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SoftBank Agrees to Buy Boston Dynamics From Alphabet
- jonknee 9y agoAre there any other Japanese companies serving as US defense contractors? IIRC that was a big part of why they didn't jive well with Google.
- bitbckt 9y ago"Jibe" not "jive".
- mythrwy 9y agoJive has become acceptable in that context and is commonly used that way now (although technically you are correct).
- erikpukinskis 9y agoIt's common. Whether it's acceptable... I don't know. I think most people imagine it has something to do with dancing together, congruently, to "the jive" which doesn't really make any sense if you think about it very long. Maybe I can just chalk it up to a compression error in the dictionary though. Perhaps fewer words is better.
- mythrwy 9y agoI always took it to mean something like "communicating effectively". As in, using the same jive.
- yorwba 9y agoFWIW, I'm not a native speaker, and the only time I have ever seen anyone use "jibe" is to correct someone's use of "jive". I'm not sure whether it can really be considered a mistake anymore.
- hkmurakami 9y agoHmm well Shinetsu probably supplies some wafers upstream. Mitsubishi heavy industries would be the other prime candidate for aerospace...
- deepnotderp 9y agoProbably the mask writing companies.
- aresant 9y agoAnother top HN news item today is that Andy Rubin's new startup, "Essential", raised $300m today. Fun fact and by coincidence, Andy Rubin's last official gig prior to this startup was head of Google's robotics division and oversaw Boston Dynamics. Larry Page convinced Rubin to run the division after moving Sundar Pichai (Now Google's CEO) to takeover the Android project. And so the tech world turns! (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin Edited per comment below for clarity
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- foobarian 9y agoQuoth the Tao of Programming: 7.1 A novice asked the Master: "In the East, there is a great tree-structure that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with vice presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying 'Go Hence!' or 'Go Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an unnatural entity exist?" The Master replied: "You perceive this immense structure and are disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?"
- jklinger410 9y agoThe wheels move the tank but they do not steer it.
- lodi 9y agoBut... they do? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_steering_systems#Double_differential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_steering_systems#Double_d...
- killin_dan 9y ago
- trevyn 9y agoTremendous loss for Google.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bingobob 9y agoyes its a great loss for Google. but they have plenty of things going on this is just another distraction from there core product groups.
- deevolution 9y agoTremendous gain for Japan, and everyone else, eventually. Theres huge demand and pressure for automation in Japan because of their aging population. I think softbank will find some very usefull and apreciated applications for these robots.
- bitmapbrother 9y agoI disagree. These robotic company acquisitions were spearheaded by Andy Rubin after he was asked to step aside from Android. When Andy left Google these companies were left rudderless. There was also a lot of friction between Boston Dynamics and the robotics division within Google. This is simply Google unloading unprofitable acquisitions (due in most part to Google not accepting military contracts) Andy made.
- y04nn 9y agoI agree, but I wonder if it is because main usages for such robots are military and that would make a negative opinion impact on Google.
- imron 9y agoThe Japanese love their robots. Hopefully we'll start to see something from it.
- toisanji 9y agoit will be interesting to see how SoftBank tries to monetize this. I always wonder why Google has had such a hard time making money from other places besides ads, especially since google is trying to turn their company into a full fledged AI company. It would seem robotics will be a center piece of the AI future.
- visarga 9y agoThey're still doing powerful research at DeepMind, training reinforcement learning agents in VR where progress can be much faster. I think the path to AI will be simulation - we need to simulate virtual worlds in order to master AI. AI agents need to experiment somewhere. Just make the simulation good enough, detailed enough and study the domain transfer problem to make training in virtual domain and applying in real domain work. We have games with amazing renditions of the world created for human pleasure, we need an AI training playground (of course, OpenAI Gym and DeepMind Lab are starting points).
- hoodoof 9y agoKinda weird. I envisage robotics as being the next gigantic thing in technology so its a bit hard to understand why Google don't want this any more.
- smpetrey 9y agoAI and automation will unlock that era. For now it gets shelved.
- venachescu 9y agoMostly because it was a rushed and not totally thought out acquisition - Boston Dynamics never wanted to leave Boston and has always been about legged locomotion, Google wanted them to change and they didn't.
- oh_sigh 9y agoGoogle has an office in Cambridge which is right next door to Boston.
- venachescu 9y agoBut all of their other robots that they bought are in the bay! Except for SCHAFT, who, apparently were also bought by SoftBank today so go figure.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- accountyaccount 9y agoYou don't understand why Google doesn't want to keep a company that works on military robots?
- Baeocystin 9y agoFWIW, I don't. The world wouldn't have the amazing space programs we collectively do if it weren't for the massive tech transfer that came from military missile research, for example. A humanoid robot that can be used for military purposes will have a vastly greater number of civilian uses. I used to work as a welder in a shipyard, and believe me, there were plenty of times I could have used a robotic aid to assist a dangerous maneuver, where one side is reasonably safe, the other Guaranteed Instant Death if the safeties fail. And if Uncle Sam wants to foot the bill for baseline research, why not? Pushing the coming of useful home/civilian robotics away because it could also be used for military purposes, to me, is akin to not wanting to smelt iron because you could use it to make a sword. In the meantime, people starve without metal plows, and the tech will be developed anyway, by someone else, who will do what they want. (It is better to be the one deciding what to do with the tech than the one waiting pensively to see what will happen.)
- discordance 9y agoSoftBank also acquired Aldebaran a few years ago, who's Pepper robot appears to be a toy next to the Boston Dynamics stuff.
- dbcurtis 9y agoSoftbank is a major investor in a lot of robotic companies other than the few that they own. The Softbank robot portfolio, as measured by dollars invested, a lot larger than most people realise. Unless you are raising B or C round money for a robot company. Then you have them on speed dial.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoHN was saying that Google acquired Boston Dynamics specifically to dismantle it. Thoughts? This was more than a random HN comment. There seemed to be several persuasive reasons why Google would do something like that. Note that three years ago, the general sentiment was that Boston Dynamics was pretty scary: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=boston%20dynamics%20google&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=boston%20dynamics%20google&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7103433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7103433 "Technically, since their acquisition Boston Dynamics, Google is indeed in the business of war robots: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/google-buys-major-military-robot-maker-why-does-search-giant-2D11744237 http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/google-buys-major-military... " Is there a chance that Google stayed ahead of the curve and prevented Boston Dynamics from pursuing that?
- jpm_sd 9y agoThis is complete nonsense. The only sense in which Boston Dynamics is building "military" robots is that no one other than DARPA was willing to fund the development of these expensive toys. They have no real military use. Andy Rubin and Larry Page were going to build "household helper" humanoid robots - no really, that was the grand vision - but it all fell apart.
- jimjimjim 9y agoI don't remember that sentiment. It sounds like general fud against google but back then people had less to worry about. Given the current political climate I would actually welcome a robot dystopia. as long as the robots were running it. not the politicians.
- api 9y agoSoftBank is interesting to say the least. Google it and Saudi funding. They even have a cute (kawaii) mascot. So cyberpunk.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dngerousminds87 9y agoBoston Robotics is doing better than Motorola right?
- droithomme 9y agoWow, I missed the news Boston Dynamics had been bought by Google. Did Google do much with them during their mentorship?
- joejerryronnie 9y agoMasayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, has raised a $100 Billion fund to invest in, among other things, the singularity. I'm sure the ultimate plan for Boston Dynamics is to build robotic/cyborg parts that will augment humans. I know this sounds a little out there but Masayoshi Son is a serious visionary and plays the long game - e.g. Softbank's 300 year vision plan.
- godzillabrennus 9y agoIt's crazy as an American when I realized how old some Japanese companies are. This hotel has been operating since 705 AD: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nishiyama_Onsen_Keiunkan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nishiyama_Onsen_Keiunkan Planning for 300 years doesn't seem so insane in context.
- vadym909 9y agoI've seen this #100B investment being used in multiple places now- Trump creating jobs in US- Softbank, Trump getting investment from Saudi Arabia- Softbank. investing in Robotics- Softbank.
- nihonde 9y agoSon is heavily promoting this Vision Fund right now. It's a big vote of confidence in his ability to buy and build wealth. He has support from Saudi sovereign funds, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. He's a guy who has lost huge and come back bigger than ever. Totally fearless. He once had $70B on paper, lost almost all of it, and recovered due to his stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. If Asia Has a bright future, he's definitely Going to be part of it.
- cardiffguy 9y agoIf I buy ordinary shares in SoftBank am I distantly investing in the vision fund. I.e is the vision fund manager as part of SoftBanks core assets?
- Symmetry 9y agoIf you work for a robotics company people will always ask you if the things you're creating can be used for cybernetics but really that's never the point. The problem Boston Dynamics is solving is much harder than human augmentation in that they have to make their robots respond to the environment. And they have no expertise at integrating with human nervous systems. And the remaining bits are also different but not as fundamentally.
- deevolution 9y agoI wonder if any Japanese construction companies ever considered aquiring Boston Dynamics. There are quite a few of them who are really pushing for construction automation[1]. 1. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/16/business/tech/japans-labor-scarce-building-sites-automating-turning-robots-drones/#.WTob3XMpDqA http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/16/business/tech/ja...
- daveguy 9y agoI think the problem with this for Google and construction is they have pretty, smooth, impressive dynamic control systems. Unfortunately that's where it ends -- at control. You don't have intelligence beyond that. If you have to have someone driving the robot at a high level then it is less helpful in industry. The robot can't on command say "go pick up that box" or "go hang the drywall on those studs". That is an AI problem for open construction environments. For controlled environment industrial applications the dumb, non-dynamic repetitive systems work just fine. Construction companies don't have that missing piece. SoftBank may have a shot at it.
- dpratt 9y ago"Don't be evil." "We make killer robots." That's one way to square the circle.
- Animats 9y agoNotice that they also bought Schaft. That's significant. Schaft has better actuator technology; electrical, rather than hydraulic. They built a very nice humanoid robot a few years ago. As I wrote last year when BD came up, the guy behind BigDog was Dr. Martin Buehler, who previously had an ambulatory robotics lab at McGill, and whose group built the first good running robot quadruped.[1] He's at Disney now. Raibert was primarily responsible for the hydraulics; his name is on the patent for that. But unless SoftBank wants to build giant mecha, hydraulic systems are too bulky. Also, Raibert is 68 now. When Google bought both companies, I thought they'd put Boston Dynamics control algorithms on Schaft hardware. That did not happen, as far as anyone on the outside can tell. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11307168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11307168
- type0 9y agoThey also bought ARM Holdings last year, makes you realize how big they are.
- agumonkey 9y agoI also remember a large acquisition not long ago. SB is buying the future.
- dmix 9y agoSoftBank also announced last month they raised $100B for Vision Fund, which is the largest in tech funding history https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/20/softbank-vision-fund-first-close/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/20/softbank-vision-fund-first...
- baldfat 9y agoThey also bought Sprint in USA, and I am a loyal Sprint customer and praying they start delivering on the potential they could infuse into the USA mobile infrastructure.
- nihonde 9y ago
- ww520 9y agoHere we go. Gundam is coming.
- flor1s 9y agoI'm a bit saddened by the sneer at Aldebaran in the article: '“SoftBank may not have struggled as much if they bought a better robotics company” instead of Aldebaran, Takahashi said.' To be a bit hyperbolic: Aldebaran (renamed as Softbank Robotics) may not have struggled as much if they got bought by a better holding company. Aldebaran was one of the first companies to commercially release a humanoid robot (NAO). I have one under my desk right now, it is an amazing combination of hardware and software engineering. You can program it using Python, C++ or a visual programming tool called Choregraphe. Novice users can write simple programs for the robot, however the robot is not very capable of doing more complicated tasks such as operating (physical) tools. It is however used as standard platform in the RoboCup (robot soccer) competition. The company is (was?) in the process of creating a human size robot called Romeo, which is being used by various research institutes in Europe and could be used for household tasks. I wonder what would have happened if Google bought Aldebaran instead of Softbank!
- basejumping 9y agoBoston Dynamics robots seem an order of magnitude further ahead than Aldebarans'. Aldebaran has these tools available because their business is selling these robots who can do tricks and are easy to program, while BD seem to push technology and make mobile robots useful. There's a mistake in the article, a Pepper robot is around 15k not 1.6k.
- flor1s 9y agoI'm not sure if the price in the article is wrong. NAO costs between 5k-15k, but Pepper uses much cheaper hardware and is sold at a loss so it might be possible to buy it for 1.6k. Like you mentioned, Boston Dynamics and Aldebaran have different goals. If Google however is interested in making a household robot then I think Aldebaran would have been more suitable for them. Pepper and NAO have actually been used in public places like hotels and shops, but would you imagine one of Boston Dynamics robots being used there?
- basejumping 9y ago
- symbolepro 9y agoIs this a sign of Japan rising again?
- Fricken 9y agoOh, this is gonna be good.
- TorKlingberg 9y agoARM, a big chunk of Nvidia, and now this: Where does SoftBank get the money for all these acquisitions? I thought they were just a Japanese telco, and not even the biggest.
- pas 9y agoProbably Japan's central bank doing quantitative easing ... but, no, it comes from investors (Apple, Qualcomm, Foxconn, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Larry Ellison, and so on)! https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/20/softbank-vision-fund-first-close/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/20/softbank-vision-fund-first...
- lorenzorhoades 9y agoI find myself being very skeptical about robotics' use in society. I think robotics will splinter off into many different specifically designed forms. the "irobot" dream of a humanoid robot doing all the menial tasks that humans don't want to do will never happen. Instead, there will be robots designed for specific tasks, because that specific design will be better for that purpose than any generally designed robot will. Also, AI will solve most of the use cases that i see robotics used for and it will not require the expensive electronics and manufacturing required.
- peter303 9y agoJapanese are exact opposite. They have extreme love of robots and are trying to put them everywhere. (Maybe caused by all the childhood robot cartoons like Astro boy) Examples include store greeters, companions for people living alone, etc. I wonder if they will anthropomorphize the speaker services like Amazon Echo. In the US these are bare bones listening and talking cyclinders. The Japanese might want to put an animated face on them for feedback. And make them mobile too.
- jitix 9y agothey seem to already have: http://gatebox.ai/ http://gatebox.ai/
- johnking 9y agoMonica Anderson had an interesting post on this a while back. Essentially relating the Boston Dynamics sale to a clash between the deep learning approach at Google, and BD's lack of. Here's what she said: Google wants to sell (now sold) Boston Dynamics, a robotics company they acquired in Dec 2013. People are speculating why, and some claim this is because of a "culture clash". I no longer work for Google so what follows is pure speculation. Boston Dynamics (BD) are very successful pioneers. But their algorithms are not based on Deep Learning (DL) principles. And Google is leading the world in Deep Learning and can apply it to anything they want, including robotics. DL based algorithms do not provide a complete robotics solution today but there is wide agreement that this is the best path forward for the field. Why is this important? The difference is robots that can walk vs robots that can dance ballet. The goal is "graceful locomotion" which will be an order of magnitude more adaptive, more energy efficient, and faster than the current generation of robots. I am suspecting this is part of the culture clash. Imagine a meeting where Google comes to BD staff and says "we want you to toss out all the software you have written, retrain your engineering staff to use DL and other Holistic methods, and create a new generation of robots capable of learning rather than being programmed"... then I can see BD staff saying "Ahem. That'll take a few years". And Google might then say "Forget that". Changing one person's mindset and stance from Reductionist to Holistic methods is a multi-month to multi-year effort; I have tried that and have rarely succeeded. Now imagine a company's worth of engineers that need to do that switch. It might be much better, cheaper, and faster to start a company from scratch and hire a more receptive crowd of engineers. And seed them with Googlers that already drank the Holistic Kool-Aid. The hardware solutions BD created is know-how and intellectual property that Google currently owns since they own BD. When they sell off BD they could exclude the key patents or sell them as non-exclusive licenses. Which means Google could start a competing robotics company, use the BD patents and hardware know-how, and add a Deep Learning based software stack to run that hardware much faster than they could turn BD around.
- tegeek 9y agoI doubt that the billion's dollars business decisions are taken because of the programming models of the products.
- huffmsa 9y agoAbout damn time the Japanese start getting their mecha-industry into high gear.
- mkay581 9y agoGod it really annoys me when journalist don't use commas in their headlines... Maybe the robots should start making the headlines.
- rimjeilly 9y agoid love to see SoftBank dump some $ into Sprints awful network - maybe the robots will run around with range extenders
- sideband 9y agoI could never understand what Google wanted with Boston Dynamics. It seemed like a huge risk to their brand: Google, 2001: "Don't be evil." Google, 2013: "We make military robots."
- ttam 9y agoWell, I could never understand why they're selling BD. Such cool research. And now they're Alphabet, so the brand thing should've been ok.
- forgottenacc57 9y agoGoogle never actually declared "don't be evil" as its slogan.
- sah2ed 9y agoThey did -- the founders included that phrase in their founder's letter [1] the year they went public in 2004. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504142742/ds1a.htm#toc59330_1 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504...
- Jach 9y agoThe original slogan always had a convenient loophole. It's about not being evil, but not necessarily not doing evil. If you accept that something can do evil without being evil, it all works out to justify most anything.
- ansible 9y agoAfter seeing the demo video for Ghost Robotics [1], I'd have acquired those guys instead. What BD has done is indeed impressive. But the motors used by GR are simultaneously cheaper and (to my eye) more responsive. And it looks like they've work out a lot of the kinematics. They just need to commercialize the technology to make some big bucks. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YrWX9ez3jM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YrWX9ez3jM
- Symmetry 9y agoThat's a very nice mechanical design on the legs with a lot of implicit intelligence. But it doesn't look like the robot has much in the way of software smarts onboard and from the sensor package I'd guess that it has a range of stereotyped behaviors being invoked by a human with a controller operating it. And a big part of the reason the Ghost Minotaur looks more responsive is that it's smaller and so moves with smaller time constants and because it's executing movements programatically rather than through a feedback loop.
- ansible 9y agoIt is not super clear exactly how far they've taken the kinematics. But the physical system is simple enough that it should be possible to develop a very sophisticated and responsive system. For each leg, you've got two motors per leg, and each motor just has two variables: angle and torque. Then you just have a 6-axis IMU for the chassis itself. All that tells you everything you need to know about the body and leg position, and the terrain you're standing on. I'd say that's way easier than a typical legged robot. Consequently, it should be easier and cheaper to implement a given level of capability.
- unpythonic 9y agoFor those of you living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and especially for those living in San Jose, you can interact with Pepper at Valley Fair Mall -- Pepper being the AI-infused robot which was one of Softbank's previous acquisitions. https://www.westfield.com/valleyfair/services/all-services/pepper/1233 https://www.westfield.com/valleyfair/services/all-services/p... Generally only small children play with it, and it has the affect of a children's companion.