{"id":452,"date":"2015-03-24T02:51:14","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T02:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trich.me\/blog\/?p=452"},"modified":"2015-03-24T02:51:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T02:51:14","slug":"astro-teller-and-his-googlex-moonshot-updates-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trich.me\/blog\/astro-teller-and-his-googlex-moonshot-updates-failures\/","title":{"rendered":"Astro Teller And His Google[x] Moonshot Updates &#038; Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Astro Teller told\u00a0a full\u00a0auditorium at the Austin Convention Center,\u00a0during\u00a0SXSW, that the last 5 years of Google[x] has taught him to fail and\u00a0fail at the beginning. He admitted that it is hard. That the longer you work on a project, the less you want to know the world&#8217;s reaction to it. He continued to tell the crowd how\u00a0a number of Google[x] projects have experienced a series of \u201cbumps and scrapes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What is a Google Moonshot? They are projects that solve a huge problem, have a radical solution, and involve breakthrough technology. Moonshots must produce a massive value to\u00a0make things better, not only by 10% or 20% increments, but by 10X.<\/p>\n<p>Teller continued to tell us about past, current, and future projects:<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/loon\/\">Project Loon<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Moonshot\u00a0: Balloon-powered internet for everyone. Astro said 4 billion people in this world are not connected digitally. Project Loon helps them\u00a0to be connected.<\/li>\n<li>How :\u00a0A network of balloons to act as cellular towers in the sky<\/li>\n<li>The Failure : These balloons needed to be\u00a0so high that they couldn&#8217;t\u00a0be tied down. The team was\u00a0essentially making a cell tower that needed to be\u00a01% of the standard weight, produce more power, and to function in 90 degrees below zero. Finally after creating a device, the balloons that were used to keep the device high above the earth started to leak\u00a0and eventually burst.\u00a0When their balloons failed, they had to\u00a0fetch it (sailing in the pacific, scavenging the\u00a0Arctic).<\/li>\n<li>Lesson Learned : Turns out it was the socks that the techs were wearing when they were manufacturing them. They found the issue, tackled it, and now the balloons last for 6 months at a time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Project\u00a0Driverless Car<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Moonshot : We spend millions of hours driving. Those hours are wasted. The goal is to make a car drive safer than a human.<\/li>\n<li>How : Through artificial intelligence that learns on the fly through it&#8217;s surroundings. Astro told the audience about an incident that happened 4 or 5 months ago. Google&#8217;s driverless car was driving on yet another test run in the suburbs of\u00a0California. While driving on the road\u00a0the car &#8220;saw&#8221; in front of it a women in an electric wheel chair with a broom. She was reaching into the middle of the road trying to chase a duck to shoo\u00a0it off the road. The car came to a stop, waited til the woman\u00a0was out of the road, then continued on it&#8217;s way. There is\u00a0no way for the Driverless Car team\u00a0to sit in a conference room and say \u201cwe need to watch out for women in wheel chairs, in the middle of roads, trying to shoo ducks\u201d. Thats why there is AI. Now that specific Driverless Car\u00a0computer knows what that specific incident looks\u00a0like. Astro continued to say that they\u00a0show the computer this moment and 10,000 other similar moments, and it learns! The more bumps and scrapes in the project the better.\u00a0It is not about not getting them, its about extracting the value from them.<\/li>\n<li>The Failure : When the product was starting to become more and more developed the team started to work with\u00a0safety drivers. These safety drivers were assigned to ride with cars during the test runs. The safety drivers were there to make sure the car was driving properly and to help in emergency situations. The Google[x] team\u00a0had cameras watching the human&#8217;s every move. What the team\u00a0found was that the humans trusted the car more and more over time and started doing stupid stuff during the testing. The humans would try to take over in weird moments, or not pay attention at all. The safety drivers, in the end, made the cars drive worse.\u00a0They\u00a0assumed humans were\u00a0a good back up system to the driverless car.<\/li>\n<li>Lesson Learned : The Driverless Car team\u00a0made a car with no steering wheel, brakes, accelerator, or other parts so the humans riding in them wouldn&#8217;t be tempted to &#8220;take over&#8221; the ride. Astro said that regulations did not\u00a0require cars to have a steering wheel so they cut it out. Oddly enough it was required to have rear view mirrors, so they kept those on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Project Google Glass<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Moonshot : Connecting the offline and online worlds.<\/li>\n<li>How : Through a smaller and slimmer head-mounted and hands-free display design.<\/li>\n<li>The Failure : They made one great decision on google glass, in that they did the glass explorer program.\u00a0They made a bad decision because they\u00a0allowed the explorer program to get to big for it&#8217;s own good. &#8220;We allowed and somewhat encouraged too much exposure to the program&#8230;.We did things to encourage people to think that [Glass]\u00a0was a finished product,\u201d Astro\u00a0said.<\/li>\n<li>Lesson Learned : The Glass explorer program led them to learn a lot on the tech front. Including battery issues and improvements. It also led them to social discoveries and\u00a0how social norms could be built. But Google\u00a0learned that there is a fine line between rushing into production and perfecting a product.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/flux.io\/\">Project Genie<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Moonshot : Help the field of construction and architecture. It would design and architect buildings. It was a building genie.<\/li>\n<li>How : The\u00a0invention is a cloud based collaboration software\u00a0with \u201cplanning applications to help architects and engineers in the design process, especially for skyscrapers and large buildings. The platform includes planning tools of expert architects and engineers and advance analytics and simulation tools.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>It is now called Flux, a stand alone business. It is the only project that is its stand alone business.<\/li>\n<li>Flux automatically answers zoning questions, and correct building codes for a specific area.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cRTNvWcx9Oo\">Project Wing<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Delivery of things via self flying vehicles<\/li>\n<li>Goal : Why are we sending 2-3 pound packages in 3000 pound vehicles across towns in traffic<\/li>\n<li>First road block, could they\u00a0possibly use someone else vehicle so they\u00a0didn&#8217;t have to build a vehicle? No. There wasn\u2019t anything that fit what they were looking for, so they had to build one.\u00a0It had to be a vertical take off vehicle because\u00a0they couldn&#8217;t have run ways when out on delivery.<\/li>\n<li>They built one. They call them tail sitters. It is a hover able and wing engine vehicle. They are perfect for flight, but they are harder to control.<\/li>\n<li>After 8 months, 50% of the team knew it was a failure. Then after a year and a half 80% of the team knew it was a failure. The lesson they learned, admit when something is not working, while also trying to\u00a0get out to the world as fast as possible.<\/li>\n<li>Sergey Brin saw the stall in development and said &#8220;You have 5 months\u2026.go.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>They finally got out to the real world to a select group in australia. They learned alot and because of Sergey&#8217;s deadline they have a new and improved vehicle.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/makani\/\">Project Makani<\/a> <\/strong>\/\/ Failing to Fail<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An energy\u00a0source<\/li>\n<li>Goal : Harvest the power of the wind at a fraction of the cost of normal wind turbines.<\/li>\n<li>They discovered that the higher they\u00a0got the higher the wind speed and the more consistent the speeds. There is an enormous advantage to going up when harvesting wind for power.<\/li>\n<li>A normal wind turbine is about 100 meters and 300\/400 tons. They are an incredible amount of money.<\/li>\n<li>How : Next month they have a turbine that will fly, and once it is released\u00a0the length of the tie down (80ft), the wind turns it&#8217;s\u00a08 propellors. The kite like contraption is the most efficient wind energy producer.<\/li>\n<li>Larry page said, &#8220;make sure you crash at least 5 versions of the vehicles.&#8221; So the team picked the windiest place in America to test the product. But they failed to fail. They never crashed it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astro Teller told\u00a0a full\u00a0auditorium at the Austin Convention Center,\u00a0during\u00a0SXSW, that the last 5 years of Google[x] has taught him to fail and\u00a0fail at the beginning. He admitted that it is hard. That the longer you work on a project, the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trich.me\/blog\/astro-teller-and-his-googlex-moonshot-updates-failures\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Astro Teller And His Google[x] Moonshot Updates &amp; Failures - trich.me<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.trich.me\/blog\/astro-teller-and-his-googlex-moonshot-updates-failures\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Astro Teller And His Google[x] Moonshot Updates &amp; Failures - trich.me\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Astro Teller told\u00a0a full\u00a0auditorium at the Austin Convention Center,\u00a0during\u00a0SXSW, that the last 5 years of Google[x] has taught him to fail and\u00a0fail at the beginning. 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