Maker of fearsome animal robots slowly emerges from stealth
Maker of fearsome animal robots slowly emerges from
stealth
By ASSOCIATED PRESS PUBLISHED: 10:26 EDT, 5 June 2018 |
UPDATED: 10:56 EDT, 5 June 2018
BOSTON (AP) - It's never been clear whether robotics
company Boston Dynamics is making killing machines, household helpers, or
something else entirely.
For nine years, the secretive firm - which got its start
with U.S. military funding - has unnerved people around the world with YouTube
videos of experimental robots resembling animal predators.
In one, a life-size robotic wildcat sprints across a
parking lot at almost 20 miles an hour. In another, a small wheeled rover
nicknamed SandFlea abruptly flings itself onto rooftops - and back down again.
A more recent effort features a slender dog-like robot that climbs stairs,
holds its own in a tug-of-war with a human and opens a door to let another
robot pass.
These glimpses into a possible future of fast, strong and
sometimes intimidating robots raise several questions. How do these robots
work? What does Boston Dynamics intend to do with them? And do these videos -
some viewed almost 30 million times - fairly represent their capabilities?
Boston Dynamics has demonstrated little interest in
elaborating. For months, the company and its parent, SoftBank, rebuffed
numerous requests seeking information about its work. When a reporter visited
company headquarters in the Boston suburb of Waltham, Massachusetts, he was
turned away.
But after The Associated Press spoke with 10 people who
have worked with Boston Dynamics or its 68-year-old founder, Marc Raibert, the
CEO agreed to a brief interview at a robotics conference in late May. Raibert
had just demonstrated the machine that will be the company's first commercial
robot in its 26-year history: the dog-like, door-opening SpotMini, which Boston
Dynamics plans to sell to businesses as a camera-equipped security guard next
year.
The company hasn't announced a price for the
battery-powered robots, which weigh about the same as a Labrador retriever.
Raibert said it plans to manufacture 1,000 SpotMinis annually.
Speculation about Boston Dynamics' intentions - weapons
or servants? - spikes every time it releases a new video. The SpotMini
straddles that divide, and Raibert told the AP that he doesn't rule out future
military applications. But he played down popular fears that his company's
robots could one day be used to kill.
"We think about that, but that's also true for cars,
airplanes, computers, lasers," Raibert said, wearing his omnipresent
Hawaiian shirt as younger robotics engineers lined up to speak with him.
"Every technology you can imagine has multiple ways of using it. If
there's a scary part, it's just that people are scary. I don't think the robots
by themselves are scary."
The firm's previous military projects included a
four-legged robotic pack mule that could haul supplies across deserts or
mountains - but which sounded like a lawnmower and was reportedly deemed too
noisy by the U.S. Marines.
The bigger question of just what Boston Dynamics hopes to
accomplish remains murky - and that may be by design. Interviews with eight
former Boston Dynamics employees and some of Raibert's former academic
collaborators suggest that that the company has long brushed aside commercial
demands, not to mention outsiders' moral or ethical concerns, in single-minded
pursuit of machines that mimic animal locomotion.
Former employees say the company has operated more as a
well-funded research lab than a business. Raibert's vision was kept alive for
years through military contracts, especially from the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, known as DARPA. A federal contracting database lists more than
$150 million in defense funding to Boston Dynamics since 1994.
Boston Dynamics said only it believes a quarter-century
of work on robots will "unlock a very high commercial value." It did
not answer when asked if it ever entertained proposals to weaponize them.
Building robots that can jump, gallop or prowl like animals
was a fringe field of engineering when Raibert and his colleagues began
studying kangaroo and ostrich videos in their Carnegie Mellon University
research lab nearly 40 years ago.
But agile robots aren't so sci-fi anymore, even if they
can still seem that way. Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot, for instance, is a
hulking humanoid machine that can be seen hiking across broken ground, jumping
onto pedestals, and even performing an ungainly backflip . (The company's robot
videos have not been independently verified.)
In videos, the company's robots wander through a variety
of locales - in and around the company's single-story headquarters, a New
Hampshire ski lodge and across the secluded meadows and woodlands near
Raibert's home. In some videos, humans kick the robots or jab them with hockey
sticks to test their balance.
Michael Cheponis, who worked with Raibert at CMU's
pioneering robot laboratory in the 1980s, calls his former colleague an
"American hero" for sticking with a vision that could prove useful to
the world. "Marc doesn't have the slightest Dr. Evil in him,"
Cheponis said.
The defense contracts began winding down in 2013 when
Google bought Boston Dynamics and made clear it wanted no part in defense work.
Andy Rubin, then Google's chief robotics executive and architect of the
acquisition, swept into the firm's lunchroom to give a pep talk to employees
shortly after the deal was announced in December 2013.
Attendees later said they felt a sense of relief and
cautious optimism. "He was talking about really ambitious goals,"
said one former employee, who asked not to be identified because of concerns it
could hurt career opportunities in the small and tight-knit U.S. robotics
community. "A robot that might be able to help the elderly and infirm.
Robots that work in grocery stores. Robots that deliver packages."
But the Google honeymoon soon soured. Rubin left the
company the following year and his replacements overseeing Boston Dynamics grew
increasingly frustrated with Raibert's approach, according to several people
familiar with the transition. Among the concerns: Boston Dynamics' lack of
focus on building a sellable product.
Google also grew concerned that "negative
threads" on social media about the firm's "terrifying" robot
videos could hurt its image, according to leaked emails from its public
relations division obtained by Bloomberg in 2016.
Inside the company, the idea that its robots could be
turned into weapons occasionally inspired casual workplace chatter, chuckles or
discomfort, several former employees said. But few took it seriously.
"They're definitely aware that people are frightened
by them," said Andrew String, a former Boston Dynamics engineer. "The
company regularly gets hate mail and other weird stuff." But he said
Raibert never felt a need to explain himself, and instead wanted the technology
to speak for itself.
By 2016, Google was looking to sell the firm - eventually
finding an interested buyer in Japanese tech giant SoftBank, which already has
a robotics portfolio that includes the cute humanoid Pepper. The deal closed
earlier this year.
SoftBank declined to say anything about its plans, but
Boston Dynamics' latest job postings reveal a heightened emphasis on finding
something that sells. One posting seeks a "robot evangelist" to help
find "market-driven" applications for the machines in logistics,
construction and commercial security.
Raibert credited Google for pushing the firm forward to
perform the "best work we ever did," but said under SoftBank his team
is acting as a "standalone company" again.
"We have a very strong plan," he said.
"We're all digging in and working hard on it."
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