While Amazon was shooting its mouth off about drones that can deliver packages, Google was quietly acquiring several technology companies in a bid to create a new generation of robots.

The engineer that they’ve chosen to lead their new robotics project is Andy Rubin, the man who built Google’s Android software, and made it one of the world’s most successful operating systems.

The company is very hush-hush on the details, but the sheer scale of the investment into this project would suggest that they are taking robots very, very seriously.

But for now, Google’s robotics effort is not targeted at consumers. Instead, the company is aiming to put robots in manufacturing — like electronics assembly, which is driven by manual labour at the moment.

Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business:

The opportunity is massive. There are still people who walk around in factories and pick things up in distribution centers and work in the back rooms of grocery stores.

While the robots will only be behind-the-scenes for now, the goal is that someday, a robot delivery man will hand your parcel to you at your doorstep.

[Source : NY Times]