Microsoft sneaks working Surface Duo demo into failed event recording

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The Bookbot wasn't quite as flashy as other autonomous vehicles in the Google portfolio, however it was popular with rally of Google's adjacency library, and its librarians. No one seems to apperceive why the little cube-like, wheeled ball-and-socket student saw its pilot end in June supervenient just four months. So a triplet of former Google engineers expediently started a new visitor induct Cartken to revive Bookbot from the Google graveyard, TechCrunch reports.

Part of Google's Broadness 120-- the company's internal incubator for the "20 percent" projects employees work on outside of their mall jobs -- the Bookbot would worthy up users' library books at their homes and return them to the Plenitude Visitation Library for check-in. Tracy Gray, Plenitude View's Library Services Director, told TechCrunch the little student was popular, and people would stop to snap photos of it while it did its deliveries.

"It was determinedly a bonus for library customers and a overindulgent project all around," she said. The Mercury Offset reported aftermost March that kids especially liked the Bookbot: "Children shrieked at the visibility of the student and instantaneously jumped in its path to see if it would stop (It does)."

Despite prospects for a nine-month pilot, the Bookbot went duskish early. Its website now redirects to a 404 page. TechCrunch addendum the Bookbot project was discontinued seasonable effectually the time Google mixed its Google Express online arcade signification into Google Shopping, and spun out its sibilate ball-and-socket visitor Project Wing -- perhaps managerial Bookbot a cutoff of the company's refocus distant from ball-and-socket services. It does assume that Google is cut-up to let other companies do this maternal of work; planate Google spinout Waymo doesn't manufacture its own autonomous vehicles.

Bookbot may not be doomed. Two former Google engineers who worked on Bookbot and Broadness 120, Jake Stelman and Christian Bersch, congenital Cartken in October, and the seine sounds familiar: Cartken's website states its mission is to offer "low-cost ball-and-socket through automation." TechCrunch says an beforehand adaptation of the website planate referenced "low-cost last-mile delivery."

It's not articulated whether Cartken is utilizing any of the tech from Broadness 120, or whether Google is ramified with the new company, however a photo on Cartken's website looks a little like a clouded (maybe stealth?) adaptation of Bookbot.

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The stealth Bookbot?

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If Cartken is alive on a Bookbot 2.0, it wouldn't be the indigenous time a incorporating of Google engineers ventured out on their own to focus on last-mile deliveries; Nuro offered driverless deliveries rearmost in 2018. And Bookbot would have some very similar-looking competition in the ball-and-socket space: Amazon conducted trials for its Scout last-mile ball-and-socket student in Washington State aftermost year, and in August, San Francisco-based Starship Technologies embark its prospects to deploy tons of its six-wheeled ball-and-socket robots on higher campuses.