Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-06/alphabet-executives-canceled-launch-of-a-google-robotic-arm
53 comments
Big issue is that Google's market cap is huge, the amount of money they make is massive as well. For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to make lots of $$$. Hence why lots of projects get killed. Making 300 million a year isn't enough money to move the needle at google.
I fully believe that's why alphabet was created. Allow the `bets` to not use the google branding and name, and stealthy create new companies that produce millions of revenue, but just not billions.
I fully believe that's why alphabet was created. Allow the `bets` to not use the google branding and name, and stealthy create new companies that produce millions of revenue, but just not billions.
> For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to make lots of $$$.
Then why not just sell the tech and team to someone else, or market the device under a different brand name?
Then why not just sell the tech and team to someone else, or market the device under a different brand name?
Right, let's dedicate a new department to that. And, just in case other departments start expecting similar leeway, let's make this department clearly separate from the others.
IMO, Google suffers from the curse of Oil in corporate terms. As long as they milk their core product they can do just about anything and look competent. Which allows a horribly dysfunctional leadership to thrive.
Google seems to be doing ok to me. I like your point that success can hide problems though; Ed Catmull presents it very well here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc
It looks like people were suggesting that Google takes this advice more to heart six years ago already: https://hbr.org/2010/08/what-google-could-learn-from-p
It looks like people were suggesting that Google takes this advice more to heart six years ago already: https://hbr.org/2010/08/what-google-could-learn-from-p
>As long as they milk their core product they can do just about anything and look competent. Which allows a horribly dysfunctional leadership to thrive.
Until one day, reality reasserts itself and things start melting down. It occurred at IBM, its occurring at Microsoft, and it will occur at Google, Amazon, and the rest of the tech giants.
Until one day, reality reasserts itself and things start melting down. It occurred at IBM, its occurring at Microsoft, and it will occur at Google, Amazon, and the rest of the tech giants.
[deleted]
I've been reading up a lot on early Atari and history shows a remarkably similar phenomenon with the success of the Atari 2600/VCS. It didn't matter what management did, they'd make money, until the management finally became so terrible, and the debt of poor decisions finally did the company in.
This is an excellent analogy BTW!
I was sort of hoping the 'toothbrush test' would involve the robot being able to clean your teeth...
Years ago my father worked in robotics. The product was a very simple robot that took a piece out of a die-casting machine and placed it on a conveyor belt. There was nothing to program of any complexity, this arm had a fixed trapezium with different length sides that performed all the required motion, some sines/cosines/tangents involved to get the fixed path right. Most of the bits for the robot came from the R+S components catalogue, so usual industrial control gear, all 'tried and tested' with warranty, not 'home made'.
However, did it go well? The robot only had to do one job right but it rarely did. It probably only ever was one robot, customers were not exactly two-a-penny for this machine, even though it was in theory a very good machine. It would require on-site attention every week and some weekends. There was no fundamental design flaw, the heat had been considered, but it was a constant war of attrition on the reliability front. I would have to ask how that ended, all I know is that it was doomed, just not an economically viable adventure. Yet this was the simplest of robots for the simplest of tasks, solving a known problem that seemed to make sense to solve.
The main business survived the venture into robotics (sold to the same customers) but a loss had to be accounted for, people were laid of and the industrial unit vacated. A lot of hard work was put into it and the whole company was behind it. But it failed, reliability and support just could not be done economically.
So what are robot arms to be for outside of manufacturing, where Google wants to be with their customers?
If Google did get into the sales of these robot arms and 'learn along the way' there really is a risk that support for customers, 'beta customers', might be as all-consuming as it was for my father with his very simple robot. Then there are no resources to actually develop or iterate the product. You need to have the original creators debugging and fixing the robots in the field and there is a high likelihood that this work would take 10x the amount of available resources making actual development nigh on impossible. Much better to take the long route and get the product right before bringing it to market and avoid the trap.
Building robots is okay if that is your core business or if you have some massive factory that needs them. Here the cost benefit analysis can be done, things tested and deployed complete with a team of engineers to keep everything running. If selling adverts is your main business then maybe not.
Years ago my father worked in robotics. The product was a very simple robot that took a piece out of a die-casting machine and placed it on a conveyor belt. There was nothing to program of any complexity, this arm had a fixed trapezium with different length sides that performed all the required motion, some sines/cosines/tangents involved to get the fixed path right. Most of the bits for the robot came from the R+S components catalogue, so usual industrial control gear, all 'tried and tested' with warranty, not 'home made'.
However, did it go well? The robot only had to do one job right but it rarely did. It probably only ever was one robot, customers were not exactly two-a-penny for this machine, even though it was in theory a very good machine. It would require on-site attention every week and some weekends. There was no fundamental design flaw, the heat had been considered, but it was a constant war of attrition on the reliability front. I would have to ask how that ended, all I know is that it was doomed, just not an economically viable adventure. Yet this was the simplest of robots for the simplest of tasks, solving a known problem that seemed to make sense to solve.
The main business survived the venture into robotics (sold to the same customers) but a loss had to be accounted for, people were laid of and the industrial unit vacated. A lot of hard work was put into it and the whole company was behind it. But it failed, reliability and support just could not be done economically.
So what are robot arms to be for outside of manufacturing, where Google wants to be with their customers?
If Google did get into the sales of these robot arms and 'learn along the way' there really is a risk that support for customers, 'beta customers', might be as all-consuming as it was for my father with his very simple robot. Then there are no resources to actually develop or iterate the product. You need to have the original creators debugging and fixing the robots in the field and there is a high likelihood that this work would take 10x the amount of available resources making actual development nigh on impossible. Much better to take the long route and get the product right before bringing it to market and avoid the trap.
Building robots is okay if that is your core business or if you have some massive factory that needs them. Here the cost benefit analysis can be done, things tested and deployed complete with a team of engineers to keep everything running. If selling adverts is your main business then maybe not.
Pity. Sounds like they had a real product with a real, demonstrated business model (akin to Universal Robotics). Google needs to embrace a bit more of the "just fscking ship" attitude for its moonshots.
(The brand protectionism is really starting to hurt their ability to be scrappy.)
(The brand protectionism is really starting to hurt their ability to be scrappy.)
This "we must protect our brand" is really weird. If you look at the sentiment here on HN, it's pretty much "Oh great, Google is in the news again. I wonder which product they're sunsetting today". Maybe Google only invoke this for their HW products and not their SW.
They've now optimized the process to the extent now that they can cancel them before they launch. Seems like an advance over things thus far. :)
They seemed to throw a lot of stuff up like buzz, reader etc. and then stop supporting it.
This is exactly my fear with Project Fi. It's very intriguing to me and I'm considering switching over to it, but what happens if Google suddenly decides it's not "core enough" and decides to shuttle it?
It takes less than a day to port your number over.
As a Project Fi customer I can tell you that 1) customer support is awesome 2) It feels like a VC-backed startup, they give you generous discounts for small issues 3) There are a few small issues, for example some fuck-up with wifi calling 4) It's terrible if you travel a lot 5) Its great if you travel a lot to places with networks that are Fi-partners.
What I really love is that they do true cash-back for unused data, not rollovers, etc.
What I really love is that they do true cash-back for unused data, not rollovers, etc.
If that happens, you can just move your number to a different telecom. Others will welcome you.
I'm a recent Fi convert, so take this with a grain of salt.
- Customer service is exactly what it should be, accessible, excellent, quick, friendly and timely. It feels a bit like stepping back in time 40 years.
- The service works very well considering it's combining the coverage of 4 different networks (3 mobile + wifi)
- call quality on the mobile providers is about what you'd expect from them, not as good as AT&T or Verizon
- call quality on wifi is great
- the additional built in services and integration into the phone are really well done: simple website to service the account, reasonable pricing, automatic voice transcription of messages
I'm pretty impressed with how consumer friendly it is.
- Customer service is exactly what it should be, accessible, excellent, quick, friendly and timely. It feels a bit like stepping back in time 40 years.
- The service works very well considering it's combining the coverage of 4 different networks (3 mobile + wifi)
- call quality on the mobile providers is about what you'd expect from them, not as good as AT&T or Verizon
- call quality on wifi is great
- the additional built in services and integration into the phone are really well done: simple website to service the account, reasonable pricing, automatic voice transcription of messages
I'm pretty impressed with how consumer friendly it is.
I've been a Project Fi customer for almost a year and love it. I am slightly worried about them shuttering it at some point, but switching to another carrier is really easy and I use Google Voice anyways, so the downside of potentially having to do that isn't too bad compared to the huge upside of awesome customer service and super cheap pricing (for me). It brought my monthly bill from $80 to $30 as I mostly use WiFi.
Pure speculation here. I can't imagine that the "toothbrush test" is accurate here. There is a large market for robotic arms. And if Google's robot creates any advantage over existing robots in manufacturing, Google could go up or down stream in the verticle.
My guess is that it hasn't been tested enough and/or hasn't cleared the top level of safety in the market. One incorrect swing of a robotic arm could severely injure someone and that is a huge liability for Google's name.
My guess is that it hasn't been tested enough and/or hasn't cleared the top level of safety in the market. One incorrect swing of a robotic arm could severely injure someone and that is a huge liability for Google's name.
"There is a large market for robotic arms."
There is a small market for robotic arms. Total sales in 2014 were 229,000 units worldwide. Worse, from a Google perspective, robot arms require a substantial support infrastructure, with on-site installation, maintenance, and support. Google is terrible at support, let alone the kind of support where the customer wants a service tech on site right now because their production line is down. That's the norm in the industrial robot business.
Rod Brooks' "Baxter" robot was supposed to change this. Introduced in 2012 with a lower price than competitors, enough AI to make it easier to "teach", and better safety around humans, it was going to be the industrial robot that sold like a mass market product.
In 2015, only 400 "Baxter" units were sold.[1] The company's new "Sawyer" robot is said to be selling better, but hard sales numbers don't seem to be available. This just isn't a big industry. The first industrial robot, the Unimate, was sold in 1961, and there have been wildly optimistic projections for over half a century now. But the actual numbers aren't impressive.
Google acquired all those robotics companies and accomplished nothing with them. Even the ones that were shipping a product, such as Bot and Dolly, stopped shipping.
[1] https://robotenomics.com/2016/01/11/the-facts-about-co-bot-r...
There is a small market for robotic arms. Total sales in 2014 were 229,000 units worldwide. Worse, from a Google perspective, robot arms require a substantial support infrastructure, with on-site installation, maintenance, and support. Google is terrible at support, let alone the kind of support where the customer wants a service tech on site right now because their production line is down. That's the norm in the industrial robot business.
Rod Brooks' "Baxter" robot was supposed to change this. Introduced in 2012 with a lower price than competitors, enough AI to make it easier to "teach", and better safety around humans, it was going to be the industrial robot that sold like a mass market product.
In 2015, only 400 "Baxter" units were sold.[1] The company's new "Sawyer" robot is said to be selling better, but hard sales numbers don't seem to be available. This just isn't a big industry. The first industrial robot, the Unimate, was sold in 1961, and there have been wildly optimistic projections for over half a century now. But the actual numbers aren't impressive.
Google acquired all those robotics companies and accomplished nothing with them. Even the ones that were shipping a product, such as Bot and Dolly, stopped shipping.
[1] https://robotenomics.com/2016/01/11/the-facts-about-co-bot-r...
I own a Panasonic Robot welding cell, and I keep up with numbers of robots sold like that - I know your numbers are correct. My experience with programming the Panasonic is that there is quite a learning curve to get over, to do the most basic things with it. I think the small numbers of robot adoption could be a reflection on this difficulty, combined with high cost. My cell was $85,000. The robot was a great value at that price though, it generates about $2000 an hour worth of product. Paid for in 40 hours of welding, good for 10,000 more hours before its worn out.
The Baxter should prove me wrong, but I think it is just an underperforming platform. The current owners of robot tech would view it as under capable compared to arms from Kuka or Motoman or Panasonic etc. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIIJME8-au8
I think the non-robot users, those companies getting a first robot, would find Baxter easy to use but would be less inclined to go buy one; getting a robot is a big step.
I have to think that ROS getting better and better, with offline programming, will help adoption. We are at the UNIX terminal phase of computing, or at best we are at a Windows 3.1 level. Nobody has made the iphone of robots yet, one that is very capable yet easy to program. Once we can get to a few swipes to get result, robot placement will increase rapidly. I love how repeatable the result is, and how fast it produces parts. It is about 3x more productive than my most productive welder, with equal or better accuracy (we still hand weld a lot of things)
Baxter was supposed to be the super easy to program robot, but he never seemed very precise in the videos, nor very fast (by design, but still - we buy these things to make money).
The Baxter should prove me wrong, but I think it is just an underperforming platform. The current owners of robot tech would view it as under capable compared to arms from Kuka or Motoman or Panasonic etc. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIIJME8-au8
I think the non-robot users, those companies getting a first robot, would find Baxter easy to use but would be less inclined to go buy one; getting a robot is a big step.
I have to think that ROS getting better and better, with offline programming, will help adoption. We are at the UNIX terminal phase of computing, or at best we are at a Windows 3.1 level. Nobody has made the iphone of robots yet, one that is very capable yet easy to program. Once we can get to a few swipes to get result, robot placement will increase rapidly. I love how repeatable the result is, and how fast it produces parts. It is about 3x more productive than my most productive welder, with equal or better accuracy (we still hand weld a lot of things)
Baxter was supposed to be the super easy to program robot, but he never seemed very precise in the videos, nor very fast (by design, but still - we buy these things to make money).
Kuka, the world's largest robot arm manufacturer, got acquired for $5B [1]. I'm not sure how that's a "small market." If Google believed in robotics (beyond autonomous cars), which seems to be the case given the acquisitions, then they need to start somewhere.
Universal Robotics was demonstrably worth $300M with (what sounds like) a more-or-less similar product. That seems like a good place to start -- and all big unicorn products start somewhere; very few jump straight from $0 to $Billions.
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-midea-group-announces-bid...
Universal Robotics was demonstrably worth $300M with (what sounds like) a more-or-less similar product. That seems like a good place to start -- and all big unicorn products start somewhere; very few jump straight from $0 to $Billions.
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-midea-group-announces-bid...
One of the biggest robot companies in the world, and its only worth $5 billion? Yes, it is a small market if that statement is true. Which is a shame. Kuka robots are amazing, and capable of welding together cars to being rides at Legoland. And yet, one of the premier robotics companies in the world is worth less than 10% of Uber.
Robots are still hard to use, hopefully soon this will change. Then the market will get big. The robot arms are already precise enough, they need volume manufacturing to get cheaper.
Robots are still hard to use, hopefully soon this will change. Then the market will get big. The robot arms are already precise enough, they need volume manufacturing to get cheaper.
Google's market cap $500+B so if they hit a home run their market cap will only go up 1-2%.
Until Google created AdWords, you could say the same about online search and sem ads too. All frontier markets start small and become big over time.
When we get the iPhone of robots, we're going to see a huge societal change.
I've been waiting for the IBM PC or Apple II of robots for far too long, and it's still not here. It's frustrating. Robots just are not very general purpose yet.
What went wrong with Baxter? I remember it being so revolutionary when it came out.
I have a Baxter Research Robot. The theory was that you would make up for the imprecise gear train (backlash at the gripper of 10-20 mm) with visual servoing. But this turns out to be hard. A big limitation is that the gripper-mounted cameras are 30 FPS (less if you try to use both) and add a full frame of delay, so the visual servo loop has to be really slow (like, 1/2 second to zero in on an object). That means it's far less productive at simple operations like loading parts into boxes than humans.
Also, its industrial design is really bad. I hate its hulking arms and smiling animated face. It's surprising that you can ruin an industrial product with ugly visual design, but there you are. For another example, see the Boeing X-32. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-32#/media/File:USAF_X...
Also, its industrial design is really bad. I hate its hulking arms and smiling animated face. It's surprising that you can ruin an industrial product with ugly visual design, but there you are. For another example, see the Boeing X-32. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-32#/media/File:USAF_X...
Rant: Sheesh, now even Wikipedia is using full-page JS popups that fail to load and make the page unusable. Seriously webdevs of the world, do we actually test our own work on phones?
At least I was able to see the image first. I was wondering how much of the X-32's shape was constrained by functional requirements, and the same for the Baxter. Can a safer arm be made without looking as you describe?
At least I was able to see the image first. I was wondering how much of the X-32's shape was constrained by functional requirements, and the same for the Baxter. Can a safer arm be made without looking as you describe?
The X-32 and X-35 were two candidate designs for the Joint Strike Fighter. The X-35 was chosen. They had the same functional requirements, but the X-35 looked less silly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-35
You could easily avoid having a decorative face. The general arm configuration might look OK with some other ID.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-35
You could easily avoid having a decorative face. The general arm configuration might look OK with some other ID.
Baxter is supposed to be safe around humans, but to achieve this, they had to make it weak and slow. So it underperforms competing industrial robots. Compare: Baxter and Sawyer: [1] Festo: [2].
It's also not precise enough for precision assembly. Baxter videos show it stacking medium sized parts, not assembling cell phones.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPth0Q4apLU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH_t_1-tl40
It's also not precise enough for precision assembly. Baxter videos show it stacking medium sized parts, not assembling cell phones.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPth0Q4apLU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH_t_1-tl40
In between you have stuff like Universal Robots' stuff which is human safe and relatively fast. For a startup knowing that the arm you're using isn't going to kill anyone[1] is huge in terms of being able to develop stuff quickly.
https://www.universal-robots.com/
[1] Or kill yourself with it, I've managed to hit myself in the head but didn't even get a bruise.
https://www.universal-robots.com/
[1] Or kill yourself with it, I've managed to hit myself in the head but didn't even get a bruise.
From the article, the second half of the toothbrush test is 'used daily by billions of people'. Can you show the robotic arm market that large?
With self driving cars, I believe Google is showing willingness to develop things that could severely injure someone.
disclosure: I work for Google. I have not been involved in toothbrush test discussions and do not work on robotics nor cars.
With self driving cars, I believe Google is showing willingness to develop things that could severely injure someone.
disclosure: I work for Google. I have not been involved in toothbrush test discussions and do not work on robotics nor cars.
Sure. In the future (~20 years) I expect that a robot around the price of a luxury car will be able to perform tasks such as laundry, cooking, and cleaning (not just vacuuming but nearly all types of cleaning). These robots will be used in workplaces and homes, and the eventual market size is definitely in the billions. These robots will need arms, of course. These arms will be sold by a company that releases a small-volume product early and iterates, not by a company that waits until they have a billion-person product before releasing anything.
To be fair - this 20-year-prediction-to-home-robots has been happening since the Jetsons aired in the 1960's.
If anything, the Roomba proved that there is small niche-market demand for robotic automation in the home, and economies of scale for goods follows the demand. Consumers simply aren't going to spend the equivalent of buying a new car for something that can be done by a minimum-wage maid service.
If anything, the Roomba proved that there is small niche-market demand for robotic automation in the home, and economies of scale for goods follows the demand. Consumers simply aren't going to spend the equivalent of buying a new car for something that can be done by a minimum-wage maid service.
"Consumers simply aren't going to spend the equivalent of buying a new car for something that can be done by a minimum-wage maid service"
a leased new car costs the consumer a few hundred dollars a month, which is the equivalent of say 30 or 40 hours of minimum wage labor. a robot that cleans floors, prepares food, washes clothes, folds laundry, cleans windows, serves meals, puts dishes away, feeds the dog, waters plants etc. could work 24/7 (with swappable batteries). i'm not convinced that consumers wouldn't pay that if the technology could get there.
of course we are far from a robot that can do all of that, but in my opinion, the prize to the company that can deliver this is massive.
a leased new car costs the consumer a few hundred dollars a month, which is the equivalent of say 30 or 40 hours of minimum wage labor. a robot that cleans floors, prepares food, washes clothes, folds laundry, cleans windows, serves meals, puts dishes away, feeds the dog, waters plants etc. could work 24/7 (with swappable batteries). i'm not convinced that consumers wouldn't pay that if the technology could get there.
of course we are far from a robot that can do all of that, but in my opinion, the prize to the company that can deliver this is massive.
Consumers don't lease appliances, and they're certainly not going to pay $500/mo + maintenance for something that they and/or a maid can do.
It's an inferior service, the same reason the Roomba didn't put Dyson or Hoover out of business.
It's an inferior service, the same reason the Roomba didn't put Dyson or Hoover out of business.
They're better off trying to sell a "real" phone and "table-bot" as their first venture into hardware.
Also, how big would the market be if you could just say pick up that widget and put it over there on that belt. And, it said no problem boss.
And by the way it worked with any slim margin robot arm.
Also, how big would the market be if you could just say pick up that widget and put it over there on that belt. And, it said no problem boss.
And by the way it worked with any slim margin robot arm.
Robots will be stocking shelves before they're in homes. And they'll be picking off of warehouse shelves before they're stocking. They're already moving stuff around in warehouses, like what Kiva is doing.
Potentially, sure - as the article mentions at present, AI isn't able to be involved in moving the arm at all. How long until it isn't? What if you could have an arm and sensors installed in your kitchen that would cook dinner for you, or wash dishes? Sounds complicated...but more than a self driving car? There's a lot of people that would (and do) pay a lot of money to have someone else prepare and clean up their meals.
Moley is trying to make a robot chef and release it in 2018 [0]. Personally, I think it will bomb because the AI isn't there yet. When a grip on a tool or bowl fails the whole thing fails. Robotic arms aren't "set and forget" when dealing with even the simplest failure modes. That said -- successful robots like this are why the potential market for robot arms is huge. The current market for robot arms is very small. The gap between the two is an AI problem.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDprrrEdomM
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDprrrEdomM
Yeah but what if there's one machine that makes billions of toothbrushes. Does google decide to not make that machine?
[deleted]
The comparison in the article was to Universal Robotics, whose arms are low-payload and compliant (ie. not big 'ole position controlled arms of yesteryear).
Toothbrush test generally refers to daily use. But I'm not sure I understand that context outside of mass-market consumers. A well-designed arm for light-manufacturing has 90%+ uptime and is (in fact) used daily.
Toothbrush test generally refers to daily use. But I'm not sure I understand that context outside of mass-market consumers. A well-designed arm for light-manufacturing has 90%+ uptime and is (in fact) used daily.
Google does not do a great job at products which interact with the physical world.
When I first read "Robotic Arm" and "Toothbrush Test", I imagined something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki7lqI6XE2s
Surely they'll have no problem with open sourcing it then, right?
If every Household had such a collaborative Arm on roof-rails they could toothbrush the world.. but no, google is gone.
Replaced by another cautious giant, forced to buy inventors from outside, instead of growing them within. Really sad. Everyone sets there ten-year-till-they-are-gone clock, on this re-mark.
Replaced by another cautious giant, forced to buy inventors from outside, instead of growing them within. Really sad. Everyone sets there ten-year-till-they-are-gone clock, on this re-mark.
Either Google didn't have it working well enough to sell widely (without embarrassment) or else they're pants-on-head crazy.