After only a few months at Google, Java founder James Gosling has left the search engine giant to go to a small startup company specializing in ocean-based robotics.
Gosling, who joined Google in late March, said in blog post Tuesday that he has moved on to Liquid Robotics, where he is chief software architect. "They have a growing fleet of autonomous vehicles that rove the ocean collecting data from a variety of onboard sensors and uploading it to the cloud. The robots have a pile of satellite uplink/GSM/WiMax communication gear and redundant GPS units," Gosling said.
[ Gosling lauded the recent release of Java SE 7, citing Oracle's ability to deliver the technology after it been delayed. | Stay ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: First Look newsletter. ]
At Liquid Robotics, Gosling will be involved in both onboard software for sensing, navigation, and autonomy, as well as in the data center, dealing with rush of data: "The current systems work well, but they have a variety of issues that I look forward to working on. This is going to be a lot of fun."
"Liquid Robotics tackles a rocket science problem that does good for the world and is incurably cool," said Gosling in a statement released by the company. "Liquid Robotics can totally change the way we look at oceans. We'll be able to get a wide variety of detailed data more cheaply and pervasively than any other way. It involves a large data problem and a large-scale control problem, both of which are fascinating to me and have been passions of mine for years."
Gosling, who was considered the father of Java while at Sun Microsystems, had moved over to Oracle last year after Oracle acquired Sun. He left shortly afterward, under acrimonious terms. When he joined Google, he said at the time that he did not know what he would be working on at that company, anticipating he would be doing a bit of everything. In his blog, he expressed no animosity toward Google: "I've surprised myself and made another career change. I had a great time at Google, met lots of interesting people, but I met some folks outside doing something completely outrageous, and after much anguish decided to leave Google."
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