Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So? Last week, Tesla held an event called
Speaker 1: we Robot, in which attendees got to see a new
Speaker 1: vehicle that was dubbed the robo Van, although Elon Musk
Speaker 1: pronounced it as reboven. There was a cyber cab that
Speaker 1: must claims is going to cost less than thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars when it goes into production sometime before twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 1: which would potentially allow the average person to run a
Speaker 1: small uber or lift business out of their own garage
Speaker 1: with the cybercab giving people rides. Though that raises a
Speaker 1: lot of questions I have, like liability issues. Let's say
Speaker 1: that your cybercab got into an act extent. Are you
Speaker 1: held liable for that? Or is Tesla or I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's a discussion for another time. But they also gave
Speaker 1: a closer look at the humanoid Optimus robots, and they
Speaker 1: had robots that were dancing and serving drinks and some
Speaker 1: that even held conversations with attendees. Now, those robots had
Speaker 1: some help. Tesla also did not hide this fact. This
Speaker 1: is not like a gotcha because the company was very
Speaker 1: forthright about this. Remote operators were augmenting the robot's abilities
Speaker 1: while those robots were on the floor. So, for example,
Speaker 1: those conversations were actually human beings who were using the
Speaker 1: robots kind of like an advanced bipedal intercom system. But
Speaker 1: it made me think about the long history of humans
Speaker 1: trying to make humanoid robots. Now, in some ways this
Speaker 1: pursuit is a bit strange because a legged, bipedal humanoid
Speaker 1: robot brings with it a ton of challenges that you
Speaker 1: could sidestep if you just made some compromises to your
Speaker 1: design approach, like why does the robot need to be
Speaker 1: bipedal and humanoid? If you decided the robot should move
Speaker 1: around on wheels or tank treads, or maybe move around
Speaker 1: on all fours, or maybe you make like a centaur
Speaker 1: like robot where it has like a base with four
Speaker 1: legs and then a torso with two arms and it
Speaker 1: stands upright. You know, we make the rules like it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to take any specific form factor, and you
Speaker 1: could do that and get around a lot of the
Speaker 1: challenges you would face if you were to instead focus
Speaker 1: on this humanoid bipedal approach. Creating a robot that can
Speaker 1: move the way humans do is hard. It has taken
Speaker 1: decades of research and development to accomplish that to a
Speaker 1: reliable degree, and even then it's typically under very controlled circumstances.
Speaker 1: When you start getting into stuff like uneven terrain, it
Speaker 1: gets a lot trickier. Okay, In other ways, the desire
Speaker 1: to build a human like robot is totally understandable. You know,
Speaker 1: my first reaction to anyone talking about developing a humanoid
Speaker 1: robot is why why are you doing that? What's your reasoning?
Speaker 1: Because if you can accomplish the same goal using a
Speaker 1: different method of locomotion, that might be the better choice. However,
Speaker 1: if you want this robot to be able to do
Speaker 1: tasks in our human world, like tasks that human beings
Speaker 1: would typically carry out on their own, well, making the
Speaker 1: robot human shaped makes more sense. You don't have to
Speaker 1: adapt your environment to the abilities of the robot, right
Speaker 1: because a set of stairs or a ladder would defeat
Speaker 1: most wheeled robots. They would come to it and say, well,
Speaker 1: I can't navigate up this obstacle, and if my goal
Speaker 1: is on the other end of that obstacle, that's a problem.
Speaker 1: So to really maneuver within the human world, it helps
Speaker 1: to have your typical human shape and typical human capabilities. Now,
Speaker 1: the flip side of this is that we humans, we
Speaker 1: have an obligation to make spaces accessible for those who
Speaker 1: have an atypical shape or atypical capabilities. We need to
Speaker 1: make sure that people who don't have the use of say,
Speaker 1: their legs, can still access really important stuff. That's a
Speaker 1: responsibility we have, but that's a topic for another episode. Plus,
Speaker 1: I think there is something inherent within us, or at
Speaker 1: least inherent within some of us, some human beings, and
Speaker 1: it drives us to want to create companions that look
Speaker 1: and to an extent behave the way we do. So
Speaker 1: much of science fiction is based around variations of this idea.
Speaker 1: Arguably Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is kind of along this track
Speaker 1: of thinking. You know, you have you your crazy scientists
Speaker 1: who desires to play god, and then you have General
Speaker 1: Capex's influential work, Rossum's Universal Robots. That's the work where
Speaker 1: we get the term robot in the first place, or
Speaker 1: the replicants in Blade Runner, which actually pretty closely resemble
Speaker 1: the robots in capex work, to the works of Isaac
Speaker 1: Asimov and beyond. So in many of these pieces there's
Speaker 1: a warning that is given that the pursuit to build
Speaker 1: and exploit robots often comes tinged with arrogance and hubris,
Speaker 1: and it rarely works out well for anybody by the
Speaker 1: end of the story. Now, not all of those robots
Speaker 1: were mechanical or electro mechanical or digital creatures. In fact,
Speaker 1: like Frankenstein's Monster, the robots in Capex's work and the
Speaker 1: replicants in Blade Runner are all synthetic life forms. They're
Speaker 1: not masses of wires and circuit boards. Asimov's work introduced
Speaker 1: more mechanical and electro mechanical creatures with artificial brains. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: all the stories involve creatures and creations that gain an
Speaker 1: awareness of themselves and their place in the world, and
Speaker 1: how they reject the hand that has been dealt to them,
Speaker 1: often to dramatic and catastrophic degrees. Now, what the future
Speaker 1: holds as far as humanoid robots go has yet to
Speaker 1: be written, though we can certainly look back and talk
Speaker 1: about some of the history in the field of humanoid
Speaker 1: robots that have happened so far. Before robots, we have
Speaker 1: examples of automata that mimiced human movement and capabilities. Some
Speaker 1: of these were actual clockwork creations, such as the Karakuri.
Speaker 1: These are puppets from Japan, dating as far back as
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, so the sixteen hundreds. These used mechanisms
Speaker 1: to power certain movements, usually repeatable movements like serving tea
Speaker 1: or playing musical instrument. Some of the early automata weren't
Speaker 1: automata at all. They were hoaxes. The famed mechanical Turk
Speaker 1: creation of Wolfgang von Kemplan is such an example. Kempland
Speaker 1: actually stowed a human operator inside a cabinet that was
Speaker 1: attached to this supposed automaton that had been designed to
Speaker 1: play chess. In reality, it was the human operator hidden
Speaker 1: inside the cabinet that was controlling everything. It was really
Speaker 1: just a puppet, not an automaton. But these creations, whether
Speaker 1: actual automata or not, were limited in function, and typically
Speaker 1: they weren't bipedal either, not truly like they weren't moving
Speaker 1: around on two legs. They might be stationary in the
Speaker 1: case of the mechanical turk, or they might have wheels
Speaker 1: and they have like robes that cover up the wheels,
Speaker 1: so it looks like they're kind of gliding across, but
Speaker 1: they're not actually walking. And I also have to include
Speaker 1: one story I came across because it's just too absurd
Speaker 1: to leave out. So in eighteen forty eight. In May
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty eight, a couple of different journals, one
Speaker 1: of them being Scientific American, published an account of a
Speaker 1: supposed encounter with a remarkable automaton that was capable of
Speaker 1: standing up, sitting down, and even of speaking. The automaton
Speaker 1: itself was apparently almost indistinguishable from a human being. The
Speaker 1: account was said to have originally published in quote an
Speaker 1: Augsburg Gazette end quote. So Augsburg is a city in
Speaker 1: Bavaria in Germany, and so the original article was supposedly
Speaker 1: written in German and then translated into English to be
Speaker 1: published in various periodicals in the United States and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: The automaton's name was mister Eisenbrass, which is great, but
Speaker 1: the name of the inventor was doctor Lube, which, y'all,
Speaker 1: that's like a gift from the gods of comedy right there.
Speaker 1: Mister Eisenbrass and Doctor Lube. I maintain that someone should
Speaker 1: make a stage production that has the title mister Eisenbrass
Speaker 1: and Doctor Lube, and it might well be me unless
Speaker 1: someone beats me to it. And someone probably will beat
Speaker 1: me to it, because I'm infamous for coming up with
Speaker 1: ideas for shows or novels or whatever and then just
Speaker 1: sitting on them. But my goodness, mister Eisenbrass and Doctor Lube.
Speaker 1: That's that's a title, y'all. Anyway, according to this article,
Speaker 1: the author and some other visitors went to the lab
Speaker 1: of doctor Lube, which I imagine was down a slippery slope. Anyway,
Speaker 1: The doctor was quote seated at a sort of cabinet
Speaker 1: having a keyboard somewhat similar to that of a piano
Speaker 1: forte arranged on one side of it, and nearly in
Speaker 1: the center of a room sat a fashionably dressed gentleman
Speaker 1: who rose and bowed as we entered endo quote. And then,
Speaker 1: according to the article, the visitors engaged in some small
Speaker 1: talk with this fashionably dressed gentleman, and the gentleman actually
Speaker 1: took a seat after the visitors had sat down, and
Speaker 1: eventually the doctor stops playing at his keyboard, and mister
Speaker 1: Eisenbrass goes quiet, and Lube explains that the whole thing
Speaker 1: is a mechanical contraption. Only then do the visitors notice
Speaker 1: the cables going from the keyboard console to the chair
Speaker 1: of mister Eisenbrass. Now, according to the piece, Lube procured
Speaker 1: bones from a human being, presumably a dead one, which
Speaker 1: is a big ol' ick already, but then use rubber
Speaker 1: tubes to kind of serve as musculature, and that he
Speaker 1: also created quote a perfect system of nerves made of
Speaker 1: fine platinum wire and covered with silk end Quote to
Speaker 1: what end, you might say, what what are the nerves for?
Speaker 1: I guess the idea is that electric motors would pull
Speaker 1: upon the rubber tubes. It does explain that there were
Speaker 1: electro magnets that were in use in this system, and
Speaker 1: that the tubes just served as muscles that when you
Speaker 1: pulled on them, would cause the contraction you would associate
Speaker 1: with a human body. I actually at first assumed, since
Speaker 1: they were talking about rubber tubes, that this was going
Speaker 1: to be a pneumatic system where you would use air
Speaker 1: to achieve similar results. Right, you pump air into something
Speaker 1: to extend a limb, and you would allow air to
Speaker 1: escape to contract the limb. But that apparently is not
Speaker 1: how this was supposed to work. Supposedly, the keyboard allowed
Speaker 1: the doctor to produce incredible results just by pressing a
Speaker 1: few keys, like I guess there was a key that
Speaker 1: was just labeled small talk or something, and that the
Speaker 1: figure was apparently capable of quote walking, talking, singing, playing
Speaker 1: the piano, and doing many other things with as much
Speaker 1: ease and precision as an accomplished man. End quote. The
Speaker 1: author then proactively chides the reader for undoubtedly asking so
Speaker 1: what good is on this? And then the author goes
Speaker 1: on to talk about how mechanical servants will replace all
Speaker 1: those undependable lauts and scally wags who currently act as servants,
Speaker 1: and thus give the women of the household the freedom
Speaker 1: to carry out their feminine duties as caretaker of the
Speaker 1: home just by tickling some ivories. Yeah, this article is
Speaker 1: well and truly both sexist and classist. Anyway, to say
Speaker 1: that I am skeptical about this account is putting it lightly.
Speaker 1: I feel fairly certain that no such demonstration ever actually
Speaker 1: took place, or if there were some kind of demonstration,
Speaker 1: it did not unfold as described in this article. I
Speaker 1: did try to find the original article written in German.
Speaker 1: I assumed that the German gazette that was referenced in
Speaker 1: the English piece must have been the Algemina Zeitung that
Speaker 1: was published in Augsburg, Germany for most of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and was like the main paper not just of Augsburg,
Speaker 1: but like of that region of Germany. However, I found
Speaker 1: no record of Eisenbrass or doctor Lube anyway. As diverting
Speaker 1: as mister Eisenbrass and doctor Lube are, I feel confident
Speaker 1: in saying that the capability of building a robot that
Speaker 1: could maintain its balance standing still, let alone walking around
Speaker 1: all without other means of support, was likely well outside
Speaker 1: the reach of even the most clever of innovators in
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds. That seems like that's just a
Speaker 1: no brainer. When it comes to creating a two legged robot,
Speaker 1: one where most of the mass is actually above the
Speaker 1: legs of the robot, not contained within the legs, things
Speaker 1: get really tricky because a lot of physics have to
Speaker 1: be considered before engineers could get serious about bipedal robots.
Speaker 1: If we relied solely on trial and error and just
Speaker 1: figured we're going to get this right, we'd likely not
Speaker 1: be anywhere as far along as we are right now.
Speaker 1: So when we come back, we're going to consider how
Speaker 1: challenging it is to create something that walks around on
Speaker 1: two legs. But before we get to that, and I
Speaker 1: get a little unbalanced, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsors. All right, So what's the big deal
Speaker 1: with walking around on two legs? Lots of people do
Speaker 1: it all the time. You know, toddlers can get the
Speaker 1: hang of it without too much trouble, and we celebrate
Speaker 1: it when it happens like that's a big deal, But
Speaker 1: then shortly after that it's It really becomes just a
Speaker 1: source of stress as the toddlers toddle along toward one
Speaker 1: danger or another. But you're entirely dependent upon just two
Speaker 1: points of contact with your surrounding environment. If you're talking
Speaker 1: about a true bipedal form that is capable of moving
Speaker 1: around round the area, and those two points of contact
Speaker 1: with the environment are essentially the bottoms of the foot seats. That's,
Speaker 1: of course, if everything is actually going as you wanted
Speaker 1: it to. If things have gone poorly, you might actually
Speaker 1: have lots of different points of contact with the ground.
Speaker 1: But that's because you went horizontal after something went wrong.
Speaker 1: So you've got your robot. It's got two legs, the
Speaker 1: two points of contact with the ground or the bottom
Speaker 1: of the feet likely the legs and the feet, and
Speaker 1: your robot in general has a number of degrees of freedom.
Speaker 1: So degrees of freedom are joints that allow movement along
Speaker 1: at least one axis. The point of contact with the
Speaker 1: ground could actually be considered a passive degree of freedom
Speaker 1: in itself. And you're also relying on friction to allow
Speaker 1: your robot to stand up, to maintain balance, and to
Speaker 1: get anywhere. If the robot's feet were frictionless, then it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to stay up right at all, let
Speaker 1: alone walk. And you've got all this weight above the
Speaker 1: legs that you have to worry about. So have you
Speaker 1: ever balanced something like, say, a baseball bat, on the
Speaker 1: palm of your hand. If you do that with a
Speaker 1: baseball bat and you're using the narrow part the handle
Speaker 1: in of the words of the bat and you're balancing
Speaker 1: that on your palm and the thick part of the
Speaker 1: bat is up in the air, you know that little
Speaker 1: motions can create big results. Right A small movement at
Speaker 1: the base can cause the top to really sway, and
Speaker 1: that requires you to make larger corrections down at the
Speaker 1: base in order to keep everything in balance. Well, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what it's like to try and figure out
Speaker 1: how to make a bipedal robot walk while maintaining its balance.
Speaker 1: You've got a inertia to deal with, and that really
Speaker 1: affects balance. How do you make sure the mass above
Speaker 1: the legs doesn't throw everything off kilter whenever it starts
Speaker 1: moving or when it stops moving. How do you correct
Speaker 1: for that so that your robot doesn't just tumble over?
Speaker 1: How do you keep your bot upright? One early discussion
Speaker 1: that became a core component in the pursuit of bipedal
Speaker 1: robots revolved around a concept that came to be known
Speaker 1: as the zero moment point or ZMP. So a pair
Speaker 1: of smarty pants is from Russia named Beyomir Vukabratovich and
Speaker 1: Davor Jurichic first described this back in the nineteen sixties. Now,
Speaker 1: the actual term zero moment point would be coined a
Speaker 1: little bit later, but it was used to describe what
Speaker 1: they were talking about, and the whole concept revolves around
Speaker 1: a moment in which the net reaction forces between a
Speaker 1: bipedal mechanism's feet and the ground are essentially zero and
Speaker 1: there's no movement along the horizontal plane. So that means,
Speaker 1: like forward momentum and gravity they've kind of canceled each
Speaker 1: other out. You've hit this zero moment where you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about the robot tipping forward and falling over.
Speaker 1: It is you could think of as a moment of stability,
Speaker 1: and the robot, assuming no external forces are acting upon it,
Speaker 1: will remain upright, assuming that ZMP is maintained. Now, this
Speaker 1: discussion really drives home how stability can be a huge challenge.
Speaker 1: As robots move, they must deal with inertia and you
Speaker 1: have to know the math to achieve dynamic stability if
Speaker 1: your robot is to remain upright, whether it's walking, running, jumping,
Speaker 1: or whatever. And in fact, it gets increasingly more difficult
Speaker 1: as you go down those tasks. Walking is hard, running
Speaker 1: is really hard, and jumping is really really hard. Like
Speaker 1: the jump part might be easy, the landing and staying
Speaker 1: upright that's the hard part. Otherwise your robot's gonna topple over.
Speaker 1: And while watching a robot take a tumble might be
Speaker 1: a great YouTube video. In practice, in the real world,
Speaker 1: you obviously don't want your robots to be falling over.
Speaker 1: You want your robots to be stable and capable of
Speaker 1: moving around environments without causing damage or potentially injury to people,
Speaker 1: to be able to maneuver. It's tough and robots are expensive.
Speaker 1: You don't want them falling over. Then you're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: that's twenty thousand dollars to get this thing back on
Speaker 1: its feet. Again, that's not a great way to reach
Speaker 1: progress either. So to plan the motion for a robot,
Speaker 1: you need to be able to calculate the zero moment
Speaker 1: point or ZMP. You need to figure out which joints
Speaker 1: the robot is going to have to engage in order
Speaker 1: to achieve stability under its various operating conditions, and those
Speaker 1: conditions could include things outside of your strict control. It's
Speaker 1: one thing to calculate how the robot can achieve stability
Speaker 1: when it's walking across a level floor that has a
Speaker 1: firm surface, But what about a floor that surface isn't
Speaker 1: as firm. Maybe it's a little squishy, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a nineteen seventies shag carpet or something, or what
Speaker 1: if the floor isn't level, what if the terrain is
Speaker 1: actually uneven, you know, kind of like a typical sidewalk
Speaker 1: in the city of Atlanta. How does a robot compensate
Speaker 1: for all this, remain stable and keep itself from pitching over?
Speaker 1: This is a non trivial challenge, and it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of work to get to a point where robots
Speaker 1: are sophisticated enough to achieve stability. Engineers have had to
Speaker 1: take a lot into consideration. Would more degrees of freedom
Speaker 1: help or does that actually overcomplicate matters? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no reason why we should be constrained to the same
Speaker 1: degrees of freedom that a person has. Right Like, we
Speaker 1: could think, oh, let's mimic the way humans work and
Speaker 1: make sure that the ankles and the knees and the
Speaker 1: hips all have the same points of articulation. Or we
Speaker 1: could say, well, there's no reason why we couldn't have
Speaker 1: more or fewer joints if it makes the operations work better.
Speaker 1: So that's something to think about, you know. And then
Speaker 1: walking would require shifting stability so that the robots can
Speaker 1: maintain itself with just one foot in contact with the ground,
Speaker 1: right like, suddenly points of contact have halved. If you're running,
Speaker 1: it's even harder because with running, at least the definition
Speaker 1: of running that roboticists use, there's a moment that may
Speaker 1: only last just for a split second, but there's a
Speaker 1: moment in which both of the robots feet are not
Speaker 1: touching the ground. So how do you achieve stability when
Speaker 1: your point of contact is continually interrupted? Jumping is even harder, right,
Speaker 1: because you're really leaving the ground then, and how do
Speaker 1: you ensure that landing you do so in a way
Speaker 1: that you maintain stability. So that ZMP was a huge deal.
Speaker 1: It still is a huge deal. Not all robot locomotion
Speaker 1: is centered around ZMP calculations, by the way, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it still is. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: work in bipedal robots, particularly in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: involved calculating ZMP and keeping the robot within that zone
Speaker 1: while engineering movements. So calculating ZMP is one thing. Building
Speaker 1: a robot that can balance is another. Even building robot
Speaker 1: that's capable of static stability is no simple task. Static
Speaker 1: stability just means the robot is able to stand still
Speaker 1: and not fall over, and believe it or not, that's
Speaker 1: easier said than done. In nineteen seventy four, labs at
Speaker 1: the School of Science and Engineering at Waseda University in
Speaker 1: Japan started a project with the goal of building a
Speaker 1: stable bipedal robot. This project became known as Weibot wabot
Speaker 1: that stands for Waseda Robot. The labs created a new
Speaker 1: focus group within the laboratory system at the university. It's
Speaker 1: called the Bioengineering Group, and their first effort, the Waybot one,
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly something that you would mistake as a human being.
Speaker 1: It was not like a smooth humanoid robot. You would
Speaker 1: never look at it and think it was anything other
Speaker 1: than a robot. In fact, it looked kind of like
Speaker 1: a giant erector set. It was very much a big, blocky,
Speaker 1: metallic humanoid robot. So it had a limb control system,
Speaker 1: obviously very important if you're going to have a walking robot.
Speaker 1: It also had a primitive vision system. It even was
Speaker 1: able to converse in Japanese to a certain degree. They
Speaker 1: said that it had the in electrical capacity of like
Speaker 1: a one and a half year old Keep in mind
Speaker 1: this is the early nineteen seventies. It was tethered to
Speaker 1: computer systems and power systems. There was not yet a
Speaker 1: point where we had reached a miniaturization where you could
Speaker 1: have all that computing power, not to mention electrical power
Speaker 1: on board the robot itself. If you had done that,
Speaker 1: the robot would either need to be huge or would
Speaker 1: be carrying the biggest backpack you've ever seen in order
Speaker 1: to have all the computational and electrical power necessary to
Speaker 1: operate this thing. So, yeah, it was tethered. The Waybot
Speaker 1: was the first humanoid robot to achieve static stability, and
Speaker 1: later it would be the first digitally controlled anthropomorphic robot
Speaker 1: at all that was able to achieve dynamic stability, and
Speaker 1: statically stable means that the robot can remain balanced while
Speaker 1: standing still. Dynamically balanced refers to robots that are maintaining
Speaker 1: that stability while they are still in motion. Going from
Speaker 1: one to the other and back again is actually really hard.
Speaker 1: Like achieving one is hard, achieving the other one is
Speaker 1: also hard. Going back and forth between still and moving
Speaker 1: and maintaining balance is even harder. You know, remaining dynamically
Speaker 1: stable is often easier than going from dynamic to static,
Speaker 1: assuming that you know motions are smooth, and fast enough
Speaker 1: to counter the forces acting on the robot, because when
Speaker 1: you think about it, walking is really a series of falls.
Speaker 1: It's like you're falling and you're catching yourself over and
Speaker 1: over again. You move forward when you walk, not just
Speaker 1: by moving your legs. You know, you kind of lean
Speaker 1: forward into the walk as well, and for a moment
Speaker 1: it's as if you're falling forward and that you would
Speaker 1: face plant into the ground ahead of you. But of
Speaker 1: course you've moved your leg to catch yourself, and this
Speaker 1: process repeats, so you're propelling yourself forward by constantly almost
Speaker 1: falling but catching yourself over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Now we do this without really thinking about it, like
Speaker 1: once we learn how to walk, we don't have to
Speaker 1: focus on this. This is this is just how we
Speaker 1: do it. Robots, however, have to calculate this stuff in
Speaker 1: order to do it properly, in order to catch themselves
Speaker 1: with just the right amount of force to keep things
Speaker 1: moving and not to use too much or too little
Speaker 1: force and then risk taking a fall. Tons of work
Speaker 1: in robotics continued around the world towards this goal of
Speaker 1: creating bipedal humanoid robots, but nearly all the articles I
Speaker 1: read for this episode. Make a big jump from the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies to the mid nineteen nineties. That's when Honda
Speaker 1: unveiled a robot that they called the humanoid P two.
Speaker 1: So Honda had actually been developing humanoid robots for about
Speaker 1: a decade before showing off the P two. A series
Speaker 1: that was kind of the in secret R and D
Speaker 1: works that was called the E series of robots, and
Speaker 1: this was in the nineteen eighties. These E robots were primitive,
Speaker 1: but they demonstrate the capability to walk on level ground
Speaker 1: under very controlled circumstances. The first E robot, for example,
Speaker 1: was able to walk at an extremely deliberate pace because
Speaker 1: it was said that each step took about five seconds
Speaker 1: to complete. I challenge you to try walking that way,
Speaker 1: even if it's just a couple of feet, count to
Speaker 1: five slowly per step. That is slow, but it illustrates
Speaker 1: how challenging it was to design a robot capable of
Speaker 1: walking in a biped away. Now, the first E series
Speaker 1: robot was built in nineteen eighty six. It essentially looked
Speaker 1: like a pair of legs attached to robotic hips and
Speaker 1: that's it like. It didn't have any top half. There
Speaker 1: was no torso or arms or anything like that. The
Speaker 1: B two wouldn't debut until nineteen ninety six. Honda had
Speaker 1: a decade of work developing humanoid robotics before they revealed
Speaker 1: to the public what they had been up to. And
Speaker 1: like I said, E zero, not very humanoid. It is
Speaker 1: like a free, free walking pelvis, robotic pelvis. The later
Speaker 1: robots in the E series started to look I don't know,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, even more strange, Like one of them
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a microwave oven that has legs.
Speaker 1: One of them looks sort of like the front end
Speaker 1: of a fancy car, like a Rolls Royce, but with legs.
Speaker 1: You would never call any of them human in shape,
Speaker 1: but they were gradually evolving toward that. The P two
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six looked much more human in that
Speaker 1: it had legs, and it had arms and a torso
Speaker 1: and a head. Now this head was rectangular, and it
Speaker 1: was it was wider than it was tall. It was
Speaker 1: not human looking at all, but it demonstrated that Honda
Speaker 1: had been hard at work tackling this BikeE Hetle challenge,
Speaker 1: and it would serve as a foundation for a much
Speaker 1: more famous Honda robot just a few years later, a
Speaker 1: robot that would debut in two thousand. It was called Asmo.
Speaker 1: Now I have a fun connection with Asimo, and I
Speaker 1: will talk about that, but first let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: All right, So the year was two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: Asimo had been a thing for the better part of
Speaker 1: the two thousands, like it debuted in early two thousand
Speaker 1: and now it's two thousand and seven. I had just
Speaker 1: been hired by a company called HowStuffWorks dot com, and
Speaker 1: one of my first assignments was to rewrite and to
Speaker 1: update the article on how Asimo works. So I researched
Speaker 1: the project, including the lofty goal that the engineers had
Speaker 1: set to have a robot that couldn't just walk but
Speaker 1: could also run. So it would be a robot that,
Speaker 1: at little points would have both feet leave the ground
Speaker 1: just for a moment, but still be able to maintain
Speaker 1: its balance. Now that was a huge accomplishment. Even if
Speaker 1: you were to watch videos and it kind of looks
Speaker 1: like Asmo's doing a little hopping dance you might do
Speaker 1: if you were in need of getting to a restroom,
Speaker 1: Like I think of it as oh, it's doing the
Speaker 1: peepee dance. But you know, watch Asmo running. It's cute,
Speaker 1: it's weird, it has this odd sort of tone to it,
Speaker 1: I would say, But it was phenomenal because yes, for
Speaker 1: a split second, both feet are off the ground, and
Speaker 1: yet when the opposite foot makes contact with the floor,
Speaker 1: the robot would maintain its balance and be able to
Speaker 1: continue running. Asimo looks a lot more human than P
Speaker 1: two did. In fact, it looks like sort of a
Speaker 1: diminutive astronaut in a spacesuit. I actually got to meet
Speaker 1: Asimo once when I was at Disneyland in California, because
Speaker 1: there was demonstration of Asimo that was a real blast.
Speaker 1: I watched this presentation that they gave, and then I
Speaker 1: mentioned to a cast member that I had written an
Speaker 1: article about how Asima worked, and they brought me aside
Speaker 1: and I got to meet the robot, which was a
Speaker 1: really fun moment for me. That was kind of cool. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Asimo would go on to establish a lot of firsts
Speaker 1: in the bipedal humanoid robot space. Not only was it
Speaker 1: the first one to run, it could also climb and
Speaker 1: descend stairs, at least eventually it could. One early demonstration
Speaker 1: didn't go so well, and Asimo tripped, but it later
Speaker 1: demonstrated those capabilities, and these were things that would be
Speaker 1: built upon in future robotic projects, both at Honda and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I should also mention that Asimo was largely a programmed robot,
Speaker 1: in that it would maneuver around and interact with an
Speaker 1: environment that had been carefully mapped out for the robot.
Speaker 1: So it's not like it was spontaneous. It wasn't coming
Speaker 1: into a brand new environment finding its way or around
Speaker 1: picking things up that kind of stuff. It was following
Speaker 1: a very specific set of instructions and it knew where
Speaker 1: everything was supposed to be and where it was supposed
Speaker 1: to go. So it was not like an autonomous robot.
Speaker 1: But that really wasn't what the project was about. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about autonomy. It was about robotic locomotion and interacting
Speaker 1: in human spaces. So you have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that this whole approach to robotics is multidisciplinary in nature.
Speaker 1: It requires lots of different work in varying fields, some
Speaker 1: of which aren't even in technology. I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that later. In twenty fifteen, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Speaker 1: Agency here in the United States aka DARPA held a
Speaker 1: robotics challenge. So DARPA is known for contracting with various
Speaker 1: companies and research facilities to develop bleeding edge technologies potentially
Speaker 1: useful for the purposes of national defense. They're not always
Speaker 1: couched in those specific terms, but that's the directive of DARPA.
Speaker 1: DARPA has played a part in everything from the development
Speaker 1: of the Internet to the early days of driverlest car technology.
Speaker 1: Well in twenty fifteen, they had a lofty goal set
Speaker 1: for robotics teams and it was all inspired by a
Speaker 1: terrible disaster. So in twenty eleven, an earthquake and tsunami
Speaker 1: damaged the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. The
Speaker 1: power plants backup systems were damaged, and this led to
Speaker 1: a situation in which the plant's reactors began to overheat
Speaker 1: because there was no power that could be used to
Speaker 1: operate the cooling system in order to keep everything under control,
Speaker 1: and ultimately this overheating led to a containment failure and
Speaker 1: radioactive material was released into the environment. It was the
Speaker 1: worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Cleaning up after the disaster
Speaker 1: was a really dangerous job. Response workers would be subjected
Speaker 1: to potentially dangerous levels of radiation or extended periods of time.
Speaker 1: DARPA's challenge was to give robotics teams a set of
Speaker 1: tasks that a robot would have to complete with minimal
Speaker 1: direction and intervention from the teams. The idea being let's
Speaker 1: work toward a technological solution where we could develop robots
Speaker 1: that could step in into situations that were like Fukushima
Speaker 1: and take the place of humans so that human beings
Speaker 1: don't put their lives at risk to do this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. The robots, since they have no lives, they
Speaker 1: could go and do it and we wouldn't be putting
Speaker 1: any human life in jeopardy. That was the concept. But
Speaker 1: to do this, these robots would have to do very
Speaker 1: human like things, and they have to maneuver in a
Speaker 1: very human like world because it was designed by humans, right,
Speaker 1: so no big surprise there. So the robots would have
Speaker 1: to do stuff like get in, to get out of
Speaker 1: and operate a vehicle, to be able to open doors
Speaker 1: and step through doorways, to pick up a tool and
Speaker 1: to use it properly. And teams were given some but
Speaker 1: not all, the information that they would actually need in
Speaker 1: order to complete the various tasks that DARPA had laid out,
Speaker 1: and the reason why they weren't given everything is because
Speaker 1: the whole concept requires teams to build a robot that
Speaker 1: could accomplish goals in a world that is unpredictable and
Speaker 1: uncontrolled for the most part. In a real emergency, there
Speaker 1: may be no way to account for all the variables,
Speaker 1: and depending on the nature of the emergency, a team
Speaker 1: might not be able to maintain a direct connection with
Speaker 1: their robot, so the robot would need to be able
Speaker 1: to handle some of this autonomously. Now, most of the
Speaker 1: challenges were pretty darn straightforward, and they would have been
Speaker 1: trivial for most people to be able to complete if
Speaker 1: they were given the assignment. You know, if you ask
Speaker 1: your typical human to get into a vehicle kind of
Speaker 1: like a golf cart and to drive to a specific location,
Speaker 1: to then get out of that vehicle, to open a door,
Speaker 1: go through the door, pick up a power drill, drill
Speaker 1: a hole in a wall, climb some stairs, and navigate
Speaker 1: some rubble, and you'd likely see a lot of people
Speaker 1: succeed at this. It's again a pretty simple set of
Speaker 1: tasks for most people, that's not a tough gig, but
Speaker 1: for robots, it's a totally different story. Now. There are
Speaker 1: compilations of videos of the various teams participating in this
Speaker 1: competition that show just how challenging it really was. There
Speaker 1: are videos of robots that, upon trying to just walk
Speaker 1: through a doorway, fall over. One robot completed the list
Speaker 1: of tasks, turned wave to the crowd, then fell over
Speaker 1: because that balance thing is really hard, y'all. Creating humanoid
Speaker 1: robots that can interact with the technology that was made
Speaker 1: for human beings requires a ton of consideration and cross
Speaker 1: disciplinary work. For one thing, sometimes it requires roboticists to ask, hey,
Speaker 1: why did we make this thing work in this specific way.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you have to go through reverse engineering
Speaker 1: the world around you in order to understand why things
Speaker 1: are the way they are. That doesn't always end with
Speaker 1: an answer that makes much sense. By the way, sometimes
Speaker 1: we're like, wow, we should really change this because this
Speaker 1: is not the best way to do it, but at
Speaker 1: that point it's the established way to do it. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: a team from the Republic of Korea won this competition.
Speaker 1: The winning robot was named DRC dash Qubo Hubo. It
Speaker 1: completed the series of tasks in just under forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: and the team took home a two million dollar cash prize. Now, no, lie,
Speaker 1: two million dollars, that's a lot of money, But I
Speaker 1: would be willing to bet that the two million dollars
Speaker 1: doesn't remotely cover the costs of all the research, development,
Speaker 1: and production of the robot itself. I bet if you
Speaker 1: were to add up all the expenses of making this robot,
Speaker 1: it would be more than two million dollars. But the
Speaker 1: money wasn't really the full goal of this thing. Like
Speaker 1: that was an award, but you weren't doing it to
Speaker 1: win the money. It's this challenge trying to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to achieve this really tough goal set out
Speaker 1: by the nature of the challenge itself. That's the real
Speaker 1: call the engineers out there, know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Like that thrill of tackling a problem and figuring out
Speaker 1: a solution. That's really what drives a lot of engineers. Now,
Speaker 1: if anything, the challenge illustrated just how hard it is
Speaker 1: to build a humanoid robot that can function properly. Now,
Speaker 1: the benefits are pretty clear. You know, this kind of
Speaker 1: robot could potentially step in during situations like the Fukushima
Speaker 1: disaster scenarios in which a human would be put into
Speaker 1: danger and the robot, due to its design, could interface
Speaker 1: with systems that had been built for humans. That's understandably
Speaker 1: a worthy goal. It's just a very challenging one. And
Speaker 1: it gets harder when we start to bring artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: into this because we've been mostly focused on things like locomotion.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about AI. Now. I've told this story before,
Speaker 1: but I went to a panel and about robotics. It
Speaker 1: was at south By Southwest. This was several years ago,
Speaker 1: and at that panel, the presenters were talking about how
Speaker 1: challenging it is to teach robots how to do things,
Speaker 1: like not program the robots to do it, but to
Speaker 1: teach them how to learn in an environment and then
Speaker 1: replicate things that they have learned. Like even when you
Speaker 1: build models in which the robots are able to observe
Speaker 1: and then attempt to replicate actions, stuff can go wrong.
Speaker 1: Robots have the same limitations as other examples of machine learning. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I have often used an example saying, like
Speaker 1: teaching a computer to do something like recognize that an
Speaker 1: image represents a specific object like a coffee mug is hard.
Speaker 1: Not all coffee mugs are alike, right, Some come in
Speaker 1: different sizes or shapes or colors. Some might have handles.
Speaker 1: Those handles could be shaped one way versus another, some
Speaker 1: might be you know, the pictures of them might be
Speaker 1: in under different lighting conditions, or they might be paired
Speaker 1: with other stuff that's of a similar size or shape
Speaker 1: to the coffee mug. All of these elements represent challenging
Speaker 1: variables to machines that are being trained to recognize images.
Speaker 1: You know, the machines do not inherently understand what makes
Speaker 1: a coffee mug a coffee mug. That's what you are
Speaker 1: teaching them. And you know, you can teach a human
Speaker 1: being what a coffee mug is and they pretty much
Speaker 1: get it pretty darn quickly, even to the point where
Speaker 1: they can recognize other coffee mugs that don't look exactly
Speaker 1: like the initial one. But for computers it requires a
Speaker 1: lot more training. You train your model, then you tweak
Speaker 1: all the settings so that you can improve your results,
Speaker 1: you know, cut down on the false positives and fix
Speaker 1: all the mistakes, and you train it again, and you're
Speaker 1: potentially using millions of images in order to do this. Now,
Speaker 1: consider the humble door, now a door is a pretty
Speaker 1: darn simple thing to operate for most people, but there
Speaker 1: are lots of different ways that a door could potentially
Speaker 1: operate right Like, the door might have a knob that
Speaker 1: you have to twist. It might have a bar that
Speaker 1: you have to press, or a handle that you have
Speaker 1: to pull. So when you encounter a door, chances are
Speaker 1: you have a decent idea of how it works, but
Speaker 1: you might not know which way it opens it for
Speaker 1: that can give you a little bit of a pause.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons
Speaker 1: a classic cartoon strip from the eighties. It shows a
Speaker 1: young boy pushing as hard as he possibly can on
Speaker 1: a door, and just above his hand on the door
Speaker 1: is a label that reads pull, and next to the
Speaker 1: doorway is a sign that reads Midvale School for the Gifted.
Speaker 1: I feel this cartoon in my soul some days. Well.
Speaker 1: Robots are kind of like that student. Even a robot
Speaker 1: that's been trained to open doors might need to pause
Speaker 1: and have a digital think about things before giving it
Speaker 1: an attempt. So the south By Southwest panelist was telling
Speaker 1: the story of such a robot, and this robot sat
Speaker 1: outside a door in a hallway. I think It was
Speaker 1: an electrical engineering department at the university that this panelist
Speaker 1: worked at, and it was sat there for several days
Speaker 1: just contemplating the door, and it was really irritating folks
Speaker 1: who worked there because they had to walk around this
Speaker 1: thing in order to get through the hallway, and if
Speaker 1: they passed in front of it, it irritated the row
Speaker 1: bodicists because it could actually disrupt the process and set
Speaker 1: things back even further. But the robot was just trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how it should proceed in order to
Speaker 1: try and open the door. And when you think about
Speaker 1: how a robot could potentially be powerful enough to cause
Speaker 1: damage to the environment it's in if it attempts to
Speaker 1: do something incorrectly, then you start to understand why taking
Speaker 1: time might actually be a necessity. It might be an
Speaker 1: important thing to build into robots. It seems ridiculous to
Speaker 1: just stare at a door for days on end before
Speaker 1: even attempting to open it, but if you could potentially
Speaker 1: rip the handle off the door or damage the door
Speaker 1: in some way, well, taking time might be a needed precaution.
Speaker 1: And that's not even getting into the challenge of having
Speaker 1: robots that operate within an environment in which they're also
Speaker 1: human beings. Obviously, you have to take a lot into
Speaker 1: consideration in those kinds of situations where robots and human
Speaker 1: beings are going to be working within the same environment.
Speaker 1: Like in most industrial uses for robots, the robots are
Speaker 1: very much separated from all the people, like there are
Speaker 1: multiple safety considerations put in place to keep the robots
Speaker 1: and people away from each other because the potential for
Speaker 1: catastrophe is way too high. If you're working too close
Speaker 1: to a robot, like it's a robot that welds stuff
Speaker 1: or whatever. Well, you know you don't want to get
Speaker 1: in the way of a welding, right, That would be awful,
Speaker 1: It would potentially be deadly. So creating robots that are
Speaker 1: capable of interacting among human beings it comes with its
Speaker 1: own series of challenges you have to overcome. So not
Speaker 1: only must the robot be able to move around without
Speaker 1: falling over onto somebody, it needs to be able to
Speaker 1: do this in a way that doesn't cause anxiety or
Speaker 1: fear or other negative reactions among the human beings. Really
Speaker 1: weird thing is that sometimes a robot can behave a
Speaker 1: little too human and that can end up being almost
Speaker 1: as bad as if it's not acting human enough. You've
Speaker 1: got to find a balance, Like there are expectations that
Speaker 1: humans have when it comes to interacting with the robots.
Speaker 1: Of the robots behave too far outside that set of expectations,
Speaker 1: it can cause issues. So robotics has become a truly
Speaker 1: multidisciplinary endeavor. Making a bipedal humanoid robot capable of integrating
Speaker 1: with humans the way the Tesla Optimist robot is supposed
Speaker 1: to do that requires lots of work in disciplines that
Speaker 1: go well outside of technology. We're talking about stuff like psychology,
Speaker 1: and I think every time we see a remarkable achievement
Speaker 1: in the robotics space, we're also reminded how far we
Speaker 1: still have to go and how hard this really is.
Speaker 1: So will Tesla's Optimist robots deliver upon all the promises
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk often quotes at these events. Maybe I'm skeptical,
Speaker 1: largely because Elon Musk has proven to make some rather
Speaker 1: ambitious claims the past that have failed to manifest as described.
Speaker 1: He's kind of the boy who called fully autonomous driving.
Speaker 1: And largely I also have doubts because I have an
Speaker 1: inkling as to how hard it's going to be to
Speaker 1: make a bipedal general purpose robot that's at least as
Speaker 1: good as, and hopefully better than a human being at
Speaker 1: doing your typical tasks. If the robot is worse at
Speaker 1: doing those tasks, then it's a waste of time and
Speaker 1: money to use the robot. Just hire somebody else to
Speaker 1: do it, it makes more sense. So like these are
Speaker 1: these are really high barriers that you have to you
Speaker 1: have to get over, and I don't think we're going
Speaker 1: to get over them very quickly. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to take years and years more work. But it is
Speaker 1: a heck of a goal to aim for. I don't
Speaker 1: want to shame anyone for taking aim at achieving this
Speaker 1: really difficult task because it drives innovation. I think that's important.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to dismiss anyone who's working toward
Speaker 1: building bipedal humanoid general purpose robots that have a level
Speaker 1: of AI that allow them to operate autonomously within a
Speaker 1: human environment. I think that that is a phenomen I
Speaker 1: just think it's also one that's going to require many
Speaker 1: more years of work for it to be a viable project. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: I guess I could see a disappointing version becoming a
Speaker 1: reality within a couple of years. But that's really falling
Speaker 1: fall short of the promise, and I would much rather
Speaker 1: see more work being done to improve the technology than
Speaker 1: for a premature release of some humanoid robot that just
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything well enough to justify its existence. That
Speaker 1: would really take a lot of wind out of the sales.
Speaker 1: I think, all right, that's it for this episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I hope you're all well, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.