Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cops will be using these to crush protestors in 10 years.
Why would they do that when they can just use a horse or a wheeled/tracked vehicle?
Because it's utterly terrifying?
Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
41–50 of 83 posts
Re: Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
#42Re: Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
#43Its not really an issue for the US but in Europe the population is aging. That leaves Africa or robots. Companies like Boston Dynamics will be very profitable indeed in the next decades.
Europe had Kuka as robotics company but it got sold to the Chinese.
But they still do have ABB.
Re: Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
#44Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992. That was almost 30 years ago. Just me, or is it crazy they haven't had 1 year of profitability in nearly 3 decades of operations.
As someone who is in the field of mobile robotics, what Boston Dynamics does is often way ahead of its time. Robotics is hard and expensive. If you are developing a new form of locomotion it will take years and millions of dollars before things work out. Heck, I myself have seen my colleagues spend 10+ years just ironing out issues with underwater vehicles before they even see the market.
Underwater robotics PhD here. Completely seconded. Hardware is already complex. When the said hardware is mobile, complexity increases exponentially.
Re: Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
#45Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992. That was almost 30 years ago. Just me, or is it crazy they haven't had 1 year of profitability in nearly 3 decades of operations.
Looking at the company's history it seems that it was pretty much a military research outfit for a long time.
Re: Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. But the bewilderment isn’t a technical one, it’s a business one. You’d think 30 years of unprofitable future tech would happen at a university or the military or some skunkworks operation for a massive company. Though I’m sure quite a bit of their funding is military.
It was, before Google. It cost about US$120 million to get Big Dog working. At least those were the reported DARPA contract amounts.
Funny because yesterday there was a post on HN from a guy who made a DIY robot that looked very much like a small Big Dog.
Re: Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
#47Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992. That was almost 30 years ago. Just me, or is it crazy they haven't had 1 year of profitability in nearly 3 decades of operations.
There are several movies about robot uprisings etc and they often feature a mega corporation whose business is loosely speaking robotics.
I can picture that being Boston Dynamics when the robot uprising happens for real.
Those companies are always on top of the world in those movies, so maybe it will pan out after all.
Re: Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cops will be using these to crush protestors in 10 years.
Why would they do that when they can just use a horse or a wheeled/tracked vehicle?
Because you need a human to control it. A robot however could just be sent on patrol and its AI would do the rest leaving no one to blame.
Re: Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots
#49Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992. That was almost 30 years ago. Just me, or is it crazy they haven't had 1 year of profitability in nearly 3 decades of operations.
And people claim the markets/VCs are too short-termist. If anything, the opposite is true.
The markets and VC are too short-termist for things like this. The failure of many VC-funded robotics companies is evidence of this. Rethink Robotics. Jibo. Anki. I can keep going. The VCs ran out of patience long before the product gained market traction.
And Boston Dynamics is not an exception. Government funded primarily until 2013 when it was acquired by Google. Google then didn't have the stomach to continue to fund it, so they sold it to Softbank.[1]
[1] https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/06/09/its-no-wonder-googl...