For a moment there, it seemed like the golden age of robots had arrived. In late 2013, Google stormed into the field, acquiring eight companies for undisclosed sum, reported to be as high as a half-billion dollars. For a cash-strapped corner of the research world, this financial infusion was a signal to the world—and to venture capitalists and aspiring roboticists—that real money could be made with sophisticated machines.

The most notable of Google's purchases was Boston Dynamics, a veritable rock star among bot firms. Video clips of the the Massachusetts-based company's legged machines had been inspiring and terrorizing the public for years. (If that sounds like hyperbole, go back and rewatch the debut of Spot, the four-legged, unnervingly biological-seeming bot that absorbed an on-camera kick from an engineer without breaking its jaunty stride.) The deal left many of us keen to see what Google, with its vast resources, might do with that unprecedented mechanical agility. This was one of the biggest companies in tech absorbing the most impressive company in robotics, and no amount of hand-wringing over Boston Dynamics' ties to the Pentagon (most of its funding had previous come from there) could kill the collective buzz. Fear them, love them, or both, but cool robots were finally on the horizon.

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That golden age never materialized. In the more than two years since Google's spending spree, there have been no product announcements, nor any signs, leaks, or industry whispers of a revolutionary robot being cooked up in Mountain View. Then, last week, Alphabet (the Google spin-off that handles its research business) announced it was selling off Boston Dynamics. The party is over. BigDog doesn't have to go home, but it can't stay here.

Google's specific reasons for dumping Boston Dynamics are unknown—nobody's talking, and both companies are notoriously tight-lipped. But it's not particularly hard to surmise what's going on here. Before it was sucked into the Googleplex, Boston Dynamics lived on military R&D contracts almost entirely. In nearly a quarter-century of operation (BD was founded in 1992), the company has never released an actual product. It hasn't even produced what one could call a real prototype, meaning an early version of a machine with a clear path to deployment. Stunning as they are, none of robotic creatures in Boston Dynamics' menagerie have been unleashed on the battlefield. The Pentagon has no established need for the cat-like Cheetah's sprint, or the six-foot humanoid Atlas and it's unstable two-legged amble. They're just just YouTube stars, and there's a difference between what looks cool in the lab and what can generate profits.

There's also a difference between the general perception of what robots are capable of and how difficult it is to make sophisticated machines do anything of value. As Google found out, advanced robots of the kind that Boston Dynamics builds are still years away from being anything more than thrilling research.

In nearly a quarter-century of operation, Boston Dynamics has never released an actual product.

One Foot in Front of the Other

To understand why so many bots aren't ready to function in the real world, look at our own physiology. The human body is a model of energy efficiency, able to articulate and propel more than a hundred pounds of tissue through a broad variety of terrain and activities. Robots, by comparison, are certified wimps.

Last year, the Pentagon held an international contest called the DARPA Robotics Challenge (or DRC), where more than 20 robots were tasked with navigating and interacting with a mock disaster site. They had to drive a quad down a dirt road, open a door, turn a valve or two, saw a hole in drywall, and shove their way through or over rubble to the exit. These are tasks that any able-bodied person would breeze through in a handful of minutes. The robots in the DRC were given a full hour, and most of them needed that much time or more. All the bots moves at a glacial pace, some taking long minutes just to get out of the utility vehicle or to strategize the tricky business of turning a door handle. The majority never finished the course at all; their teams yanked them for poor performance or catastrophic falls took them out of action entirely. It was a mess.

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Boston Dynamics was right there in the thick of it. The company had contracted with the Pentagon to provide Atlas models to a number of qualifying teams. Of the 23 robots that took the field at the DRC finals in Pomona, CA seven of them were built by the Google-owned firm. Each of those bots represented easily $1 million in R&D, and some teams received more than that to create their own hardware.

Atlas is one of the most advanced robots in history, and it looks the part standing at over six daunting feet, with long, snaking arms and a chilling glare courtesy of twin lenses embedded in what passes for its head. In motion, though, Atlas was anything but intimidating. At the DARPA robot Olympics it shuffled forward with tiny steps, never approaching anything resembling standard adult walking speed. It fell down a lot. More than one model left the course horizontal, hoisted into the back of a truck. The Atlas that performed best took just more than 50 minutes to finish, at which point it suddenly, unexpectedly collapsed.

Atlas wasn't the only bot in the DRC to take a spill—almost all of them did. But in the end, the DRC was not a showcase of what humanoid robots can do, but a demonstration of how far they have to go to do even the basic tasks that are simple for a human. When it comes to walking, for instance, one tactic is to make lighter machines that can then use relatively low-power motors for their joints. Boston Dynamics took the opposite approach. Atlas was an incredibly top-heavy machine, balancing as much as 385 pounds on two small feet. Ironically, much of that weight came from the company's much-lauded hydraulic actuation system, which uses pressurized oil to generate a high degree of strength. But with great power comes a corresponding need for great reserves of power. So Atlas had a large battery pack, rated to last through the DRC course's allotted time of one hour but not much longer.

In the end, Atlas was a big, wobbly humanoid that moved at a snail's pace and fell without warning, sometimes without much reason (a slight incline of a few degrees took down one). The utter failure of one of the most complex and expensive walking robots in history must have been a red flag for Google/Alphabet.

It fell down a lot.

Roll With It

Now, it's clear that Alphabet isn't parting ways with robots or robotics altogether. The company's driverless car project is moving ahead at a rapid pace, and its investments in artificial intelligence, and specifically in deep learning, are in line with Google's foundation in search algorithms.

You'll notice something missing with self-driving cars and super-smart machines: legs. Boston Dynamics had make a robot walk on two legs, and probably did it better than any other company in the world. But its best efforts at legged bots remain hobbled by the need for significantly better batteries and mechanical joints that strike a better balance of strength, durability, and efficiency.

Making a robot walk is the most mechanically complex problem in all of robotics, one humans drastically underestimate because putting one foot in front of the other is so easy for us. If legged robots are ever truly feasible, it will be on the heels of breakthroughs in power storage and actuation. Perhaps Google, too, underestimated the challenge, or at least didn't appreciate that developing a walking bot is so much harder and so much slower than writing software or building a car that drives itself.

It's worth noting that one of Boston Dynamics' Atlases came in second at the DRC finals. The other two winning finalists avoided walking wherever possible, choosing instead to roll through the course. For years, the HUBO series of humanoid bots have been standard, bipedal machines. But the model that won DARPA's competition had wheels installed in its knees and feet, allowing it to slowly scoot through sections that had toppled the competition. Think about that. In order to win a contest designed for humanoid bots, a robot that was built to walk had to stop, drop, and roll.

The DRC was bad news for walking robots, and for anyone holding out hope that machines will come striding into our lives, anytime soon. Alphabet selling off the leader in walking bot technology is just more of the same. This might not be the end of walking robots, but it's certainly not the beginning.

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