Google's robotics "moonshot," and Android's Andy Rubin, profiled in NYT


JIM WILSON / THE NEW YORK TIMES

Andy Rubin, the man credited with architecting Android for smartphones, is now the engineer heading Google's robotics "moonshot" program. He is the subject of a profile by John Markoff in today's New York Times.

If Amazon can imagine delivering books by drones, is it too much to think that Google might be planning to one day have one of the robots hop off an automated Google Car and race to your doorstep to deliver a package? Google executives acknowledge that robotic vision is a "moonshot." But it appears to be more realistic than Amazon's proposed drone delivery service, which Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, revealed in a television interview the evening before one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.

"Google Puts Money on Robots, Using the Man Behind Android" [NYTimes.com].