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Internet giant Google reportedly operates a top-secret lab where boffins work on ‘crazy projects’ that may one day come to fruition.
Staffed with a world-renowned electrical engineers and roboticists, the Google X lab is working on a list of 100 ‘moonshot’ ideas, according to a New York Times report.
Software engineers work at other Google office locations such as the firm’s main campus at Mountain View, while physical work on electronic, mechanical and robotic creations is undertaken at the secretive lab.
While many of the ideas involve robotics, another example of one of the ideas being explored is the so-called ‘web of things’ which would aim to bring internet connectivity to many more every day devices and wearable objects.
While software engineers toil away elsewhere at Google, the lab is filled with roboticists and electrical engineers. Leading the lab are figures such as Sebastian Thrun and Andrew Ng, both Stanford professors well known to thousands thanks to the currently running free online courses in AI and Machine Learning.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is said to be heavily involved in the initiative. Google’s much publicised driverless car is one of Brin’s more public ‘pet projects’.
Brin sought to calm investors regarding the firm’s investment in exotic side projects such as the driverless car by saying that the firm wasn’t ‘betting the farm’ on their success.
