Engineering news
The Japanese robotics company, best known for humanoid robot Pepper, purchased US-based Boston Dynamics from Alphabet Inc, the parent company of search giant Google. The American company is known for making legged-robots, often inspired by nature. Their products include the four-legged Cheetah robot, which can run at speeds of up to 30mph, and the humanoid ‘Atlas’.
The deal, the value of which has not been disclosed, also included Schaft, another company which makes legged robots.
Ioannis Havoutis, who works on walking robots at Oxford University’s Robotics Institute, hopes the acquisition could accelerate their commercialisation. “I's not that surprising that SoftBank had bought Boston Dynamics over,” he told Professional Engineering. “I would expect that SoftBank would push towards commercialisation of the platforms, so more commercial uses in a more everyday setting.”
There have been rumours of a sale for a few years, as Boston Dynamics had struggled to find commercial interest for their products, which have so far been geared towards military applications, or search and rescue – robots which can go to places where humans or traditional vehicles cannot.
However, SoftBank’s expertise is in more social robots. Pepper, their flagship robot, is designed to be used as a tour guide, and can interact with humans through voice, vision and touch. "Today, there are many issues we still cannot solve by ourselves with human capabilities,” said SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son in a statement. “Smart robotics are going to be a key driver of the next stage of the Information Revolution, and Marc [Raibert, Boston Dynamics founder] and his team at Boston Dynamics are the clear technology leaders in advanced dynamic robots.”
The expertise on walking motion provided by Boston Dynamics and Schaft could be the final piece of the puzzle that allows robots to become in-home helpers.“I think that the biggest use case would be the everyday household setting,” says Havoutis. “For example the UK - 90 per cent of the households have stairs and without sort of a specialised lift, or specialised equipment it will be hard to get every day general service robots to be useful in a typical UK household.”