Google has bought the military robotics firm Boston Dynamics - and presumably a huge collection of wobbly, but amazing walking androids.
Boston Dynamics, founded in 1992 by a professor from MIT, has in the past worked with Sony on the consumer-focused Aibo robot dog, and other mainstream robots.
But most of its work is for the US military and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).Its speciality is robots which are able to walk by themselves, and traverse difficult terrain without direct control by a human. Several of its walking robots (including the mule-like BigDog and its recent running Cheetah) have won fame online after videos of their futuristic exploits were posted on YouTube.
Now the company appears to have a future working with Google on its secretive - but very real - plans for next-generation robots. Boston Dynamics is in fact the eighth robotics company the search giant has purchased in just 12 months.
In a statement, Google's Larry Page said:
"I am excited about Andy Rubin's next project. His last big bet, Android, started off as a crazy idea that ended up putting a supercomputer in hundreds of millions of pockets. It is still very early days for this, but I can't wait to see the progress."
Google has also added that it will honour its existing Darpa contracts.
Here are our ten favourite Boston Dynamics robots.