Google lays off 100 robot workers used to clean its cafeterias

Google's parent company, Alphabet, recently let go of 12,000 employees as well as 100 automated cafeteria cleaners.

According to a Wired report, Alphabet's 'Everyday Robots' project, an unit under Google's experimental X laboratories, has been shut down by Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

It had trained 100 one-armed, wheeled robots to help clean the company's cafeterias. In Google's Bay Area facilities, a number of these robot prototypes were taken out of the lab and put to use.

Table cleaning and recycling sorting were both done by these robots.

During the pandemic, the robots also assisted in keeping conference rooms tidy.

With the robot division now shut off, some of its technology could be used for other divisions.

An integrated hardware and software system for learning, including the transfer of knowledge from the virtual to the real world, has been developed by Alphabet over the last few years.

The robots slowly gained a greater grasp of the world around them and became more adept at executing ordinary activities, using a combination of machine learning techniques like reinforcement learning, collaborative learning, and learning from demonstration.

In the meantime, Google has even requested that workers who return to work share their work desks with a "partner" to maximize office space in an effort to further reduce costs.

With inputs from Agencies.