Boston Dynamics has consistently stirred up interest with its four-legged robot dog, Spot, and most recently ATLAS, the humanoid robot that walked off the assembly line.
Now, the company is back in the news not for a groundbreaking technology, but because it's on the block.
According to two unnamed sources in a Bloomberg Business report, executives at Google's parent company Alphabet have determined that the robotics unit won't release a marketable product for the news few years. So ATLAS can walk off that assembly line, out the door and keep on walking to potential suitors at the Toyota Research Institute and Amazon.com. If you’ve seen the footage of ATLAS stocking shelves, warehouse work could definitely be a good fit.
Google bought Boston Dynamics in 2013 and brought 300 robotics engineers into the fold. The robotic initiative was called Replicant, but the old guard didn't play nice with the new recruits. According to the report, the division has been plagued by infighting and leadership changes.
It is just amazing how failures in leadership can kill a company.