Google X is a clandestine lab where ideas involving robots and lifts to outer space are being explored and developed

IN A top-secret lab in an undisclosed location near San Francisco where robots run free, the future is being imagined. It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low.

Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. Your robot could go to the office while you stay at home in your pyjamas. And you could, perhaps, take a lift to outer space.

These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. In interviews, a dozen people discussed the list; some work at the lab or elsewhere at Google, and some have been briefed on the project. But none would speak for attribution because Google is so secretive about the effort that many employees do not even know the lab exists.

Although most of the ideas on the list are in the conceptual stage, nowhere near reality, two people briefed on the project said one product would be released by the end of the year, although they would not say what it was.

“They’re pretty far out in front right now,” says Rodney Brooks, a professor emeritus at MIT’s computer science and artificial intelligence lab and founder of Heartland Robotics. “But Google’s not an ordinary company, so almost nothing applies.”

At most Silicon Valley companies, innovation means developing online apps or advertisements, but Google sees itself as different. Even as Google has grown into a major corporation and tech startups are biting at its heels, the lab reflects its ambition to be a place where groundbreaking research and development are happening, in the tradition of Xerox PARC, which developed the modern personal computer in the 1970s.

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the lab, but said investing in speculative projects was an important part of Google’s DNA. “While the possibilities are incredibly exciting, please do keep in mind that the sums involved are very small by comparison to the investments we make in our core businesses,” she said.

At Google, which uses artificial intelligence techniques and machine learning in its search algorithm, some of the outlandish projects may not be as much of a stretch as they first appear, even though they defy the bounds of the company’s main web-search business.

For example, space lifts, a longtime fantasy of Google’s founders and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, could collect information or haul things into space. (In theory, they involve rocketless space travel along a cable anchored to Earth.) “Google is collecting the world’s data, so now it could be collecting the solar system’s data,” says Brooks.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is deeply involved in the lab, according to several people with knowledge of it. He came up with the list of ideas along with Larry Page, Google’s other founder, who worked on Google X before becoming chief executive in April; chairman Eric Schmidt; and other top executives. “Where I spend my time is farther afield projects, which we hope will graduate to important key businesses in the future,” Brin said recently, though he did not mention Google X.

Google may turn one of the ideas – the driverless cars that it unleashed on California’s roads last year – into a new business. Unimpressed by the innovative spirit of Detroit carmakers, Google is now considering manufacturing them in the US, according to a person briefed on the effort.

Google could sell navigation or information technology for the cars, and theoretically could show location-based advertisements to passengers as they zoom by local businesses while playing Angry Birds in the driver’s seat.

Robots figure prominently in many of the ideas. They have long captured the imagination of Google engineers, including Brin, who has already attended a conference through robot instead of in the flesh. Fleets of robots could assist Google with collecting information, replacing the humans who photograph streets for Google Maps, according to people with knowledge of Google X. Robots born in the lab could be destined for homes and offices, where they could assist with mundane tasks or allow people to work remotely, they say.

Other ideas involve what Google referred to as the “web of things” at its software developers conference in May – a way of connecting objects to the internet. Every time anyone uses the web, it benefits Google, the company argued, so it could be good for Google if home accessories and wearable objects, not just computers, were connected.

Among the items that could be connected are: a garden planter (so it could be watered from afar); a coffee pot (so it could brew remotely); or a light (so it could be turned off remotely). Google said in May that by the end of this year another team planned to introduce a web-connected light bulb that could communicate wirelessly with Android devices.

One Google engineer familiar with Google X said it was run as mysteriously as the CIA – with two offices, a nondescript one for logistics, on the company’s Mountain View campus, and one for robots, in a secret location. While software engineers toil away elsewhere at Google, the lab is filled with roboticists and electrical engineers. They have been hired from Microsoft, Nokia Labs, Stanford University, MIT, Carnegie Mellon University and New York University.

A leader at Google X is Sebastian Thrun, one of the world’s top robotics and artificial intelligence experts, who teaches computer science at Stanford and invented the world’s first driverless car. Also at the lab is Andrew Ng, another Stanford professor, who specialises in applying neuroscience to artificial intelligence to teach robots and machines to operate like people.

Johnny Chung Lee, a specialist in human-computer interaction, came to Google X from Microsoft this year after helping develop Microsoft’s Kinect, the video-game player that responds to human movement and voice. At Google X, where he is working on the web of things, according to people familiar with his role, he has the mysterious title of rapid evaluator.

Because Google X is a breeding ground for big bets that could turn into colossal failures or Google’s next big business – and it could take years to figure out which – just the idea of these experiments terrifies some shareholders and analysts.

“These moon-shot projects are a very Google-y thing for them to do,” says Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners. “People don’t love it but they tolerate it because their core search business is firing away.”

Page has tried to appease analysts by saying crazy projects are a tiny proportion of Google’s work. “There are a few small, speculative projects happening at any one time, but we are very careful stewards of shareholders’ money,” he told analysts in July. “We are not betting the farm on these.” – (New York Times service)