Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, try to
Speaker 1: be a robot king and settled for a robot boy.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren bolck Obam, and our other
Speaker 1: co host, Joe McCormick is not with us today. He's
Speaker 1: perfectly fine. He's on an excellent vacation and we'll be
Speaker 1: back with us soon, but perhaps even on a on
Speaker 1: a on a bogus journey. Thinking of the whole bill
Speaker 1: and ted that I caught it. So today we're talking
Speaker 1: about robots. Yes, we are sorry. That was so awkward.
Speaker 1: I inject awkwardness wherever I go. Oh me too. It's
Speaker 1: one of the things that I really pride myself on. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that robots pride themselves on is
Speaker 1: being in affiliation with dart Yeah, or at least DARPA
Speaker 1: is prides themselves on their affiliation with robots one or another. Yes,
Speaker 1: So we've done a bunch of episodes about DARPA and
Speaker 1: their connections to robots the past. Um. I mean, we
Speaker 1: mentioned them all the time, but just this May, we
Speaker 1: did a whole episode about how the organization works, end
Speaker 1: of the projects that they're sponsoring right now, and uh
Speaker 1: that that one was called What's Up with DARPA if
Speaker 1: you would like to check it out. And back in November,
Speaker 1: we did an episode about one of their other robot challenges,
Speaker 1: the Grand Challenge, which is an autonomous car obstacle course
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and that one's called robot you Can
Speaker 1: Drive My Car? Yeah, so, uh, and we'll talk more
Speaker 1: a little bit about the Grand Challenge towards the end
Speaker 1: to kind of tie in what the more recent DARPA
Speaker 1: Challenge it was all about, because as of the recording
Speaker 1: of this podcast, we're recording it on June nine, it's
Speaker 1: just after the most recent DARPA Challenge finals concluded. Yes,
Speaker 1: the I mean DARPA, of course, being the Defense Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency. I am never going to get used
Speaker 1: to saying that out loud. It's so horrible. That's why. Yes,
Speaker 1: DARPA's Robotics Challenge, or the robo Olympics, as my friend
Speaker 1: Laslow has called it, that's a fitting term. It is
Speaker 1: because because they have to do so much, they do
Speaker 1: they well, so I guess would be an octathlon. Octathlon
Speaker 1: tasks for for walking robots. Yeah, that are beautiful and
Speaker 1: fearsome and fall down so much. Yes, there they are
Speaker 1: glorious and fearsome and vulnerable. It's like a Pixar character.
Speaker 1: They are. They are so So what the challenge is
Speaker 1: the Robotics Challenges is it's a competition for teams from
Speaker 1: around the world to build these savvy, adaptable robots that
Speaker 1: are capable of helping with disaster relief related tasks. It
Speaker 1: was announced and has been since then going through various stages.
Speaker 1: First a virtual challenge to guide a simulated robot through
Speaker 1: three tasks in a virtual environment, and then physical trials
Speaker 1: and now the finals. There were prizes for the finals
Speaker 1: two million for the winner, one million for the first
Speaker 1: runner up, and five hundred thousand for the next runners. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so we're talking some serious money and this is
Speaker 1: typical of DARPA with their challenges, and you could you know,
Speaker 1: that does sound like it's a ton of money, and
Speaker 1: it is, I mean, not to put not to dismiss
Speaker 1: it is a lot of money, but some of these
Speaker 1: teams are investing lots into building these robos. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: way more than that. Much money. Yeah, So really, the
Speaker 1: the challenge is exactly what it sounds like. It is
Speaker 1: a challenge to engineers to develop machines capable of overcoming
Speaker 1: or performing some sort of task in uh, usually some
Speaker 1: trying circumstances. Yes, right, So, because the whole thing was
Speaker 1: spurred by the Fukushima disaster back in afterwards, a lot
Speaker 1: of officials started realizing that, you know, there are these
Speaker 1: situations in disaster relief which put human lives in danger,
Speaker 1: not just of the victims of the disaster, of course,
Speaker 1: but the but the human responders. Right sure, and you know,
Speaker 1: we live in this incredible future and can make hardy
Speaker 1: robots that can go into places or if we don't
Speaker 1: quite live in that incredible future yet, DARPA was like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we should build that incredible future. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a nice place to be. So when did they announce
Speaker 1: this specifically, that was April first, which seems like a
Speaker 1: really bad day to announce things if you ask me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just imagine if at the conclusion this past weekend, when
Speaker 1: the winning team steps forward and DARPA's like, here's your
Speaker 1: two million psych April fools. Three years later, that would
Speaker 1: be that would be a great April Fools. That's pretty
Speaker 1: epic April Fool's joke. One that didn't not sure that
Speaker 1: Korea has a pro fools and so spoiler alert the
Speaker 1: Korean team one. So I don't know that it would
Speaker 1: have gone over so well. But yeah, so so the
Speaker 1: the This is exactly what you were saying, Lauren. It
Speaker 1: was an attempt to say, here are some situations that
Speaker 1: we might need to have a robot be able to
Speaker 1: respond to. Here are the various scenarios that the robot
Speaker 1: would encounter. Your job is to go out and build
Speaker 1: a robot that can complete these tasks under this scenario,
Speaker 1: or at the very least, to build software for a
Speaker 1: pre existing robot. Right, yes, so you didn't have to
Speaker 1: go out and build a brand new robot from scratch.
Speaker 1: You could design the software, the brains, the programming that
Speaker 1: would allow the robot to complete the tasks. So as
Speaker 1: long as the robots form factor already allowed it to
Speaker 1: do each of the tasks that were assigned, then you know,
Speaker 1: you didn't have to go out and build brand new hardware. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing from from scratch if you didn't want to. And
Speaker 1: in fact, a lot of the teams have used Boston
Speaker 1: Dynamics at Liss Robot. Boston Dynamics, of course, being the
Speaker 1: uh eccentric company uh that that builds uh robo dogs,
Speaker 1: Big Dog and they and they kick adorable robotic dogs that.
Speaker 1: Oh I just thought about that again and it's still upsets.
Speaker 1: The video left a lasting impression on me. I know,
Speaker 1: I know the robot can't feel anything, right, I don't
Speaker 1: know that. I don't know that, but it's still is
Speaker 1: hard to watch um for me at any rate. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about Let's talk about the stages. You mentioned
Speaker 1: that the first one was a virtual challenge. What was
Speaker 1: that all about? Yeah, so this virtual challenge took place
Speaker 1: back in June, and twenty six teams built software to
Speaker 1: control a virtual Atlas robot through three disaster related tasks
Speaker 1: getting into a vehicle, driving it, and getting out that
Speaker 1: that's a single one, Yeah, which, by the way, sounds
Speaker 1: really basic, but when you think about it, it's natural
Speaker 1: for us, but not natural for a robot. I've also
Speaker 1: I can't do that all the time without like bumping
Speaker 1: my knees and falling down, or I stand up before
Speaker 1: my head is clear of the car, like once a week. Man,
Speaker 1: if you ever wonder why I'm a little bit fuzzy sometimes?
Speaker 1: Do you ever wonder why I'm bleeding from the scalp
Speaker 1: because I don't have hair, So it's just there. That's
Speaker 1: that's why, all right. So so that was the first
Speaker 1: task at then walking through an area of uneven ground
Speaker 1: that had mud and debris to contend with a right
Speaker 1: that the ground didn't have the mudd and debris to
Speaker 1: contend with the robot, yes, um. And then the third
Speaker 1: was attaching a hose to a spigott and turning the
Speaker 1: valve alright, So these are things that it might have
Speaker 1: to do in a response situation, for example, putting out
Speaker 1: a fire in an area that had suffered earthquake damage
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. To make it a little bit more fun,
Speaker 1: the teams also had to deal with simulated communication lags
Speaker 1: and limits, like like limits to the amount of data
Speaker 1: that they could transfer back and forth to the robot
Speaker 1: and uh a lag time of of maybe like five
Speaker 1: dred milliseconds or something like, which again makes sense because
Speaker 1: in a disaster environment some of the infrastructure has probably
Speaker 1: suffered damage as well, so your ability to communicate could
Speaker 1: be limited. Um. In the end, they were judged on
Speaker 1: how well the simulated robots completed the simulated tasks and
Speaker 1: how much control the operators commanded. And from that UH
Speaker 1: one team team I h m C. That's the Institute
Speaker 1: for Human and Machine Cognition out of PENNSI Colla, Florida
Speaker 1: one and today, along with eight other teams, qualified for
Speaker 1: the trials in December. All right, so that moves us
Speaker 1: on to those trials. Yes, a couple of the pairs
Speaker 1: of teams that made it through merged. In the end,
Speaker 1: six teams went on to compete in the trials. That
Speaker 1: was at Homestead Miami Speedway in Florida on December one,
Speaker 1: and the robots were set eight tasks. They had to
Speaker 1: man a vehicle and I wish that there was a
Speaker 1: better word for that than robot a vehicle, Yeah, that thing. Um.
Speaker 1: They had to navigate uneven terrain. They had to climb
Speaker 1: a ladder, remove debris from a door, and then open
Speaker 1: the door, breakthrough a wall like kool aid Man. They
Speaker 1: did not, however, have to yell oh yeah, I really
Speaker 1: hope that they all did though too, okay, and handle
Speaker 1: some valves and again attached a host with spigott. So
Speaker 1: the winning team was called Shaft sc H A F T,
Speaker 1: which I love. Uh they're they're they're out of Japan
Speaker 1: and they had just been bought by Google prior to
Speaker 1: the trials. Now, wait a minute, I'm sure you're gonna
Speaker 1: get to this, but I don't remember seeing that team
Speaker 1: name when I was looking over the finals. Story about
Speaker 1: that just a moment, Yes, yes, So Shaft really just
Speaker 1: looked robo butt. In these trials, of thirty two possible points,
Speaker 1: they earned twenty seven, which was an entire seven more
Speaker 1: points than even their closest runner up, which was our
Speaker 1: friends I H n C Robotics. Third place, at nine
Speaker 1: points behind Shaft was a team called the Tartan Rescue
Speaker 1: out of Carnegie Melon. Now I've heard about that one.
Speaker 1: So what happened with the Google acquisition of this Japanese company? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: in June, Google announced that Shaft would be dropping out
Speaker 1: of the finals in order to pursue work on a
Speaker 1: commercial Google project. So, in other words, they said, you
Speaker 1: know this, this research work is fantastic, it's great, but
Speaker 1: we need to dedicate these people to building something that's
Speaker 1: going to become a real world product and not a
Speaker 1: proof of concept kind of tasting out things in a
Speaker 1: scenario environment, and I suspect it also had something to
Speaker 1: do with Google's prior decisions to stay out of military
Speaker 1: related projects, which they have not infrequently said, you know,
Speaker 1: like thanks guys, but no thanks, We're doing good not
Speaker 1: funding military. We've seen we've seen it go the other
Speaker 1: way where people from projects that were part of the
Speaker 1: military ended up at Google later. But that's different. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: so they dropped out in June, and the finals took
Speaker 1: place this past weekend as of when we're recording this
Speaker 1: podcast on June five and six. Yeah, over in California
Speaker 1: that they had a dartbed had a contest as well
Speaker 1: for high school students to create a video explaining what
Speaker 1: they how they felt robots fit into the future of culture, society,
Speaker 1: how they were going to integrate, and how they would
Speaker 1: be an important part of our lives. And the winners
Speaker 1: got to go and witness the finals. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. There was a big audience there there there
Speaker 1: have been at the past couple I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if there was an audience for the virtual trials,
Speaker 1: but definitely for the preliminary the physical trials. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's interesting also is that if you watch the videos
Speaker 1: from this, I mean that crowd is not shy, they're psyched.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful. It's like a sporting event. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really is. And spoiler alert, a lot of these robots
Speaker 1: fell down a lot, and hearing the crowd react to
Speaker 1: the robots falling is heartbreaking. Is they're they're also invested in.
Speaker 1: They're not like laughing at the robots, which honestly I
Speaker 1: tend to do when I'm just sitting on my computer.
Speaker 1: Especially you see, like the animated gifts and like the
Speaker 1: anime gifts make it look hilarious. Like there's a robot
Speaker 1: that it takes a walk, it takes one step forward,
Speaker 1: immediately collapses and and the gift makes it hilarious. But
Speaker 1: you know when you kind of way, yeah, just like
Speaker 1: it's kind of like like, I mean, it's it's that
Speaker 1: ultimate in being taken down a peg right where you're right,
Speaker 1: we're ready to compete, one step falls apart. Like it's
Speaker 1: it's like almost like a national Lampoon vacation kind of moment.
Speaker 1: You figured the Griswolds where the team behind Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but the but the audience who was there? What
Speaker 1: would own? Yeah, every every time a robot fell down,
Speaker 1: like because everyone wanted everything to go Obviously, the the
Speaker 1: performance here meant pushing the field of robotics forwards. So
Speaker 1: it was more than just cheering on your favorite It
Speaker 1: was about cheering on the the advancement of robotics as
Speaker 1: a discipline. Yeah. And and these tasks were not easy
Speaker 1: tasks that were set to the robots. They were they
Speaker 1: were challenging. Yeah. They Now when we start saying them,
Speaker 1: they're gonna sound easy because you're going to be thinking
Speaker 1: about it in the terms of a human being completing
Speaker 1: these tasks. And they're very simple. But keep in mind
Speaker 1: that all these things are tasks that robots have to
Speaker 1: be engineered to do. And only that, but the robot
Speaker 1: has to be engineered to do all of these tasks root. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you think about most robots that you would see
Speaker 1: in your day to day life, Like if you have
Speaker 1: a rumba, that rumba is designed to clean the floor.
Speaker 1: It's not designed to clean the floor plus do the dishes,
Speaker 1: plus or watch your kids, or walk your dog or whatever.
Speaker 1: It can't do those things and you wouldn't expect it to.
Speaker 1: Yet these are robots that have to complete these eight
Speaker 1: different tasks and have one robot to do it. Oh
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and with minimal supervision from the from the team,
Speaker 1: right yeah, because again your communication is limited. And the
Speaker 1: idea was build a robot that can autonomously do as
Speaker 1: much of this as possible, not not expecting any robot
Speaker 1: to be like the Terminator and not need any further
Speaker 1: direction like go that way and save the people, like
Speaker 1: there's nothing like that, but limited, you know, the more
Speaker 1: limited than the human interaction, the better. So Task number
Speaker 1: one drive. So so here's how this worked. They had
Speaker 1: to drive a Polaris Ranger XP nine hundred, which is
Speaker 1: essentially like a little not quite an altering vehicle, but
Speaker 1: similar STV kind of thing. Yeah, not even in su
Speaker 1: be more like a little almost like think of like
Speaker 1: a souped up golf cart, so a little bit more
Speaker 1: advanced than the golf cart. Um, and the teams had
Speaker 1: five minutes to alter the vehicle without the use of tools,
Speaker 1: so that their robots could operate it. So if the
Speaker 1: robot was at a form factor that did not easily
Speaker 1: fit into this, they could alter the vehicle, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't use tools to do it. So this made me
Speaker 1: think of like cutthroat kitchen. I'm picturing robotics teams just
Speaker 1: like smashing their hands into panics to reform them or something.
Speaker 1: You can alter this vehicle, but you can only use
Speaker 1: gummy worms. Yeah, it is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: of a fun twist on that. So the way the
Speaker 1: challenge would start is the robots would already be behind
Speaker 1: the wheel. They did not have to get into the vehicle.
Speaker 1: They could be placed in the vehicle. The vehicle was
Speaker 1: already running and in high gear. They said that they
Speaker 1: chose high gear because it would move the most smoothly
Speaker 1: out of the gears. But the teams were welcome to
Speaker 1: design a robot that could shift gears if need be,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have to. Uh. So then the robot
Speaker 1: had to drive the vehicle from the starting position to
Speaker 1: a different position through an obstacle course, not really an
Speaker 1: obstacle course, but a driving course. Uh. If the robots
Speaker 1: was to uh collide with one of the barriers and
Speaker 1: move it, then it would not be eligible for a
Speaker 1: point for the task. And we should say these eight
Speaker 1: tasks represent eight points. So teams were judged on two criteria,
Speaker 1: the number of points that they were able to accumulate
Speaker 1: and the time it took the robot to complete the
Speaker 1: series of tasks. So if you were able to do
Speaker 1: all eight and you had the lowest time, you win.
Speaker 1: Uh So if you if you ran ran to an obstacle,
Speaker 1: you've got no point. You could also choose for your
Speaker 1: robot to walk from the starting point to the next task,
Speaker 1: but then you also time penalty share. Yeah, time penalty,
Speaker 1: and you don't get a point because the robots not
Speaker 1: operating the vehicle. Um. So really the robot bare minimum
Speaker 1: had to be able to operate the accelerator and the
Speaker 1: steering wheel, although you would hope it could also operate
Speaker 1: the brake um because otherwise the robot would just be
Speaker 1: easing off the accelerator so that it would essentially coast
Speaker 1: into the final position. And then it had to uh
Speaker 1: to get completely past a cut off point that said,
Speaker 1: you know here, once the vehicle has passed this point,
Speaker 1: you have completed the task without going so far as
Speaker 1: to smash into the next obstacle. All right, So that's
Speaker 1: that was the first task. Second task was called egress,
Speaker 1: which I love. It's that's terrific vocabulary. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a little nicer than get out of the DIRN car.
Speaker 1: So that that's the southern version, right. So egress is
Speaker 1: essentially what I just said. The robot had to get
Speaker 1: itself out of the vehicle. It could exit out of
Speaker 1: either side, so it was not required to exit from
Speaker 1: one side versus the other. It had to be able
Speaker 1: to stand up or otherwise get into its you know,
Speaker 1: mobile format, because you didn't have to have a bipedal robot.
Speaker 1: Most of the designs were, but you didn't have to
Speaker 1: design one that way. It's just that when you're talking
Speaker 1: about operating stuff that humans operate bipedal, since that's how
Speaker 1: we are, that tends to beat. Yeah. So then it
Speaker 1: had to move itself to the next uh task position.
Speaker 1: So the whole judging, the whole thing is get is
Speaker 1: allowing itself to get out and walk over to the
Speaker 1: next point, and that would be another You would get
Speaker 1: a point for the egress part of the task if
Speaker 1: you were able to do that, or rather if your
Speaker 1: robot were able to do that. After that was door. Okay,
Speaker 1: so here's one of those things that sounds incredibly simple.
Speaker 1: The robot had to open a door and walk through
Speaker 1: the doorway. That's it that's the challenge. So so drive
Speaker 1: a car is on equal playing field with open and
Speaker 1: walk through it through a door. Yeah. However, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: this was one of the challenges that was the most
Speaker 1: difficult for the robots. Uh So. It was a push door,
Speaker 1: and it was a it was a central, a lever
Speaker 1: handled door. It kind of like the one we have
Speaker 1: to the studio where you have to either push down
Speaker 1: or lift up on the levers and then push the
Speaker 1: door to simultaneously push. There was no threshold, so the
Speaker 1: robot didn't have to step over anything. That's very kind. Still,
Speaker 1: a lot of robots fell over in this point. And
Speaker 1: part of the reason why the robots were having so
Speaker 1: much trouble because that the doors with when you include
Speaker 1: the door jam, was only thirty three and a half inches,
Speaker 1: and some of these robots were wider than that. So
Speaker 1: they had to turn themselves, they had to pivot in,
Speaker 1: or they had to fold their limbs inward and then
Speaker 1: just kind of, you know, wiggle on through. I've got
Speaker 1: all these great images of robots attempting to get through
Speaker 1: a doorway. So yeah, that's the thing is that, in fact,
Speaker 1: it prompted one guy in the audience to say, when
Speaker 1: the robot uprising inevitably happens, just close your door and
Speaker 1: you'll probably be safe. If you have a door and
Speaker 1: you're at the top of a set of stairs, you're
Speaker 1: doubly safe. Um. So, next was Valve, which is where
Speaker 1: a robot had to buy a game on Steam. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: preferably something like uh, well there's the new Fallout, so
Speaker 1: pre ordering Fallout. Oh yeah yeah, actually no, no, it's
Speaker 1: it was actually physical Valve. It was not not the
Speaker 1: not the game company Valve. It was a terrible joke
Speaker 1: that I wrote in our notes. Actually in there, I
Speaker 1: was willing to go with it. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that I think that navigating complex internet software is really
Speaker 1: part of your future of robots. Yeah, you know where
Speaker 1: your robot could just sit at home and buy all
Speaker 1: those games for you. Yeah, exactly. I mean you're not
Speaker 1: gonna play him anyway, You're just buying them because they're
Speaker 1: on sale. Right, Really hate putting my credit card information
Speaker 1: into Yeah, this is going to be valuable. You just
Speaker 1: do it once with the robot and then you're done,
Speaker 1: maybe less with maybe less with disaster situations. So in
Speaker 1: this case, in this case, they were operating an actual valve.
Speaker 1: It was a circular handle. They had to turn in
Speaker 1: a counter clockwise direction at least three sixty degrees that
Speaker 1: would be considering opening the valve. So this was another
Speaker 1: one that was a little tough. Was you know, design
Speaker 1: a robot that can grip a circular valve and then
Speaker 1: turn it in this way. Also, the teams only knew
Speaker 1: that the valves size would be somewhere between four and
Speaker 1: sixteen inches in diameter, so they couldn't a gap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they couldn't just plan in advance, like all right, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just design the robots so that it's hands are
Speaker 1: you know, are precisely molded to this particular valve, right, Like,
Speaker 1: let's just assume it's twelve inches. It'll be fine. That's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the case. The next step was probably my
Speaker 1: favorite out of all of them. Oh this is this
Speaker 1: is the kool aid Man challenge. Yeah. Wall. This was wall,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't just breaking through a wall, which is
Speaker 1: the way it was always described to me when I
Speaker 1: heard about, well it's really cutting through a wall, and
Speaker 1: and that's and I and I said breaking through in
Speaker 1: the in the previous trial challenge. But but it's really
Speaker 1: cutting through a wall using a drill actually, and the
Speaker 1: wall was dry walls half inch thick drywall, and there
Speaker 1: was a shape that you your robot had to cut
Speaker 1: the shape out of the wall, so I think it
Speaker 1: was like a giant circle, at least the one I
Speaker 1: saw it was a giant circle. Where the idea was
Speaker 1: that the robot had to go pick up a drill.
Speaker 1: The drill was an off position, so I had to
Speaker 1: squeeze the trigger to have it go on. Turn it on, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then insert the drill uh inside the line of
Speaker 1: the shape, trace around that line on the inside, and
Speaker 1: remove the rubble. The idea being that there might be
Speaker 1: a time where a robot would have to have to
Speaker 1: respond to an emergency get access to controls, but the
Speaker 1: entrance to the control room is otherwise blocked, so this
Speaker 1: would be a way of getting access to stuff without
Speaker 1: being without having to go through the doorway. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a cool thing, and the pictures and video
Speaker 1: from this section are really interesting. One robot got a
Speaker 1: little over excited, dropped the drill, then immediately turned around
Speaker 1: and walked to the next task, gave up. There were
Speaker 1: two drills by the way, so if you dropped one,
Speaker 1: you could pick up the other one you being the
Speaker 1: robot um. But yeah, that was my favorite. Uh. The
Speaker 1: next one was just called surprise, And this was one
Speaker 1: of those things DARPA like DARPA told all the teams,
Speaker 1: there will be a challenge that your robot will have
Speaker 1: to do, but we're not going to tell you what
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, oh yeah, and if we didn't mention
Speaker 1: it earlier, the teams had all of these tasks and
Speaker 1: specifications for all of these tasks, like rough specifications way
Speaker 1: in advance, like at least a year in advantage. They
Speaker 1: had to know what the robot was going to have
Speaker 1: to be capable of doing in order to engineer the robot.
Speaker 1: Really of course, of course, so surprise what what wound
Speaker 1: up being our surprise? Well, at least on one day,
Speaker 1: and I have to look into it to find out
Speaker 1: if it was the same for both, because they said
Speaker 1: that they had the option of changing out the surprise
Speaker 1: task each day, so that way, no to make it
Speaker 1: more fair, So the teams that go on day two
Speaker 1: don't have an advantage over the ones that day one.
Speaker 1: But at least on one day it was to pick
Speaker 1: up a plug and plug it into an electric outlet,
Speaker 1: which apparently one robot tried like for fourteen minutes and
Speaker 1: then just gave up one of those things. Again. I
Speaker 1: just have you ever seen the video of the one
Speaker 1: little robot arm that picks up like I think it's
Speaker 1: like it's supposed to be a little piece of food
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to put it at the mannequin's mouth,
Speaker 1: but just starts slamming the fist into the mannez. That's
Speaker 1: what I imagine. Um, But you know, so some of
Speaker 1: the robots had trouble with this task of plugging, And honestly,
Speaker 1: I've had issues where I have been unable to plug,
Speaker 1: like my computer into an outlet. I can't blame the robots. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. Uh. Then we've got we've got two
Speaker 1: more left. Yeah, so we've we've got we've got rubble. Yes,
Speaker 1: this was just traversing debris or a terrain yield. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some people said it either involved walking on top of
Speaker 1: the debris or walking through the debris, but the again,
Speaker 1: whichever works for you, I suppose. Yeah, and considering the
Speaker 1: scenarios um uh inspiration the Fokushima event, than having rubble
Speaker 1: to get through is is a realistic possibility. So some
Speaker 1: of these robots just would walk over them, like the
Speaker 1: Boston Dynamics approach is to maintain balance while walking over
Speaker 1: uncertain terrain. Some of them were designed so that they
Speaker 1: could go onto four limbs and they had like treads
Speaker 1: on four limbs, I could roll over it. In fact,
Speaker 1: the Carnegie Melon one had that, and the the Um treadmills.
Speaker 1: The treads rather were essentially on the shins and foe
Speaker 1: arms of this robot, so not on the hands and
Speaker 1: feet on so it would get down on its shins
Speaker 1: and its foe arms and roll across. Uh. So that
Speaker 1: was kind of cool, fascinating. The last one was a
Speaker 1: set of stairs that had a rail on the left side,
Speaker 1: no rail on the right. And as we all know
Speaker 1: from Dr Who not that the doaleks are robots, but
Speaker 1: they have robotic elements yea, and robots hate stairs. Robots
Speaker 1: hate stairs. You might have heard about Asimo, which is
Speaker 1: capable of walking up and downstairs, but only if you
Speaker 1: program exactly how many stairs are in the sequence and
Speaker 1: how high they are. It is not good at just
Speaker 1: you can't just put it in front of any staircase
Speaker 1: and be like, go suck at yeah and be like
Speaker 1: I'll see you on the top, and it doesn't happen
Speaker 1: that way. So stairs are tricky, and so you know,
Speaker 1: you hear a lot of crowds, Like if you watch
Speaker 1: the last few minutes of any of these runs where
Speaker 1: the robots are climbing the stairs, you hear the crowd
Speaker 1: going nuts as the robot very slowly and carefully traverses
Speaker 1: the stairs, like like there's a four minute video of
Speaker 1: the of the winning team just slowly going four minute
Speaker 1: might be a little much, but it's you seeing it
Speaker 1: slowly going up each step and everyone the crowd is
Speaker 1: just going the entire uh. And then, of course, because
Speaker 1: this is a darker challenge, there was a twist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a m night shya milan. Yeah. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you gotta gotta keep those robots on their proverbial or
Speaker 1: literal toes as the case. Maybe. So this year, each
Speaker 1: of the eight challenges had been practiced with a time
Speaker 1: limit of thirty minutes per challenge, but on the day
Speaker 1: of the competition, the robots were given an hour to
Speaker 1: complete all eight. That's incredible together, so ha, that like
Speaker 1: gets my blood pressure going, like just thinking about what
Speaker 1: those robotics teams on site must have been feeling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about you thought you were going
Speaker 1: to have four hours and you have one hour. That's
Speaker 1: a big change. So let's talk about the folks who
Speaker 1: actually won. Uh So, Like I said that, the first
Speaker 1: place team came from Korea, South Korea specifically, and that
Speaker 1: was Team k A I S T KIST KIST and
Speaker 1: they had DRC Hubo as their robot. The winning time
Speaker 1: was Remember they had one hour to complete all these
Speaker 1: four minutes twenty eight seconds. They did complete all eight tasks,
Speaker 1: so uh more than fifteen minutes to spare. And like
Speaker 1: I said, I was watching the this one and the
Speaker 1: crowd went totally bonkers. To keep in mind, now, they
Speaker 1: were not on the first day's events, so at the
Speaker 1: end of the first day there was a different team
Speaker 1: that was in the lead. So this was one of
Speaker 1: those things where you yeah, um. And there's also a
Speaker 1: preparation video for this particular robot that was hilarious. Did
Speaker 1: you see this. It's like watching one of the movies
Speaker 1: from the Rocky franchise because the robot is like in
Speaker 1: a training montage. Uh So, it's showing the team working
Speaker 1: on various things for the robot to do, like the
Speaker 1: kind of precise movements that needs to do to do
Speaker 1: things like turn valves to plug a hose into evalve,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And it also showed the robot
Speaker 1: doing push ups to show the robot doing a fighting pose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like like okay, this is this is cute. Also
Speaker 1: doing stuff like climbing a ladder. It climbed the ladder backwards,
Speaker 1: like like the part of the torso you would identify
Speaker 1: as the front. Keep in mind that robots don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have a front and back. That could be it's only
Speaker 1: it's only what you have told it is. But to them,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's backing up, and it's the way
Speaker 1: it's arms bend. It looks like it's backwards because elbows
Speaker 1: are going up and it's lifting itself up backwards up
Speaker 1: a ladder. I suppose, I suppose that the balance spots.
Speaker 1: That makes way more sense. We should all be going
Speaker 1: up ladders backwards. Really, when you think about it now,
Speaker 1: and this ladder, I should say it's more like a
Speaker 1: step ladder than not a ladder ladder, not a rung ladder,
Speaker 1: more like a step ladder. So I had a little
Speaker 1: rail and everything so the robot could hold on to
Speaker 1: the sides, so they won first. Second place was our
Speaker 1: friends team I h M C out of Pensacola. They
Speaker 1: were using an altered Boston Dynamics Atlas bought called Running Man,
Speaker 1: and upon completing the course, it struck this amazing victory
Speaker 1: post at the top of the stairs and then promptly
Speaker 1: fell right over like it also completed all eight tasks
Speaker 1: and did so in fifty minutes twenty six seconds, so
Speaker 1: it was just about six minutes slower than the other
Speaker 1: one in a competition. Third place was Carnegie Melon's Team
Speaker 1: Tart and Rescue and it's robot Chimp. So Chimp is
Speaker 1: a robot that has really long arms. Oh that one okay.
Speaker 1: It's also the one that had the treads on its
Speaker 1: forearms and shins. Now, Chimp was able to complete all
Speaker 1: eight tasks in fifty five minutes fifteen seconds. Chimp was
Speaker 1: the leading contender at the end of day one. Oh
Speaker 1: Chimp also had fallen over and was the only robot
Speaker 1: to fall over and right itself. All the other robots
Speaker 1: had to have the team's come over and look at
Speaker 1: the robot and try and get it back up on
Speaker 1: its feet. Yeah, it's it's it's legopendages its ponds. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So but but you know, chimp was in a shoot
Speaker 1: all help and got up on itself. And I watched
Speaker 1: the video of this, and this is freaky to watch
Speaker 1: the video because it's essentially twisting its legs and in
Speaker 1: ways that organic lifeform legs do not twist, and using
Speaker 1: those treads to help get it back up to a
Speaker 1: four m base. Yeah. Yeah, that that one, um, that
Speaker 1: that would kind of creeped me out. It's it's a
Speaker 1: little bit creepy looking. I think it's reminded me of
Speaker 1: like maybe like the Wheelies from Return to Oz or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can see that. So those three
Speaker 1: teams were also the only three to complete all eight tests.
Speaker 1: None of the other teams managed to do that. Four
Speaker 1: teams completed seven, one team completed six tasks, two teams
Speaker 1: complete five tasks, two teams completed four tasks, four teams
Speaker 1: completed three tasks to complete to one completed one, and
Speaker 1: then four teams didn't complete any successfully. Yeah. But they
Speaker 1: it shows how like even even as we said these challenges,
Speaker 1: like you clemoss stairs and for most people, that's not
Speaker 1: a big issue. You open a door for most people,
Speaker 1: not a big issue. Um, the walling across debris could
Speaker 1: be a little tricky depending upon the type of debris.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these are tasks that most people
Speaker 1: would find incredibly simple. But it demonstrates how these simple
Speaker 1: tasks are really tough engineering challenges. Like when you figured
Speaker 1: that only three teams were able to successfully complete all
Speaker 1: eight and only just under an hour, right, And these
Speaker 1: are yeah, sensibly some of the some of the best
Speaker 1: teams in the world in robotics right now, incredibly talented,
Speaker 1: intelligent and and motivated people. So the cool thing is
Speaker 1: that it shows us while these tasks have been really difficult,
Speaker 1: they are ones that can actually be achieved through robotics,
Speaker 1: and um, it's it's pretty pretty cool stuff. The whole
Speaker 1: point was to show that robotics could be pushed to
Speaker 1: completely specific tests, and it was taking them out of
Speaker 1: the lab. That's one of the big one of the
Speaker 1: big criticisms about technology in general is that we often
Speaker 1: see it in the R and D phase in the laboratory,
Speaker 1: where it's a very controlled environment. And in that controlled environment,
Speaker 1: of course, you would expect success rates to be much
Speaker 1: higher because you have control over everything. But but most
Speaker 1: robots are not going to be in laboratories if they're
Speaker 1: ever going to be useful. Yeah. Yeah, For if we're
Speaker 1: talking about a first respond to robot, it has to
Speaker 1: be able to adapt and respond to real world situations.
Speaker 1: And this is what that challenge was really about, was
Speaker 1: how well could you design a robot that could, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know ahead of time what it's going
Speaker 1: to have to do. And to some extent, that's going
Speaker 1: to be the truth for at least the foreseeable future
Speaker 1: where robots. Robots are going to be designed to do
Speaker 1: specific things and anything outside of that they may or
Speaker 1: may not be able to do based upon the stuff
Speaker 1: you've programmed into that robot. But you know, it all
Speaker 1: depends upon the design and programming of the robot with
Speaker 1: foresight thinking these are the things this robot is typically
Speaker 1: going to encounter, so here's how the robot needs to
Speaker 1: be able to respond, and anything that goes outside of
Speaker 1: that is really hard to design in a robot right now. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that old old problem of how do you tell
Speaker 1: how do you tell a machine to specifically do something
Speaker 1: when you don't know what that thing is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so the special you know, surprise was an example that
Speaker 1: it was. It was a variation on something that the
Speaker 1: robots were already doing. So it wasn't like it was
Speaker 1: completely lf field. It wasn't like, uh, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you've you've got a cook an omelet, wasn't something like that,
Speaker 1: you know it right, yeah, go buy games on Steam
Speaker 1: and wasn't anything like that. So uh, you know, but
Speaker 1: even then you see that some robots had real problems
Speaker 1: with that. But this does mean that we are pushing
Speaker 1: the field of robotics further as a result, And I
Speaker 1: think that by identifying specific challenges, it gives engineers the
Speaker 1: focus they need to be able to design the systems
Speaker 1: that are capable of meeting those challenges. Right, So instead
Speaker 1: of just having a wide open field where you say,
Speaker 1: there's going to be an emergency situation, design a robot
Speaker 1: to respond to it without any more direction. That's hard
Speaker 1: to do. So the other point being that that this
Speaker 1: also helped advance the the idea of how much communication
Speaker 1: to humans need to be able to have with the
Speaker 1: robot for it to be able to complete these challenges.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these challenges the DARPA was saying, well,
Speaker 1: we expect that some of the robots at least will
Speaker 1: be able to respond to a fairly simple command and
Speaker 1: carry it out, like go from this point to that point,
Speaker 1: don't fall over. Not all the robots were able to
Speaker 1: do that, obviously, but the dark but also the organization
Speaker 1: I was saying, we don't expect any robot to be
Speaker 1: able to go from start to finish with no human
Speaker 1: contact contact at all, because to complete a single task
Speaker 1: is one thing, but to chain them together in a
Speaker 1: logical formation is another. So you wouldn't tell the robot, Hey,
Speaker 1: I need you to drive to this point, Get out
Speaker 1: of the vehicle, walk up to this door, open it.
Speaker 1: Go through the door. You're going to see a wall
Speaker 1: with a shape on it. Cut the shape out of
Speaker 1: the wall, remove the rubble. Then you're gonna have something
Speaker 1: we don't know what it is. Then you're going to
Speaker 1: have to like you can't. You can't just tell a
Speaker 1: robot that. It's much easier for right to to be
Speaker 1: able to put that that input in every once in
Speaker 1: a while to go like, oh, here's the part where
Speaker 1: they're stairs, exactly, this is the stairs part. And because
Speaker 1: otherwise it's trying to climb the vehicle and it's just
Speaker 1: not you know, yeah, it's identified you know, a little
Speaker 1: Timmy as the first step, and that's not going to
Speaker 1: go well, uh, at least not for Timmy. So the
Speaker 1: comparison I wanted to draw here was one of the
Speaker 1: earlier DARPA challenges, the Grand Challenge. So with the Grand Challenge,
Speaker 1: we saw all these teams trying to build automas cars
Speaker 1: that could go through various obstacle courses. The first one
Speaker 1: was a desert course. Then they had a simulated urban
Speaker 1: environment complete with you know, traffic and other things estrians
Speaker 1: that the cars had to contend with. And we saw
Speaker 1: simulated pedestrians. Yes, yes, we saw no let me no
Speaker 1: little Timmy, We're gonna need another Timmy. I think that
Speaker 1: was from Dinosaurs, the television series. Um. But the uh,
Speaker 1: the takeaway I wanted to give was that while that
Speaker 1: wasn't intended to make automous cars reality the very next day,
Speaker 1: what it did was it pushed the discipline forward, literally
Speaker 1: pushed it forward, and we saw lots of people from
Speaker 1: the various winning teams go into other organizations, including Google,
Speaker 1: to develop the autonomous cars that are on the brink
Speaker 1: of coming out on the consumer market. Now, within the
Speaker 1: next few years, we we will probably see the first
Speaker 1: steps and they'll probably be limited it first. But it's
Speaker 1: because of that grand challenge that we're as far along
Speaker 1: as we are. Sure. Yeah, and all these challenges, of
Speaker 1: course also just raise public interest and excitement in the fields.
Speaker 1: And you know, watching video of families that were out
Speaker 1: watching the finals was so amazing, like getting to watch
Speaker 1: the looks on kids faces and and yeah, and hearing
Speaker 1: the cheers and the and the gasps from the crowd
Speaker 1: whenever the robots were doing anything. It really does seem
Speaker 1: to serve as an inspiration for people to get into
Speaker 1: the stem part of education, right, to look into science, technology, engineering,
Speaker 1: and uh, mathematics. Yeah. I was like, what's that fourth one?
Speaker 1: That that one that we're all terrible at in this
Speaker 1: podcast room English lit. Major If you listen to that
Speaker 1: other episode where I suddenly reverted to my primal self.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. This this is one of those things where
Speaker 1: you really you've got to admire it from multiple reasons. Um,
Speaker 1: the idea of we're trying to solve a real world problem.
Speaker 1: What happens in the face of an event like Fukushima.
Speaker 1: How can we design something that could potentially save countless lives? Also,
Speaker 1: how can we inspire the next generation of engineers to
Speaker 1: want to get into that, to do that, and to
Speaker 1: go beyond when we've even envisioned so far. So it's
Speaker 1: really been great to look into this. I'm glad we
Speaker 1: were able to do an episode about it and talk
Speaker 1: about all the fun and foibles of robots, um whether
Speaker 1: they're upright or falling over. Uh. It was really a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to talk about this. So if you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future topics that we can cover
Speaker 1: here on Forward Thinking, please write in and let us
Speaker 1: know we love hearing from you. You guys have been
Speaker 1: sending us some great ones, and we'll be doing another
Speaker 1: listener mail episode before too long because we we accumulate
Speaker 1: those and some of them, some of them are short
Speaker 1: enough where we can do a couple in a single episode.
Speaker 1: And then some of you guys have really complicated questions
Speaker 1: that you want answered, and we're going to tackle those
Speaker 1: as well. But if you have one you haven't voiced
Speaker 1: it yet, send us an email FW thinking at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or drop us a line on Twitter,
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