Google bought seven robotics companies in the past six months -
    Schaft, Industrial Perception, Meka,
    Redwood Robotics, Bot & Dolly, Autofuss and Holomni -

http://www.industrial-perception.com/

http://mekabot.com/

http://redwoodrobotics.com/

http://www.botndolly.com/

http://www.autofuss.com/

http://www.holomni.com/

The common themes I see are:

- Movie industry

- Anthropomorphic robots

This is not aimed at utility applications, but seems to head into the human-machine-interface (HMI) direction.

Isn't this list of acquisitions tilted towards mechanics and hardware for mobility? And less towards perception, intelligence, and planning? Do they think they have the latter areas covered in-house?

It's probably worth noting that both Larry Page and Eric Schmidt have invested in Planetary Resources.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources [2] http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/

Fortunately no-one has invented AI yet.

Not that we know but if someone did create it, is it reasonable to think that an AI would soon learn that humans should not know about its existence and kill the creator by hiring bitcoin paid killers ?

Obviously the bitcoin will be acquired via hacks on wallet, mining on hacked boxes, etc

This is interesting because of the time. The Darpa grand robotics challenge is 1 week:

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=121335

Now 2 of Google's recent acquisitions are A-list competitors. I wonder how much they paid for BD, and how much of a priority it was for Google to make the deal before the challenge and not after.

The impact however will be as large as the Internet has been. Robots will impact the lives of every person on earth in the next three decades; from resource gathering, to manufacturing, to health care, to war, to self defense, to surveillance, to service jobs. There is no field that will remain untouched by robotics.

They are trying to make hard scifi novels a reality.