Ten years ago, starry-eyed dreamers imagined a future when people could make video calls on tiny devices and master a vast trove of knowledge and entertainment with the ease of a voice command.

Thanks to the efforts of Apple, Google and a host of other tech companies, such devices are now commonplace. But a new set of technologies are taking their place at the intersection of science-fiction and achievable breakthrough.

Google, which in recent years has made headlines with ambitious “moon-shot” developments such as the self-driving car, is once again at the forefront. This time the search-engine giant, powered by massive financial resources, has its cadres of brainiacs capitalising on significant progress in rapidly maturing robotic technology.

The latest sign of the company’s ambitions to dominate what may become one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world was its acquisition of the leading robotics company Boston Dynamics, first reported Saturday by The New York Times.

Boston Dynamics develops advanced mechanical beasts for the US defense industry, and its stable includes a variety of machines that variously look like cheetahs, headless oxen and other creations that at first glance could have been torn from the doodle pad of a creative high-schooler in the 1980s.

Boston Robotics, however, has made these machines functional. Its best known machine, the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), is a pack robot built to carry heavy loads over uneven ground.

Other creatures under development include the WildCat, a dexterous four-legged robot than can prance on all terrains; Rise, an insect-like machine that scales vertical surfaces; Cheetah, which gallops at some 40 kilometres per hour; and SquishBot, built to change sizes and shapes to fit in difficult-to-access places.

Another of Boston Robotics’ products is Petman, a humanoid bot that can balance, walk, squat and perform other human-like motions. It even sweats to reduce excess heat.

News of the deal came just days after Google revealed that it had bought seven robotics companies in recent months as part of a strategy to develop its own robots to be used for warehouse, manufacturing and delivery work.

Professor Jacob Rosen, who directs the bionics lab at the University of California at Santa Cruz, believes that Google’s move marks a watershed moment in a sector in which most major developments have been funded by the US Defense Department.

Recent breakthroughs have brought us to the edge of a “robot renaissance,” he told dpa.

“Since the 1980s, all the textbooks have talked about the exponential growth of the field, but it never really happened,” he said. “Now we are finally getting there, and having a company the size of Google involved will help drive it to the market.” Google has placed the project under Andy Rubin, the highly regarded executive who led the development of Android into the world’s most widely used smartphone software.

The robotics firms that Google previously snapped up include Japanese robotics company Schaft, Redwood Robotics, three-dimensional vision company Industrial Perception, and Bot & Dolly, which built the robots that helped film Gravity.

Further Google acquisitions have included Meka Robotics, advertising and design firm Autofuss and advanced wheel design firm Holomni.

Rubin told the Times that the project was being developed with a 10-year vision, and he compared its success to that of Google’s self-driving cars.

“The automated car project was science fiction when it started. Now it is coming within reach,” Rubin said. “I feel with robotics it’s a green field. We’re building hardware, we’re building software, we’re building systems — so one team will be able to understand the whole stack.”

Google’s plans followed closely behind an announcement by web retail giant Amazon.com that it plans to develop a fleet of autonomous drones that would, within four to five years, be capable of delivering packages weighing up to 2.5 kilograms to customer homes within 16 kilometres of its distribution centres.

Even if Amazon and Google manage to overcome the technological challenges, Rosen warns that success is far from guaranteed.

“People, especially in the US, are very concerned about privacy, and its not clear that they will want to have these machines buzzing around,” he said.

Rosen warned that the machines will have to be failsafe, “We are willing to accept errors by people. But we have zero tolerance for technological errors.”

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