The company, the parent company of Google, developed and manufactured the Boston Dynamics robotics to Softbankgard, the text through Japanese Twitter for an undisclosed amount, after more than a year of its offer for sale.
As part of the deal, Softbank also bought Shaft, another less-known subsidiary of Alfabet.
Boston Dynamics is known for its "Big Dog" series of four-legged robots, developed primarily to serve as "industrial animals" under contract with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
These robots - along with humanoid Android and Handel - have attracted great interest on the Internet, thanks to their simulated life, high engine sounds and the same videos that Boston Dynamics employees are "torturing" robots with batches, kicks, and weights Heavy, to demonstrate its fluidity and reliability (see video below).
But the company, acquired by Google in 2013, failed to find a place in the culture of its parent company that sets a general rule against military contracts.
While Boston Dynamics was able to cancel its current contracts with the US military, it struggled to find a civil client who was interested in her creations. Even its military connections failed to reap the rewards. The US Navy refused a Big Dog robot in 2015 because of the noise of its engine, which would reveal the location of the soldiers if used in real combat venues.
https://youtu.be/M8YjvHYbZ9w
The company was acquired as part of a takeover spree by Andy Rubin, the developer of the Android system, who moved from Google's smartphone business to spearhead a new company initiative called "Reblickant" to give Google leadership in the robotics sector. But a year after the acquisition, Rubin resigned from Google to start his own company, leaving Relicant without leadership or guidance, leaving Boston Dynamics under less pressure to merge with its new parent company.
Boston Dynamics has been operating from its headquarters outside Boston, away from Google headquarters in the Silicon Valley. In November 2015, tensions erupted between the new President of the Relicanten initiative Jonathan Rosenberg and the founder of Boston Dynamics Mark Reebart, which resulted in the inclusion of Relicant to the new "X" section in Google, and left Boston Dynamics insulated internally, prompting Google to sell.
Softbank is currently in the throes of acquisitions, most notably the acquisition of the British chip maker Arm Holding, which is behind most of the current phone processors, for $ 24 billion. Softbank is also pushing the market for its own robot, And promoted as the first robot in the world to have emotions or emotions.
It is not known whether the acquisition will merge Boston Dynamics with Softbank itself or will be left to operate independently.
Source:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/06/boston-dynamics-softbank-google/
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-softbank-20170609-story.html
http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/06/google-sells-boston-dynamics-to-softbank.html