This week in Skynet… I mean, Google news, the New York Times is reporting that Google has acquired Boston Dynamics, most famous for the development and testing of the Wildcat robot which mimics the running gait of a four legged animal. This follows the news from just over a week ago when we found out Andy Rubin, former champion of Android at Google, was now spearheading Google’s efforts in the robotics field. Today, Andy Rubin tweeted this to officially announce the news:
The future is looking awesome! http://t.co/iFA53b9qDC
— Andy Rubin (@Arubin) December 14, 2013
It was revealed that over the last 6 months or so, Google had in fact acquired multiple robotics companies to contribute to their project which is going to start off focussing on developing manufacturing robotics. How this latest acquisition fits into that picture remains to be seen, especially seeing as the Wildcat is a mounted gun away from becoming a killing machine, but we’ll just have to trust that Google isn’t going to go all SkyNet on us. I’m hope they’re building a fleet of cheetah-like robotic couriers to rival Amazon’s flying couriers, though that still scares me a little.
And just in case you don’t know what the Wildcat is, or does, check out this video:
Source: The New York Times, Twitter via engadget
