Robohub.org
Talking Machines: Bias variance dilemma for humans and the arm farm, with Jeff Dean
Talking Machines
03 Jul 2017
In episode four of season three Neil introduces us to the ideas behind the bias variance dilemma (and how how we can think about it in our daily lives). Plus, we answer a listener question about how t...
Making Pepper walk: Understanding Softbank’s purchase of Boston Dynamics
Oliver Mitchell
12 Jun 2017
It is unclear if Masayoshi Son, Chairman of Softbank, was one of the 17 million YouTube viewers of Boston Dynamic’s Big Dog before acquiring the company for an undisclosed amount this past Thursday...
Finally! Google sells Boston Dynamics to SoftBank
Frank Tobe
09 Jun 2017
In a long-awaited transaction, The New York Times Dealbook announced that SoftBank was buying Boston Dynamics from Alphabet (Google). Also included in the deal is the Japanese startup Schaft. Acquisit...
California publishes robocar intervention reports: Google/Waymo vastly outpaces competition
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
08 Feb 2017
California published its summary of all the reports submitted by vendors testing robocars in the state. You can read the individual reports. They are interesting, but several other outlines have creat...
Google car is now Waymo
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
14 Dec 2016
Google’s car project (known as “Chauffeur”) kickstarted the entire robocar revolution, and Google has put in more work, for longer, than anybody. The car was also the first project of what becam...
Google puts Boston Dynamics up for sale
Frank Tobe
22 Mar 2016
The maker of advanced humanoid and 4-legged robots (BigDog and Atlas), Boston Dynamics, is up for sale. According to the Financial Times, "this is one of those discordant moments that makes you questi...
Toyota Research gets Kuffner, and Google gets Brondmo
Frank Tobe
18 Jan 2016
At a press conference last week at CES, Toyota, led by Gill Pratt of DARPA fame and now CEO of Toyota Research Institute (TRI), informed the world what Toyota intended to do with it's billion dollar...
Tricking LIDAR and robocars
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
14 Sep 2015
Security researcher Jonathan Petit claims to be able to hack the multi-thousand-dollar laser ranging - LIDAR - systems that self-driving cars rely on. How does he do it and is it as dangerous as it so...
Robotics and AI prominent in MIT’s annual 35 Innovators Under 35
Adriana Hamacher
02 Sep 2015
The MIT Technology Review’s annual list of 35 Innovators Under 35 aims to illustrate the most important emerging technologies of the moment. Released this August, the 2015 list features a number of...
Robocar news roundup: Google doesn’t hit Delphi but does go to Austin; Vislab sold for $30M
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
13 Jul 2015
The press were all a-twitter about a report from Reuters that there had been a near miss between Delphi’s test car and one of Google’s, though it was quickly denied that anything happened....
Robocar roundup: Google accidents, Baidu cars, startups and more
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
11 Jun 2015
Here’s a roundup of news stories in the field of robocars....
Google to release monthly driving reports
Adriana Hamacher
09 Jun 2015
Google has started publicly disclosing details of accidents involving its self-driving cars....
Automated vehicle crashes
Bryant Walker Smith
29 May 2015
Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported on several past crashes involving automated vehicles. (Per SAE Standard J3016, I use the term "automated vehicle" instead of "autonomous veh...
Why Google’s robot personality patent isn’t what it appears to be
Mark Stephen Meadows
16 Apr 2015
[tweetquote]Google’s new patent: Less about creating robot personalities than collecting yours.[/tweetquote]...
Delphi’s cross-country trip, and a raft of other robocar news
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
31 Mar 2015
There has been a ton of robocar news in the last four weeks. Below is just a small subset of the now constant stream of news items and articles that appear about robocars....
Google scraps initial ‘Project Wing’ plans for new secret design
Ben Fisher
25 Mar 2015
The head of Google's moonshot lab Google X has recently announced they have scrapped the initial 'Project Wing' design that they have been testing in Australia. According to X lab Director Astro Te...
Intuitive Surgical da Vinci Surgical System gets big endorsement and new competition
Frank Tobe
23 Mar 2015
UPDATED 3/29/15 For over two years, Intuitive Surgical has been sued, tried, analyzed and criticized about the efficacy of their da Vinci surgical robots. But they have continued to thrive, grow and ...
Why are JIBO, Pepper, Siri, Google Now and Cortana so important?
Frank Tobe
16 Mar 2015
There's a race going on to see which AI solution providing personal assistance is welcomed by businesses, end users and consumers, and whether this will be physical or virtual....
Introducing Spot, a new smaller 4-legged robot from Boston Dynamics
Ioannis K. Erripis
09 Feb 2015
[tweetquote]Boston Dynamics just released a video of a new four legged robot named “Spot”.[/tweetquote] It is an evolution along the lines of their previous four-legged robots like BigDog and Wild...
Uber Chases Google in self-driving cars with Carnegie Mellon deal | WSJ
Hallie Siegel
03 Feb 2015
What might have been a budding partnership suddenly appeared to boil over into a pitched rivalry on Monday. Besides Uber’s disclosure that it will work on its own self-driving car technology, a Bloo...
No, Google and Uber aren’t going to war over self-driving cars | The Verge
Hallie Siegel
03 Feb 2015
This week, Uber has announced a self-driving research initiative in partnership with Carnegie Mellon, while Google is rumored to be investigating ride-sharing using its own self-driving cars. At a gla...
Google is developing its own Uber competitor | Bloomberg Business
Hallie Siegel
03 Feb 2015
Google Ventures, the search giant's venture capital arm, invested $258 million in Uber in August 2013. It was Google Ventures' largest investment deal ever, and the company put more money into Uber...
Talking Machines: Common sense problems & learning about machine learning with Kevin Murphy
Talking Machines
29 Jan 2015
On episode three of Talking Machines we sit down with Kevin Murphy, who is currently a research scientist at Google. We talk with him about the work he’s doing there on the Knowledge Vault, his tex...
Google presents their actual autonomous car test prototype
Ioannis K. Erripis
22 Dec 2014
Google just unveiled their first ‘real-build’ self-driving prototype vehicle. This is a follow up to the concept presented in May and signifies the progress of this particular Google project....
Google commits $1.36 billion for NASA facility, to house their robotics, space and flight technologies
Frank Tobe
12 Nov 2014
Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures has committed to a 60-year $1.16 billion lease of the 1,000 acre Moffett Field Naval Air Station. The agreement includes an additional $200 million to refurbish th...
Google news: Rubin leaves; Pichai promoted to #2; and Google invests in Magic Leap
Frank Tobe
31 Oct 2014
Andy Rubin leaves Google; Sundar Pichai promoted to #2 man at Google; and Google invests in $542 million B funding for Magic Leap....
Google adds to DeepMind, acquiring 2 UK startups and partnering with Oxford U
Frank Tobe
27 Oct 2014
In January, 2014, Google acquired London-based DeepMind Technologies for $643 million. Now it is adding to that purchase with two more companies, ten new hires and a substantial contribution to Oxford...
Artificial General Intelligence that plays Atari video games: How did DeepMind do it?
Last December, an article named “Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning” was uploaded to arXiv by employees of a small AI company called DeepMind. Two months later [tweetquote]Google bough...
Google’s secret drone delivery program
Frank Tobe
29 Aug 2014
The Atlantic revealed the inside story of Google's two-year secret X-labs drone-delivery project in a detailed story by Alexis Madrigal. Project Wing, as the drone-delivery venture is called, has alre...
Google’s Secret Drone-Delivery Program “project wing” | the Atlantic
Ioannis K. Erripis
28 Aug 2014
After two years of development, the Silicon Valley company reveals to The Atlantic that it has substantial research effort into building flying robots than can deliver products across a city...
Inroads in perception
Frank Tobe
22 Aug 2014
Google's recent acquisition of Emu Messenger is just one of many items in recent news about improvements in perception and artificial intelligence (AI)....
Pure autonomy: Google’s new purpose-built self driving car
Ioannis K. Erripis
28 May 2014
Google completed a major step in its long and extensive self-driving cars project by presenting its first purpose-built autonomous car, which is designed from scratch for its role and is not a modifie...
Is surveillance the new business model for consumer robotics?
Mark Stephen Meadows
06 May 2014
A discussion with Ryan Calo on Google, your personal data, and the consumer robotics market
Can someone tell me: What's Google doing, making robots? Or at least: What is it doing, making such acqui...
Google & DARPA want divorce | The Verge
John Payne
22 Mar 2014
“Google’s new rock star robotics companies, Boston Dynamics and Schaft, still have obligations to DARPA — meaning Google and DARPA are entangled in a shotgun marriage, forced to shar...
DARPA’s Gill Pratt on Google’s robotics investments
Gill Pratt and Robohub Editors
19 Mar 2014
When Google bought Boston Dynamics last December, the news made headlines, but it was not the first time the Internet giant has invested in DARPA-funded robotics. As part of Robohub's Big Deals series...
Schunk to Google: Welcome to the robotics game
Henrik A. Schunk
12 Mar 2014
The continuing interest of Google in robotics over the last years and its newest activities in this regard confirms what all players active in robotics will confirm: service robotics is on the thresho...
