The Everyday Robots project has been canceled as part of the ongoing round of layoffs at Google's parent firm. This is the most recent of several Alphabet hardware projects that have collapsed.

The Wired article claims that the tech giant will abolish the Everyday Robots team. Director of marketing and communications Denise Gamboa told the publication, "Everyday Robots will no longer be a separate project within Alphabet."

She added, "Some of the technology and part of the team will be consolidated into existing robotics efforts within Google Research."

The Everyday Robots

According to Verge, the 2019 debut of Everyday Robots was motivated by a desire to create armed robots that could do minor janitorial tasks such as sorting garbage and wiping tables in both the home and the workplace.

From 2021 onwards, prototype single-armed robots with wheels were put through their paces at Google's offices for testing purposes.

In 2022, thanks to advancements in Google's AI language research, these robots were given the ability to understand natural language orders.

Nonetheless, constructing robots capable of doing such jobs in unstructured and unexpected settings, such as workplaces, is notoriously difficult. After decades of effort and enormous success in developing industrial robots, the only household activity that mobile machines have really conquered is vacuuming.

Below is a demonstration video where you can see the robots in action:

Cost-Cutting Efforts

This year, Alphabet has been slashing expenditures, with Google letting off almost 12,000 staff in January alone. And in the same month, another Alphabet robotics business called Intrinsic had to lay off around 40 workers, or about 20% of its workforce. For industrial machinery, Intrinsic develops the necessary control software.

Prior to this news, Google's most recent cost-cutting measure was desk-sharing for employees. The firm will allegedly compel its cloud employees and partners to share desks and work alternate shifts at the start of the next fiscal quarter.

The company detailed why the new desk-sharing idea is being adopted, which is to continue investing in Cloud development at its five prominent locations in the US. The cloud division, one of Google's fastest-growing yet unprofitable businesses, employs almost 25% of full-time workers.

See Also: Google Hires UX Engineer Edwin Toh Despite Lack of Degree: Here's How it Happened

Robotics Business

Apparently, another of Alphabet's grand hardware projects has come to a dismal conclusion.

Google bought a slew of robotics startups, including Intrinsic and Boston Dynamics, during the last decade. Even so, the program was headed by Andy Rubin, an executive who subsequently departed Google after being accused of sexual misconduct and allegedly receiving protection from corporate leadership.

While Alphabet continues to generate research in the field, its robotics initiatives have never gotten off the ground despite this first flurry of activity.

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