Google's New Robotics Partner Is Known for Making iPhones

Google has reportedly teamed up with a surprising name to further its robotic goals.

The tech giant is working with Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, which has long been associated with Apple, assembling most of the company's iPhones and iPads, CNET reported via The Wall Street Journal.

Sources familiar with the matter told WSJ that Google's Andy Rubin, a former Android executive and now head of robotics, has been working closely with Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou and the company to further Google's moonshot robotics program.

Rubin and Gou recently met in Taipei "to discuss new robotic technologies," sources said.

"At the meeting, Gou expressed excitement over new automation technologies demonstrated by Rubin," the sources told WSJ. "Rubin also asked Gou to help integrate a technology company that Google is acquiring as Foxconn's strength lies in mechanical engineering."

Foxconn's chairman hopes the company can put robots into factories in the near future as it becomes "a high-tech manufacturer focusing on high-margin, capital-intensive products such as automobile and medical equipment."

As the biggest contract manufacturer of electronics devices worldwide, Foxconn can act as a testing ground for Google, which plans to come up with a robotic operating system for manufacturers similar to the Android OS for smartphones.

"Foxconn needs Google's help to step up automation at its factories as the company has the lowest sales per employee among the contract makers, given its large workforce," Wanli Wang, an analyst at CIMB Securities, told WSJ. "Using robots to replace human workers would be the next big thing in the technology industry."

Google has purchased at least eight robotics companies for the robotics program, including Boston Dynamics, which has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon, according to Business Insider.

Bringing together hardware and software, the robotics program follows Google's tradition of building its own servers and data centers and writing its own software.