/ News

28.01.2014

Meet Google's Robot Army. It's Growing

Google can't stop buying robotics companies. In the past two months, eight of the 12 companies the search giant has acquired have "robotics" in their name or descriptions. Here's your complete breakdown of the robot army presently at Google's command.

As stated in the midst of its buying spree, the company's largely letting its new robotics divisions continue to work on their preexisting projects, and why wouldn't they? The newly acquired companies are doing a damn good job. They're even winning competitions.

Robot technology would help with self-driving cars, certainly, but the range of these acquisitions hints at even broader ambitions. Again, we don't know much. They're all a part of the Google X division, which is top secret by definition. We do know what the new companies in the Google family are up to, though, and that might offer us some clues.

Schaft Inc.

These guys are rockstars. The Japanese team that got its start at Tokyo University just took the top prize at DARPA's Robotics Challenge Trial thanks to the cunning and agility of its 5-foot, 5-inch, 209-pound bipedal robot. After being purchased by Google in early December 2013, Schaft's blue machine proved to be the best at walking on uneven terrain, climbing ladders, clearing debris, and connecting hoses, ultimately scoring an impressive 27 out of 32 possible points.

The company was originally founded to build disaster response robots after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 but has since broadened its scope, thanks in part to funding from the U.S. government. Who knows how far they'll go floating on Google's coffers?

Industrial Perception, Inc

Industrial Perceptions, Inc., is an imaging company that spun off of the Menlo Park robotics company Willow Garage. Before being acquired by Google in December—the day after the Schaft acquisition, in fact—IPI was focusing on building advanced technology for 3D vision-guided robots to be used in manufacturing and logistics. This includes the ability to see and sort different objects, say, in a factory. You could imagine a company like Amazon being very interested in this kind of technology, but it's so far unclear exactly what Google wants to do with it.

Redwood Robotics

Redwood Robotics started as a joint venture between Meka Robotics, SRI International, and Willow Garage, IPI's parent. And like IPI, it's always had a very focused mission. Redwood wants to build the "next generation arm" for robots. Meka Robotics founder Aaron Edsingeronce said that he wants to do for robotic arms what the Apple II did for computers. Specifically, Redwood wants to build robotic arms that can work alongside people even in the comfort of their own home. That also means being the common arm manufacturer of service robots, so in the future, everybody's personal robot could have Redwood arms. Well, make that Google arms.

Meka Robotics


Like its cousin, Redwood Robotics, Meka is dedicated to building robots that can live and work with human beings. The company describes its flagship model, the M1 Mobile Manipulator, as having "human-safe, human-soft, and human scale robot technologies that will enable the robots of tomorrow to work alongside people in the home and the workplace." The human-like faces on the robot can even emote, a feature that's as creepy as you let it be.

Holomini

Even before joining Google, Holomini was a pretty secretive outfit. All we really know from its now shuttered website is the company describes itself as "Creators of high-tech wheels for omnidirectional motion." The image above is just a stock photo guesstimate of what a "high-tech wheel for omnidirectional motion" might look like.

Bot & Dolly


If Redwood and IPI are the engineers in the family, Bot & Dolly are the artists. The companydescribes itself as "a design and engineering studio that specializes in automation, robotics, and filmmaking" with a mission "to advance motion control and automation as a creative medium." In reality, this means that Bot and & Dolly use robots to help film commercials and movies like Gravity. This doesn't mean that Google wants to get into the movie business, but hey, if a robot's good enough to make a movie, what else can it do?

Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics is the real celebrity of the bunch. After acquiring six robotics companies in six days, Google took a couple of days off before announcing this major acquisition. The company is known for building all kinds of futuristic bots from the bipedal, humanoid robot Atlas (above) to the impossibly fast, four-legged Cheetah. Actually, Boston Dynamics brings a whole robot army to Google, one that the military is very eager to recruit.

DeepMind Technologies

Google's latest purchase is less interested in building an actual robot than in designing an intelligent robot brain. The self-described "cutting edge artificial intelligence company" that uses "the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms: comes with a team of 75 researchers and software engineers whose talents could be put to use on anything from the hypothetical Googlebot to the company's flagship search engine and anything in between. Because after all, robots are just another step in Google becoming the company that is everywhere, and does everything.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/a-humans-guide-to-googles-many-robots-1509799897




/ About us

Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.

The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies. 

The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.

A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.

The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.

An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.

 

Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society

2015-2020

The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.

2020-2025

Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning  bodily life. Such technologies will  greatly enlarge  the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make  all  kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.

2030-2035

Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness  with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness  onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of  cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence,  expand human capabilities  and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times.  The final result  at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.

2045

This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive!  Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.

Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots  will become affordable  and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however:  humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover,  prerequisites for a large-scale  expansion into outer space will be created as well.

 

Key elements of the project in the future

• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of  the project of "Immortality”.

Login as user:

If you are registered on one of these websites, you can get a quick registration. To do this, please select the wesite and follow the instructions.

Login to 2045.com

Email:
You do not have login to 2045.com? Register!
Dear colleagues, partners, friends! If you support ​the 2045 strategic social initiative goals and values, please register on our website.

Quick registration:

If you are registered on one of these websites, you can get a quick registration. To do this, please select the wesite and follow the instructions.

Registration

Name:
Surname:
Field of activity:
Email:
Password:
Enter the code shown:

Show another picture

Восстановить пароль

Email:

Text:
Contact Email:
Attachment ( not greater than 5 Mb. ):
 
Close
avatar project milestones