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Comment by return0 | Hacker News Reader

Has boston dynamics put these things to some real usage? They 've been showing impressive videos for 7, 8 years?

Unfortunately there is no practical application for them. They're incredibly capable, but they're also expensive, fragile, and difficult to maintain. This is, in a nutshell, why Google decided not to hold on to the company - no consumer market whatsoever.

I spent five years in software for Amazon's fulfillment centers. Let me assure you, there is a market for this sort of robotics.

I can think of a few jobs currently handled by humans in the FCs where this robot in particular could do the entire job. Lots of kinks to work out I'm sure but that's what the software team is there for.

Google would probably never sell to their biggest competitor at a reasonable price though. Plus, Amazon already has a robotics company in Boston (Kiva).

They were never actually sold, the only news related to it was back in march 2016 where alphabet said they were looking to sell. Afaik nothing has come up about it since.

and their about-us page still says that they are a "wholly owned subsidiary of Google, Inc."

http://www.bostondynamics.com/bd_about.html

That should be Alphabet by now.

that is not why google decided to "not hold on to the company". it was far more due to culture and direction conflicts. in general, it seems google does not really understand what to do with the companies it purchases.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-google-and-boston-dynamic...

For a while they were under military contract for these, but the versions they built were expensive to maintain, but also much too loud. The military contract was removed, but i think as a result they worked towards making them more simple and more quiet.

In the end though they're still building prototypes as R&D to try and find something that can be polished into a product.

here's a video with commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giS41utjlbU

Presumably they might be learning some really cool stuff building these prototypes that could be used for something more commercial, or licensed.

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