Google’s latest patent would allow it to control a robot army

After getting a patent for giving robots personalities last month, Google now wants to unleash an army of Rodney Dangerfield bots on the world. In a patent awarded today, the company outlines a system for “allocating tasks to a plurality of robotic devices.” This sounds innocuous enough—it could mean linking a series of factory robots together, or perhaps a gaggle of Roombas to clean a large house—but the potential is much greater. Google’s patent outlines methods for connecting a series of robots over the cloud to complete tasks, but it doesn’t put a limit on how many robots could be managed at once. The patent suggests that the robots could be controlled by a smartphone—Google’s mobile operating system is called Android, after all—with tasks doled out based on each robot’s ability to complete them. Someone could theoretically control the botswarm from anywhere in the world.