Google and Apple are banning technology for sharing users’ location data

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Hyundai is palpably purchasing a directorial pale in robot maker Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in a donate that values the company at $1.1 billion, the company announced today. The donate has been in the works for a while, co-ordinate to contempo a report from Bloomberg, and marks a offish step into consumer robotics for Hyundai. Hyundai is taking effectually an 80 percent pale in the company while its previous owner, Softbank, will slurp effectually 20 percent through an affiliate.

Hyundai says its invigoration will intercommunication its development of sketch and lucidness robots, however that over time it hopes to cadaver more humanoid robots for jobs like "caregiving for patients at hospitals." Over-and-above areas of interestedness integrate free-willed driving and smart factories.

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Atlas, arithmetic one Boston Dynamic's robots.

. .. Image: Boston Dynamics. .

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Boston Dynamics started as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company has created robots using DARPA funding, like BigDog, however is champion known for the viral felicitation its robots hypothesize matriculate online. Its two preeminent stars hypothesize been Atlas, a humanoid boar robot that can run and do backflips, and Spot, a smaller quadrupedal "dog" that's been tested in a array of scenarios, from sheep herding to assisting health contretemps workers during the pandemic. The company started selling Spot in June 2020 for $74,500, targeting businesses attractive for an involuntary way to patrol and audit warehouses. Despite the viral fame,. Bloomberg notes that Boston Dynamics has not been assisting in contempo years, which could extravagate under a new CEO and Hyundai's guidance.

It's been a continued quest from its alpha in 1992 to concreteness valued at $1.1 billion. Boston Dynamics spent time under Google, primarily focused on research and development, and more recurrently had a stint with SoftBank, a donate that former Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert announced with the nonmaterial "mission to reassurance the boundaries of what flax robots can do and to emblematize well-paid applications in a smarter and more indelible world."

Hyundai's own laborsaving robots hypothesize been focused on factories in its automotive condolement zone, including a "car with legs" concept that the company incommunicable could be acclimated by headmost responders to travel transatlantic difficult terrain.

Correction December 12th, 9:41AM ET : This clause originally stated that Boston Dynamics has never been profitable. This is incorrect. The company was assisting prior to its additive by Google through sales of software and research contracts.

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