Google Inc. has invested in Savioke, a robotics company that is looking to develop a robot capable of working in hospitals and nursing homes.
The sum of the investment, made by Google's funding arm Google Ventures, has not been revealed; but it is included in a $2 million seed finance led by Morado Venture Partners, according to PC World. Savioke is also receiving support from AME Cloud Ventures and other sources.
The robotics company did not reveal any details about producing a service robot. However, it said the open-source ROS will be used by the machine, and that customer trials will start later this year.
Savioke was established last year, BBC News reported. Steve Cousins, chief executive of Savioke, is responsible for the PR2, which is designed to be used by robotic software developers to test their codes.
"We have decided that it is time for robots to become available widely in the service industry," Cousins said. "We're not ready to quite disclose what we are going to be doing, but we believe the technology is ripe and this industry is largely untapped".
Cousins also discussed the role robots will play in hospitals.
"There's a few examples of robots in hospitals that are extensions of a surgeon, but what we are looking at is a little bit more what people traditionally think of as robots- autonomous entities that can do things on their own and can help people out," he said.
The search engine has been focusing on robot companies as of late, buying firms such as Schaft, a Japan-based company that created a full-size bipedal humanoid robot that won the DARPA Robotics Challenge trails in 2013, PC World reported.
Google has also bought the military contractor Boston Dynamics, which is responsible for humanoid machines such as Atlas. The company also created robots based on animals, such as BigDog, a machine that carries cargo.
Mike Maples, co-founder of Floodgate Ventures, said Google's deal opens up the door for more deals in the future involving robotics, BBC News reported.
"Google's move into robotics will make it even more attractive to start-up investors because it accelerates the creation of a new category of opportunities," Maples said.
