Google Buys Boston Dynamics And Other Robot Companies

[o00o]

 

 

 

these guys where doing all their stuff with limited budget now skynet will be real soon

 

 

Among the companies are Schaft, a small team of Japanese roboticists who recently left Tokyo University to develop a humanoid robot, and Industrial Perception, a start-up here that has developed computer vision systems and robot arms for loading and unloading trucks. Also acquired were Meka and Redwood Robotics, makers of humanoid robots and robot arms in San Francisco, and Bot & Dolly, a maker of robotic camera systems that were recently used to create special effects in the movie “Gravity.” A related firm, Autofuss, which focuses on advertising and design, and Holomni, a small design firm that makes high-tech wheels, were acquired as well.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/google-acquisition-seven-robotics-companies

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/technology/google-adds-to-its-menagerie-of-robots.html

[delet...]

Whilst it's good that these teams will be able to use each others technological innovations now. It could have a stifling effect on each groups creativity with meddling management wanting to pursue fewer lines of enquiry as they harmonize the group as an whole. We'll see. Hopefully with google at the helm they'll let their tech be used outside their innovation hub as industry standard rather than keeping it as proprietary secret or patent wacking everybody.

[o00o]

I can image Google Streetview cars looking rather different soon. Or this combined with their auto-driving-cars

[roasty]

[Guest]

or it's just for patents.

patents = tech gold

[Guest]

I'll be in the Himalayas

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You presume that they can't climb mountains. Perhaps investing in EMP devices would be a start.

[MisterE]

emp devices won't stop a high wattage microwave laser that atomizes you in a thousandth of a second from the sky where you can't even see the satellite that picked up your heat signature easily because you chose to hide in snow.

[ambermonk]

I'm not ready to don a tin foil hat yet, but if you're worried about a drone invasion, I recommend Daniel H. Wilson's How to Survive a Robot Uprising. A good read, which was published eight years ago as a comedy.

...or is it?

You presume that they can't climb mountains. Perhaps investing in EMP devices would be a start.

Nonlethal XREP-12 wireless taser ammunition already exists for 12-gauge shotguns, though whether it's proven to short out electronics I don't know. I suppose you could just simply splash a bucket of water though.

Now if hostile robots had Faraday cages for defence...well, you'd probably have to read the book I mentioned above.

[MisterE]

thing about those tinfoil hats, i bet the resonant frequency of aluminum or some other properties of those hats could be used to melt your brain from a distance, more easily that if you werent wearing it