Internet giant Google published research earlier this month detailing how its software enables robots to learn from one another, demonstrating this capability with videos featuring robotic arms working inside its laboratories.

Google’s robotics group wanted to sell the arms to manufacturers, warehouse operators and other groups, but executives at Google’s parent Alphabet Inc over-ruled them because it failed CEO Larry Page’s so-called “toothbrush test” — a requirement that the company only sells products used daily by billions of people.

The roboticists who worked on the project are said to have voiced frustration with Google’s caution, “echoing sentiment at other divisions outside Google’s core internet business, like its self-driving car unit, which display technical prowess but have yet to ship products”, according to an insider.

James Kuffner, chief technology officer at the Toyota Research Institute who previously led Google’s robotics unit, said about the arm. “It was still a prototype, but it had a lot of advantages. The team worked really hard. If
it had been entirely up to me I would have shipped it, but it was not.”

Google spokesman Jason Freidenfelds said there are no plans to sell the machines. “We’re using them to do basic research on how machine learning might help robots be a bit more co-ordinated — a promising field of research, but still very early days.”

Google is reported to have built around 50 of the robotic arms, which are capable of lifting about 10lb and were designed by Meka Robotics, a start-up Google acquired in 2013.