Google takes big leap into developing new robots

[...] it's slowly transformed a search engine that once relied on counting links into one of the world's most sophisticated artificial intelligence tools, perpetually improving the accuracy of results by coming to "understand" how words and concepts relate to each other.

[...] - in a pattern Google followed in eventually building its own phones, tablets and PCs - the company is moving into the hardware side.

Rather than focusing on the consumer market, the company is initially exploring the use of robots in retailing and parts of manufacturing that haven't already been automated, such as electronics assembly, the Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the project.

The local companies that Google acquired include Meka Robotics, which develops friendly-looking humanoid robots; Bot & Dolly, which makes robotic camera systems for movie production; Autofuss, Bot & Dolly's sister marketing company, which has worked on several commercials for Google products; Redwood Robotics, yet another San Francisco startup building robotic manipulators (read: arms and hands) for manufacturing and one day "service industries such as health care or hospitality"; Industrial Perception of Palo Alto, which creates robot arms for loading and unloading delivery trucks; and Holomni, a Mountain View company that creates high-tech casters (i.e. wheels).

During a discussion on this issue at SRI International earlier this year, MIT research scientist Andrew McAfee noted that automation provided by computers and robotics has already helped push corporate profits toward all-time highs while depressing wages to postwar lows.

[...] tractors, irrigation and other technologies mean that just 2 percent of the workforce can now feed the nation, freeing the rest of us up to write stories, create ads, develop apps, invent robots and more.