How does a company like Boston Dynamics stay in business when they don't actually make any products?
I mean every year or two they demonstrate another impressive billion dollar prototype and then nothing comes of it, and they've been doing this for a quarter century.
sell patent rights
They're basically a defense contractor, government pays 'em.
Pays them for what?
to make robot
The underlying tech that automates their robots re: drones
Research
Skynet travelled back in time from the future and set up a fund that Boston Dynamics can draw from to developer terminators.
They are currently owned by Google X also known as "X" which is google research and development branch. They pay them for things like how to get a robot to balance and walk around. This technology is not in everyday usage so it would be hard to say or show you what they are paying for since its behind closed doors. But if a company wanted to make a robotic person and have is with googles advance speech recognition Boston would be the way to go.
What happened to the cool 2 legged terminator looking robot?
why are they going back to this lame ass shit?
>when they don't actually make any products?
They've probably made a fuckton of things no one outside of the DoD or PMC's have ever seen, demos like that either showcase that they're a legit company that actually makes shit, or creates the image they're a "friendly" company that innovates in robotic locomotion
Alphabet knows that 10 years from now those robots could bring them huge amounts of cash. It's similar to self-driving cars: in 2009 nobody thought they would ever have been anything but a research project, and now they'll bring billions of dollars to the first company that gets them right (and Waymo is pretty close to that)
Google funds them. They used to do research for DARPA, then google bought them. Then google's robotics program went to shit.
They were contracted to build like 6 Atlas robots by DARPA for the DARPA robotics challenge, according to people who made them and used them, they were horrible rushed botch jobs.
>> billion dollar prototype
Robots don't cost that much user. They even managed to save costs on their cheetah robot: instead of using a SSD they used a USB flash drive hot glued and taped into a USB port. High tech, Innovative!
Space must of been the limiting factor. I can't see any other reason to use a smaller capacity and slower device. The price difference is negligible.
They make it using your tax money
>nothing comes of it
HAHAHA ... I love it when you Sup Forums autists assume that 'nothing comes out of' something when you can't play video games with it.
>Pays them for what?
For funnelling money into black projects.
this design is way more efficient, it's not like they're giving up on atlas they're just exploring different designs
Working towards efficiently storing energy by having robots convert electrical energy into potential energy [spoiler]that can then be released by knocking the box out of their hands[/spoiler].
It's the future of battery technology.
Go drink some bleach, shit for brains.
In reality it's the tax serfs that are paying them.
nigga u is dumb
It's called an Investment.
Just like the 50 other companies investing in robotics, automation and other mechatronics areas.
I absolutely love their newer stuff. They've made a fuckload of progress.
The things are so precise and quick now.
Sadly, the downside with all of these robots are:
shitty power source and run time
noisy as fuck or slow as fuck.
The latter problem is currently being worked on by a whole bunch of engineers around the world, to create a quiet but quick motor that is precise.
The former problem is progressively improving. Recent battery breakthroughs will pave the way for newer batteries in a few years that will trickle down in 5-7. But even they are not the batteries we need for a full robotic society. Not even slightly. But they are vastly superior than what we have presently.
>choose to go to school in Boston so I can get an internship at Boston Dynamics
>they stop accepting interns when Goggles buys them out
>shilled myself