8 ms·

Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm

58 points by beambot 10y ago

beambot 10y ago
Pity. Sounds like they had a real product with a real, demonstrated business model (akin to Universal Robotics). Google needs to embrace a bit more of the "just fscking ship" attitude for its moonshots. (The brand protectionism is really starting to hurt their ability to be scrappy.)
- throwaway40483 10y ago
  This "we must protect our brand" is really weird. If you look at the sentiment here on HN, it's pretty much "Oh great, Google is in the news again. I wonder which product they're sunsetting today". Maybe Google only invoke this for their HW products and not their SW.
  - nullc 10y ago
    They've now optimized the process to the extent now that they can cancel them before they launch. Seems like an advance over things thus far. :)
- samfisher83 10y ago
  They seemed to throw a lot of stuff up like buzz, reader etc. and then stop supporting it.
  - nck4222 10y ago
    This is exactly my fear with Project Fi. It's very intriguing to me and I'm considering switching over to it, but what happens if Google suddenly decides it's not "core enough" and decides to shuttle it?
    - tintor 10y ago
      If that happens, you can just move your number to a different telecom. Others will welcome you.
    - praneshp 10y ago
      It takes less than a day to port your number over. As a Project Fi customer I can tell you that 1) customer support is awesome 2) It feels like a VC-backed startup, they give you generous discounts for small issues 3) There are a few small issues, for example some fuck-up with wifi calling 4) It's terrible if you travel a lot 5) Its great if you travel a lot to places with networks that are Fi-partners. What I really love is that they do true cash-back for unused data, not rollovers, etc.
      - pmlamotte 10y ago
        For number 4 are you referring to domestic travel? I used Fi on my Nexus 6P recently through Canada, Japan, Indonesia, and Taiwan with the service becoming available soon after landing. I was actually surprised it worked as well as it did.
        praneshp 10y ago
        Domestic, yes. It was bad for me when I was in Montana recently, but it could just be that regular mobile networks suck in those places anyway (because sparse population). When I went home to India it worked very well, likely because it just hopped on to a good network. Coupled with really cheap roaming data, and automatically using google voice for all calls, its simply awesome.
    - MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
      I've been a Project Fi customer for almost a year and love it. I am slightly worried about them shuttering it at some point, but switching to another carrier is really easy and I use Google Voice anyways, so the downside of potentially having to do that isn't too bad compared to the huge upside of awesome customer service and super cheap pricing (for me). It brought my monthly bill from $80 to $30 as I mostly use WiFi.
danvoell 10y ago
Pure speculation here. I can't imagine that the "toothbrush test" is accurate here. There is a large market for robotic arms. And if Google's robot creates any advantage over existing robots in manufacturing, Google could go up or down stream in the verticle. My guess is that it hasn't been tested enough and/or hasn't cleared the top level of safety in the market. One incorrect swing of a robotic arm could severely injure someone and that is a huge liability for Google's name.
- beambot 10y ago
  The comparison in the article was to Universal Robotics, whose arms are low-payload and compliant (ie. not big 'ole position controlled arms of yesteryear). Toothbrush test generally refers to daily use. But I'm not sure I understand that context outside of mass-market consumers. A well-designed arm for light-manufacturing has 90%+ uptime and is (in fact) used daily.
- burkemw3 10y ago
  From the article, the second half of the toothbrush test is 'used daily by billions of people'. Can you show the robotic arm market that large? With self driving cars, I believe Google is showing willingness to develop things that could severely injure someone. disclosure: I work for Google. I have not been involved in toothbrush test discussions and do not work on robotics nor cars.
  - awesomerobot 10y ago
    Yeah but what if there's one machine that makes billions of toothbrushes. Does google decide to not make that machine?
  - edc117 10y ago
    Potentially, sure - as the article mentions at present, AI isn't able to be involved in moving the arm at all. How long until it isn't? What if you could have an arm and sensors installed in your kitchen that would cook dinner for you, or wash dishes? Sounds complicated...but more than a self driving car? There's a lot of people that would (and do) pay a lot of money to have someone else prepare and clean up their meals.
Pica_soO 10y ago
If every Household had such a collaborative Arm on roof-rails they could toothbrush the world.. but no, google is gone. Replaced by another cautious giant, forced to buy inventors from outside, instead of growing them within. Really sad. Everyone sets there ten-year-till-they-are-gone clock, on this re-mark.
Retric 10y ago
IMO, Google suffers from the curse of Oil in corporate terms. As long as they milk their core product they can do just about anything and look competent. Which allows a horribly dysfunctional leadership to thrive.
- bla2 10y ago
  Google seems to be doing ok to me. I like your point that success can hide problems though; Ed Catmull presents it very well here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc It looks like people were suggesting that Google takes this advice more to heart six years ago already: https://hbr.org/2010/08/what-google-could-learn-from-p https://hbr.org/2010/08/what-google-could-learn-from-p
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  >As long as they milk their core product they can do just about anything and look competent. Which allows a horribly dysfunctional leadership to thrive. Until one day, reality reasserts itself and things start melting down. It occurred at IBM, its occurring at Microsoft, and it will occur at Google, Amazon, and the rest of the tech giants.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- gumby 10y ago
  This is an excellent analogy BTW!
- bane 10y ago
  I've been reading up a lot on early Atari and history shows a remarkably similar phenomenon with the success of the Atari 2600/VCS. It didn't matter what management did, they'd make money, until the management finally became so terrible, and the debt of poor decisions finally did the company in.
mabbo 10y ago
As someone who spent many years working on Amazon Picking software... I'm pretty sure there's a few companies that would just hand over a dumptruck full of money if those things actually worked as intended. It's such a hard problem space. Either Google didn't have it working well enough to sell widely (without embarrassment) or else they're pants-on-head crazy.
- blasteye 10y ago
  Big issue is that Google's market cap is huge, the amount of money they make is massive as well. For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to make lots of $$$. Hence why lots of projects get killed. Making 300 million a year isn't enough money to move the needle at google. I fully believe that's why alphabet was created. Allow the `bets` to not use the google branding and name, and stealthy create new companies that produce millions of revenue, but just not billions.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    > For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to make lots of $$$. Then why not just sell the tech and team to someone else, or market the device under a different brand name?
    - happyslobro 10y ago
      Right, let's dedicate a new department to that. And, just in case other departments start expecting similar leeway, let's make this department clearly separate from the others.
fred_is_fred 10y ago
Google does not do a great job at products which interact with the physical world.
lostdog 10y ago
Surely they'll have no problem with open sourcing it then, right?
Theodores 10y ago
I was sort of hoping the 'toothbrush test' would involve the robot being able to clean your teeth... Years ago my father worked in robotics. The product was a very simple robot that took a piece out of a die-casting machine and placed it on a conveyor belt. There was nothing to program of any complexity, this arm had a fixed trapezium with different length sides that performed all the required motion, some sines/cosines/tangents involved to get the fixed path right. Most of the bits for the robot came from the R+S components catalogue, so usual industrial control gear, all 'tried and tested' with warranty, not 'home made'. However, did it go well? The robot only had to do one job right but it rarely did. It probably only ever was one robot, customers were not exactly two-a-penny for this machine, even though it was in theory a very good machine. It would require on-site attention every week and some weekends. There was no fundamental design flaw, the heat had been considered, but it was a constant war of attrition on the reliability front. I would have to ask how that ended, all I know is that it was doomed, just not an economically viable adventure. Yet this was the simplest of robots for the simplest of tasks, solving a known problem that seemed to make sense to solve. The main business survived the venture into robotics (sold to the same customers) but a loss had to be accounted for, people were laid of and the industrial unit vacated. A lot of hard work was put into it and the whole company was behind it. But it failed, reliability and support just could not be done economically. So what are robot arms to be for outside of manufacturing, where Google wants to be with their customers? If Google did get into the sales of these robot arms and 'learn along the way' there really is a risk that support for customers, 'beta customers', might be as all-consuming as it was for my father with his very simple robot. Then there are no resources to actually develop or iterate the product. You need to have the original creators debugging and fixing the robots in the field and there is a high likelihood that this work would take 10x the amount of available resources making actual development nigh on impossible. Much better to take the long route and get the product right before bringing it to market and avoid the trap. Building robots is okay if that is your core business or if you have some massive factory that needs them. Here the cost benefit analysis can be done, things tested and deployed complete with a team of engineers to keep everything running. If selling adverts is your main business then maybe not.
microtherion 10y ago
When I first read "Robotic Arm" and "Toothbrush Test", I imagined something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki7lqI6XE2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki7lqI6XE2s

58 points by beambot 10y ago

Pity. Sounds like they had a real product with a real, demonstrated business model (akin to Universal Robotics). Google needs to embrace a bit more of the "just fscking ship" attitude for its moonshots. (The brand protectionism is really starting to hurt their ability to be scrappy.)

throwaway40483 10y ago
This "we must protect our brand" is really weird. If you look at the sentiment here on HN, it's pretty much "Oh great, Google is in the news again. I wonder which product they're sunsetting today". Maybe Google only invoke this for their HW products and not their SW.
- nullc 10y ago
  They've now optimized the process to the extent now that they can cancel them before they launch. Seems like an advance over things thus far. :)
samfisher83 10y ago
They seemed to throw a lot of stuff up like buzz, reader etc. and then stop supporting it.
- nck4222 10y ago
  This is exactly my fear with Project Fi. It's very intriguing to me and I'm considering switching over to it, but what happens if Google suddenly decides it's not "core enough" and decides to shuttle it?
  - tintor 10y ago
    If that happens, you can just move your number to a different telecom. Others will welcome you.
  - praneshp 10y ago
    It takes less than a day to port your number over. As a Project Fi customer I can tell you that 1) customer support is awesome 2) It feels like a VC-backed startup, they give you generous discounts for small issues 3) There are a few small issues, for example some fuck-up with wifi calling 4) It's terrible if you travel a lot 5) Its great if you travel a lot to places with networks that are Fi-partners. What I really love is that they do true cash-back for unused data, not rollovers, etc.
    - pmlamotte 10y ago
      For number 4 are you referring to domestic travel? I used Fi on my Nexus 6P recently through Canada, Japan, Indonesia, and Taiwan with the service becoming available soon after landing. I was actually surprised it worked as well as it did.
      - praneshp 10y ago
        Domestic, yes. It was bad for me when I was in Montana recently, but it could just be that regular mobile networks suck in those places anyway (because sparse population). When I went home to India it worked very well, likely because it just hopped on to a good network. Coupled with really cheap roaming data, and automatically using google voice for all calls, its simply awesome.
  - MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
    I've been a Project Fi customer for almost a year and love it. I am slightly worried about them shuttering it at some point, but switching to another carrier is really easy and I use Google Voice anyways, so the downside of potentially having to do that isn't too bad compared to the huge upside of awesome customer service and super cheap pricing (for me). It brought my monthly bill from $80 to $30 as I mostly use WiFi.

danvoell 10y ago

Pure speculation here. I can't imagine that the "toothbrush test" is accurate here. There is a large market for robotic arms. And if Google's robot creates any advantage over existing robots in manufacturing, Google could go up or down stream in the verticle. My guess is that it hasn't been tested enough and/or hasn't cleared the top level of safety in the market. One incorrect swing of a robotic arm could severely injure someone and that is a huge liability for Google's name.

beambot 10y ago
The comparison in the article was to Universal Robotics, whose arms are low-payload and compliant (ie. not big 'ole position controlled arms of yesteryear). Toothbrush test generally refers to daily use. But I'm not sure I understand that context outside of mass-market consumers. A well-designed arm for light-manufacturing has 90%+ uptime and is (in fact) used daily.
burkemw3 10y ago
From the article, the second half of the toothbrush test is 'used daily by billions of people'. Can you show the robotic arm market that large? With self driving cars, I believe Google is showing willingness to develop things that could severely injure someone. disclosure: I work for Google. I have not been involved in toothbrush test discussions and do not work on robotics nor cars.
- awesomerobot 10y ago
  Yeah but what if there's one machine that makes billions of toothbrushes. Does google decide to not make that machine?
- edc117 10y ago
  Potentially, sure - as the article mentions at present, AI isn't able to be involved in moving the arm at all. How long until it isn't? What if you could have an arm and sensors installed in your kitchen that would cook dinner for you, or wash dishes? Sounds complicated...but more than a self driving car? There's a lot of people that would (and do) pay a lot of money to have someone else prepare and clean up their meals.

Pica_soO 10y ago

If every Household had such a collaborative Arm on roof-rails they could toothbrush the world.. but no, google is gone. Replaced by another cautious giant, forced to buy inventors from outside, instead of growing them within. Really sad. Everyone sets there ten-year-till-they-are-gone clock, on this re-mark.

Retric 10y ago

IMO, Google suffers from the curse of Oil in corporate terms. As long as they milk their core product they can do just about anything and look competent. Which allows a horribly dysfunctional leadership to thrive.

bla2 10y ago
Google seems to be doing ok to me. I like your point that success can hide problems though; Ed Catmull presents it very well here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc It looks like people were suggesting that Google takes this advice more to heart six years ago already: https://hbr.org/2010/08/what-google-could-learn-from-p https://hbr.org/2010/08/what-google-could-learn-from-p
GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
>As long as they milk their core product they can do just about anything and look competent. Which allows a horribly dysfunctional leadership to thrive. Until one day, reality reasserts itself and things start melting down. It occurred at IBM, its occurring at Microsoft, and it will occur at Google, Amazon, and the rest of the tech giants.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
gumby 10y ago
This is an excellent analogy BTW!
bane 10y ago
I've been reading up a lot on early Atari and history shows a remarkably similar phenomenon with the success of the Atari 2600/VCS. It didn't matter what management did, they'd make money, until the management finally became so terrible, and the debt of poor decisions finally did the company in.

mabbo 10y ago

As someone who spent many years working on Amazon Picking software... I'm pretty sure there's a few companies that would just hand over a dumptruck full of money if those things actually worked as intended. It's such a hard problem space. Either Google didn't have it working well enough to sell widely (without embarrassment) or else they're pants-on-head crazy.

blasteye 10y ago
Big issue is that Google's market cap is huge, the amount of money they make is massive as well. For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to make lots of $$$. Hence why lots of projects get killed. Making 300 million a year isn't enough money to move the needle at google. I fully believe that's why alphabet was created. Allow the `bets` to not use the google branding and name, and stealthy create new companies that produce millions of revenue, but just not billions.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to make lots of $$$. Then why not just sell the tech and team to someone else, or market the device under a different brand name?
  - happyslobro 10y ago
    Right, let's dedicate a new department to that. And, just in case other departments start expecting similar leeway, let's make this department clearly separate from the others.

fred_is_fred 10y ago

Google does not do a great job at products which interact with the physical world.

lostdog 10y ago

Surely they'll have no problem with open sourcing it then, right?

Theodores 10y ago

I was sort of hoping the 'toothbrush test' would involve the robot being able to clean your teeth... Years ago my father worked in robotics. The product was a very simple robot that took a piece out of a die-casting machine and placed it on a conveyor belt. There was nothing to program of any complexity, this arm had a fixed trapezium with different length sides that performed all the required motion, some sines/cosines/tangents involved to get the fixed path right. Most of the bits for the robot came from the R+S components catalogue, so usual industrial control gear, all 'tried and tested' with warranty, not 'home made'. However, did it go well? The robot only had to do one job right but it rarely did. It probably only ever was one robot, customers were not exactly two-a-penny for this machine, even though it was in theory a very good machine. It would require on-site attention every week and some weekends. There was no fundamental design flaw, the heat had been considered, but it was a constant war of attrition on the reliability front. I would have to ask how that ended, all I know is that it was doomed, just not an economically viable adventure. Yet this was the simplest of robots for the simplest of tasks, solving a known problem that seemed to make sense to solve. The main business survived the venture into robotics (sold to the same customers) but a loss had to be accounted for, people were laid of and the industrial unit vacated. A lot of hard work was put into it and the whole company was behind it. But it failed, reliability and support just could not be done economically. So what are robot arms to be for outside of manufacturing, where Google wants to be with their customers? If Google did get into the sales of these robot arms and 'learn along the way' there really is a risk that support for customers, 'beta customers', might be as all-consuming as it was for my father with his very simple robot. Then there are no resources to actually develop or iterate the product. You need to have the original creators debugging and fixing the robots in the field and there is a high likelihood that this work would take 10x the amount of available resources making actual development nigh on impossible. Much better to take the long route and get the product right before bringing it to market and avoid the trap. Building robots is okay if that is your core business or if you have some massive factory that needs them. Here the cost benefit analysis can be done, things tested and deployed complete with a team of engineers to keep everything running. If selling adverts is your main business then maybe not.

microtherion 10y ago

When I first read "Robotic Arm" and "Toothbrush Test", I imagined something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki7lqI6XE2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki7lqI6XE2s