticists and AI experts.
"X is working on a number of moonshots with robotics at their core. We're hiring talented engineers with a background in robotics and ML who are interested in exploring how robotics combined with machine learning can help solve some of humanity's biggest problems," says the spokesperson.
That Google might be willing to try its hand again at robotics isn't totally a surprise to industry observers.
"No, I wouldn't be surprised if they're going at it again," said Alex Broadbent, a former program manager at Boston Dynamics, one of the robotics firms Google acquired in 2013. "They have new leadership and they probably want to go at it differently. They're probably asking themselves how do we salvage this. We got all this brain power and technology, so how do we put it all together and change the world? Again."
Google's quest to master robotics
For a brief period, Google appeared poised to breath life into robots and transform all of our wildest sci-fi fantasies into reality.
In 2013, Andy Rubin, the Android cofounder and a prized executive at Google, oversaw the acquisition of nine top robotics firms. Among them was Boston Dynamics, the company famous for posting jaw-dropping videos to YouTube of automatons walking through a snow-covered woods, picking themselves off the ground, or loading boxes. What Google hoped to build was never revealed but emails showed Rubin hoped to launch a product by 2020.
Then, less than a year later, Rubin left Google to start a hardware incubator called Playground. From then on, the robotics project appeared rudderless. In 2016, some of the companies Rubin acquired were sold, including Boston Dynamics, which has been owned by SoftBank since 2017. Others were folded into X.
There's a case to be made that Google made some serious missteps that hurt not only the company, but the entire field of robotics. In October, Bloomberg published a story indelicately titled "Google Has Made a Mess of Robotics."
In April, Bloomberg reported that Amazon was making progress on a robot codenamed "Vesta," and that unnamed sources told the news outlet might be a "sort of mobile Alexa, accompanying customers in parts of their home where they don't have Echo devices."
If Google is playing defense and creating a mobile version of its Google Home speakers, it would make sense. Amazon's Echo and Google Home are battling to become the dominant home smart speakers.
Robots for the home are hard to build
In this scenario, hiring Hickman also makes sense. After he departed Google in 2016, he eventually cofounded TickTock, an AI and robotics startup that tried to crack the onerous problem of creating robots that can navigate home environments. TickTock didn't get far. After a year, the company closed down after attempting four different robot concepts, according to Wired.
Starting in April, the day after Bloomberg published the story about Amazon's Vesta robot, Hickman began posting essays to Medium dealing with indoor robots. The first was titled "Why an Echo Show on Wheels makes sense for Amazon."
In June, presumably shortly before Google hired Hickman back, he wrote about the complexities involved with supplying robots with better vision.
"I want a fast-moving home robot that doesn't crash through my glass door," Hickman wrote. "I'd like to walk into a room and not trip over a robot that failed to get out of the way. I want to use all the verbal queues I do with a real dog (e.g. "sit", "stay", "heel", "lay down", "come here") to command my robot on where to be. This requires a level of spatial-reasoning AI that doesn't exist today."
Hickman indicated that he's optimistic the challenges can be overcome. Others are far less sure. Almost everyone interviewed agreed said the sensors needed for a robot to navigate a home are too expensive and clunky. Others said they doubted that Google, after its previous botched attempt, is interested in any in-home robot.
"Last time Google hired like crazy (in robotics)," said one former employee, "it didn't work very well for them."