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Alphabet announced on Friday its latest venture, a robotics software company called “Intrinsic.” The segment comes out of X, its “moonshots” division.
Intrinsic said they are developing software tools to make industrial robots easier to use, cheaper and more flexible, so that they can extend the reach of consumers who use them. Wendy Tan-White, head of Intrinsic, said in a blog post that the company “is working to unlock the creative and economic potential of industrial robotics for millions of other businesses, entrepreneurs and developers.”
Two robots use perception, force control and multi-robot planning to assemble a simple piece of furniture (time-lapse video)
Intrinsic
Alphabet X was launched about ten years ago in the hope that it could use new technologies to solve global problems. The so-called Moonshot factory has developed a handful of projects so far, including delivery drones and internet balloons. Many of those projects failed, but Alphabet’s self-driving car unit Waymo is perhaps the most promising.
Intrinsic will operate within Alphabet’s “Other Bets” segment, which has continually been a cash burner. The region lost $ 1.145 billion on revenue of $ 198 million in the first quarter of 2021.
Alphabet’s hope was to use X as an incubator to create a new area of growth for the company outside of its core digital advertising business at Google. But X and the rest of Alphabet’s companies have yet to find a big new money generator.
Robotics has been an area of interest for the tech giant, but projects have fizzled out. The company launched a spending blitz from 2013, acquiring six robotics startups that have either sold or closed. In early 2019, Alphabet would be back in the robotics game. The New York Times said Google’s revamped robotics program will focus more on simple machines that can perform and learn tasks through machine learning.
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