Google parent Alphabet is pulling the plug on Everyday Robots, its multi-billion-dollar X moonshot lab of 100 one-armed, wheeled robots it used for just under a year to squeegee cafeteria tables and separate trash, Wired magazine reports.
The news comes a day after it was learned Google Cloud is cutting back office space, forcing employees in five offices, including New York and Seattle, to report for duty on two alternate days of the week and to share desks in workstation “neighborhoods.”
Some of the 200 Everyday Robots employees and the technology will be transferred to Google Research, said Denise Gamboa, communications director for Everyday Robots.
This is the latest failure for X, which also spun out a number of other busts, including Loon balloons offering internet connections, and Makani power-generating kites.
Alphabet lost $6.1 billion last year on Everyday Robots and Waymo, it autonomous driving car technology now operating in test mode in three cities, including San Francisco. Each robot is estimated to have cost tens of thousands of dollars, according to robotics experts.
The cuts are no surprise, as Alphabet’s profit fell 21% last year to $60 billion, primarily due to Google ad spending slowing down. While in the past, Alphabet was able to raise outside funding from venture capitalists and other investors for its subsidiaries, today’s economy is making that nearly impossible.
Last month, Alphabet announced it will lay off 12,000 workers, or 6% of its staff, which ballooned to nearly 187,000 people during the pandemic from 119,000 at the end of 2019, according to regulatory filings.
Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook parent Meta, Salesforce and Snap are among other Big Tech giants making making major job cuts.
X nevertheless is still betting on other cool technologies dogged by regulatory and engineering challenges that threaten their financial viability. These include Waymo and Wing grocery delivery drones.
Everyday Robots was the result of a minimum of eight robotics acquisitions Google made over the past decade, with the hope that machine learning would revolutionize robotics.
Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin hoped robot “arm farms” and “playpens” driven by artificial intelligence (AI) rather than engineering code would breed sophisticated androids.
The problem, Wired says, is that the premise worked initially for simple tasks, but the machines failed to handle subtleties or variations when responding to human commands. When asked to deal with complexities, like the type of lighting in a room or hand a person who expressed hunger something other than a bag of potato chips — the robots malfunctioned.
Eventually, Google could not determine whether Everyday Robots should pursue advanced research or create commercially viable everyday robots.
The robot technology currently remains in limbo.
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