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 I was
Speaker 1: made to build things, and I build them quite well.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're
Speaker 1: going to be tackling a listener request. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: a listener request. That's from Chris, and Chris sent us
Speaker 1: an epic email. I mean it's it's an incredible email, fantastic,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Chris. It's it's long. It's long,
Speaker 1: but we're so we're not gonna read the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but I'll give you the gist of what Chris was
Speaker 1: talking about. Chris was talking about the sort of the
Speaker 1: the combination of multiple disciplines to allow us to explore
Speaker 1: the universe ultimately with robots that would give us a
Speaker 1: telepresence in wherever those robots could go, so that we
Speaker 1: could kind of experience that ourselves. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: a combination of different factors advances in robotics where the robots,
Speaker 1: particularly humanoid robots, would be able to go around and
Speaker 1: explore things, the ability to send those signals back to
Speaker 1: us using a user interface that's similar to virtual reality
Speaker 1: or augmented reality headsets, and the ability for us to
Speaker 1: control those robots in real time or as close to
Speaker 1: real time as possible, so that we can experience what
Speaker 1: it's like being on these remote places, including places across
Speaker 1: the galaxy, right right, This is like a step above
Speaker 1: rovers and into full on robotic avatars. Yes, So we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about the possibility of that and some
Speaker 1: of the challenges that we face in order to get
Speaker 1: to a point where we could have robotic avatars. And
Speaker 1: in some ways we're really close, and in other ways,
Speaker 1: for some applications there's some problems that may in fact
Speaker 1: be insurmountable. Yeah, well, we may be coming up against
Speaker 1: problems that we often encounter when trying to uh interface
Speaker 1: between technology and our brains. Yeah, exactly. But we've talked
Speaker 1: about this on the show before, but maybe we should
Speaker 1: just do a real quick refresher on why it is
Speaker 1: you'd want to have robots in space exploration as opposed
Speaker 1: to human astronauts, right right, and why you would want
Speaker 1: to have a robot, you know, avatar in the first place. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some reasons why you would want one just
Speaker 1: here on Earth. And one of the great stories will
Speaker 1: be covering later is looking into research of using robotic
Speaker 1: avatar for people who are otherwise incapable of moving right.
Speaker 1: It gives them the ability to have a robotic body
Speaker 1: do things on their behalf, and they can control it
Speaker 1: in various ways. So that's one reason, but the other
Speaker 1: one being for space exploration or other means. Here on Earth.
Speaker 1: Robots can go places we can't. Yeah, we've got these delicate,
Speaker 1: squishy human bodies that don't breathe the vacuum of space.
Speaker 1: And you, Yeah, cold, really super cold temperatures kind of
Speaker 1: mess with us. Radiation is bad. Super hot temperatures mess
Speaker 1: with us. We're just not that great. Yeah, organic matter,
Speaker 1: organic matter has limitations, and some of those are limitations
Speaker 1: that mechanical or electro mechanical or synthetic materials either do
Speaker 1: not experience or experience to a lesser degree. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are a couple ways you want to look
Speaker 1: at this. One of them is simply that it can't
Speaker 1: like a robot can do things a human couldn't do.
Speaker 1: It can actually accomplish a mission that we would not
Speaker 1: be able to complete. The other thing is that we
Speaker 1: don't have to value robots as much like it's okay
Speaker 1: to send a robot on a suicide mission. You don't
Speaker 1: have to feel bad about it. Right, It may end
Speaker 1: up being a large financial obligation, but still that's very
Speaker 1: different than putting a human life in danger. Sure. Sure,
Speaker 1: and you know, sentencing someone to never see their family again,
Speaker 1: or never use Facebook again, or right right, or just
Speaker 1: never see Gremlin's too again. Actually, I'm getting into an
Speaker 1: area where I wouldn't mind giving those things up. But
Speaker 1: Kremlins Too is still amazing. Uh No, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those It's also one of those things where we
Speaker 1: could send them to, even if it's not a one
Speaker 1: way mission, we could send them to places that would
Speaker 1: be extremely risky for humans. And that that includes places
Speaker 1: here on Earth. Obviously we use robots for that now,
Speaker 1: shure for deep sea exploration. Yeah, and there are also
Speaker 1: reasons a robot could complete a mission that humans couldn't complete.
Speaker 1: Apart from the fact that it like the environment, might
Speaker 1: kill a human, it can also be that robots can
Speaker 1: have scientific precision that humans don't naturally have unless we
Speaker 1: have some kind of tool or something. Yeah, robots can
Speaker 1: move on a level of precision that that is far
Speaker 1: greater than what humans can accomplish, and we've been putting
Speaker 1: that to good use here on Earth as well. Also,
Speaker 1: robots can have an array of sensors on them that
Speaker 1: give them access to a lot more information than what
Speaker 1: we humans can can act us with just our our
Speaker 1: natural senses. Right, So they're they're robots are capable of
Speaker 1: quote unquote seeing in a spectrum that's much more broad
Speaker 1: than our visible spectrum that we're limited to because of
Speaker 1: our dumb media. And they can also quote unquote here,
Speaker 1: I mean pretty much any sense you can think of.
Speaker 1: We can build sensors that are much more sensitive to
Speaker 1: that information than our natural sense of The robot can
Speaker 1: have an onboard mass spectrometer, which I mean we have
Speaker 1: a tongue. But yeah, it's just better better to use
Speaker 1: the spectrometer than to go tasting the dust of Mars.
Speaker 1: This taste radioactive. Yeah, that's not not necessarily a good thing. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so obviously it's not a new idea to use robots
Speaker 1: controlled by humans in certain conditions where they would be
Speaker 1: you know, preferable or more useful or at least you
Speaker 1: know better to put in harm's way. For example, one
Speaker 1: thing I've seen plenty of pictures and video of before
Speaker 1: his bomb disposal robots. This was total sense. This is
Speaker 1: one of the ones that leapt to mind when I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this, sort of like the predecessors to
Speaker 1: the types of robots that Chris was asking about in
Speaker 1: the email we received. So, bomb disposal robots have been
Speaker 1: around for a while. The earliest one I could find
Speaker 1: was designed in nineteen seventy two by Lieutenant Colonel Peter Miller.
Speaker 1: I say lieutenant because he was in the British Army.
Speaker 1: His bomb disposal robot was built as a means of
Speaker 1: a matter of necessity. At the time, the British Army
Speaker 1: was dealing with a lot of car bombs that were
Speaker 1: being left by the Irish Republican Army and so or
Speaker 1: rather the Irish republic Army, and so he wanted to
Speaker 1: find a way to be able to to pull cars
Speaker 1: that might have explosive devices in them to a safe
Speaker 1: zone surrounded by sandbags, that sort of thing, so that
Speaker 1: it could be detonated without putting people in harm's way.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the times before he had made
Speaker 1: the first bomb disposal robot. It was essentially the job
Speaker 1: of somebody who was very brave and padded down as
Speaker 1: much as possible, armored up to physically go look into
Speaker 1: a car, sometimes having to open a car door, which
Speaker 1: could be a triggering device to get access to a bomb.
Speaker 1: So they were trying to find a way to make
Speaker 1: this safer and he came up with the idea when
Speaker 1: he was thinking back on something else he had done.
Speaker 1: It turned out that that Peter Miller was something of
Speaker 1: a tinkerer and someone who often would think, how can
Speaker 1: I make this easier? Uh? And one of the things
Speaker 1: he thought about was a way to make it easier
Speaker 1: for him to mow the lawn so that he didn't
Speaker 1: have to do it personally. And what it did was
Speaker 1: he he did something really simple. He had a lawnmower
Speaker 1: that had powered wheels so it could move on its
Speaker 1: own once you apply you know, gas to it. Essentially,
Speaker 1: he tied a rope to it, put a stake in
Speaker 1: the ground that the rope was attached to, and let
Speaker 1: it go so it would go in a circle. And
Speaker 1: every time it completed a circle, it was it was
Speaker 1: winding the rope around the steak. It was tall enough
Speaker 1: in it there would be a shorter length of rope
Speaker 1: next go around, so it was concentric circle. So it's
Speaker 1: like an early mowing room. It's brilliant in theory for
Speaker 1: some reason that it seems like it wouldn't actually work
Speaker 1: in practice. It worked for him enough for him to think,
Speaker 1: maybe I can come up with something similar, but use
Speaker 1: it for this this very dangerous activity. And he thought, well,
Speaker 1: the lawnmower wouldn't really work as well. And he saw
Speaker 1: someone using a motorized wheelbarrow, and he literally went to
Speaker 1: the garden center, bought a motorized wheelbarrow, brought it back
Speaker 1: to headquarters. They were given carte blanche to do whatever
Speaker 1: they needed in order to actually put this thing together.
Speaker 1: So they disassembled the wheelbarrow so they just had the
Speaker 1: chassis and they created a robot that had a toe
Speaker 1: hook on it. It was essentially a grappling hook and
Speaker 1: they could power it remotely. And by remotely, I mean
Speaker 1: they tied ropes to the controls. By power you mean
Speaker 1: human power or yeah, there was a human standing several
Speaker 1: feedback using ropes to guide and power the willbarrow as
Speaker 1: it would move to a car. And in fact they
Speaker 1: had to test this out almost immediately. They had to
Speaker 1: go to Belfast with it. They used it to hook
Speaker 1: a car and it started to tow the car back, however,
Speaker 1: and it was actually there was another vehicle I believe
Speaker 1: that was connected to it to help it pull back
Speaker 1: because the wheelbarrow wasn't strong enough to tow a car.
Speaker 1: I don't believe. However, what happened was the wilbarrow unfortunately
Speaker 1: fell over during that first real life It wasn't even
Speaker 1: a test, this was a real life use of it.
Speaker 1: This was before they had really had chance to test
Speaker 1: this thing. It phil fell over on its side and
Speaker 1: they ended up deadening the car by rockets where it
Speaker 1: what where it ended up after it'd been towed just
Speaker 1: a short distance. But they still considered it a success
Speaker 1: because it didn't it didn't require someone to get into
Speaker 1: harm's way to pull the car further away from it
Speaker 1: was actually at a car dealership is where the car
Speaker 1: was so uh they considered as a success, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Peter Miller would go on to oversee the development of
Speaker 1: more sophisticated robots, ones that had a true remote controllability
Speaker 1: not just with ropes, and ones that had more like
Speaker 1: an articulated arm so it could do things like pick
Speaker 1: up a suspicious package and move it physically to a
Speaker 1: different location. Uh, you know, ended up being sort of
Speaker 1: the genesis of bomb disposal robots. And so we've got
Speaker 1: a lot more advanced ones now, including ones that have
Speaker 1: cameras so you can operate remotely and see what quote
Speaker 1: unquote see what the robots sees. Yeah, yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: of course there's lots of other military use robots. A
Speaker 1: lot of them are used for for for simple reconnaissance missions.
Speaker 1: In fact, the company that makes room bas has military
Speaker 1: reconnaissance robots that are pretty awesome. Um. But uh, that
Speaker 1: gets into our next bullet here, which is reconnaissance drones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so drones obviously being used for reconnaisance around the world
Speaker 1: right now. Uh, the earliest drones were really kind of
Speaker 1: electronic drones. That we were the earliest electronic drones, I
Speaker 1: should say, because you could count like unmanned balloons from
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century and the really tragic time that they
Speaker 1: strapped bombs to bats and yeah, yeah, that could be
Speaker 1: considered part of it too, But in this case, we're
Speaker 1: talking about electronic drones that were just used as target
Speaker 1: practice UH for combat pilots and anti aircraft gunners, and
Speaker 1: then eventually in the nineteen sixties, the US Air Force
Speaker 1: funded development of unmanned reconnaissance drones like the Ryan Model
Speaker 1: one seven, also known as the Lightning Bug, which had
Speaker 1: to be launched from a Lackey d C one thirty
Speaker 1: Hercules airplane. UH. They had cameras aboard the drones, but
Speaker 1: they were just taking series of photographs and had to
Speaker 1: be retrieved so that you could see what they had gotten.
Speaker 1: The nineteen sixties, they didn't have a satellite up link
Speaker 1: to automatically, you weren't getting a live need from the drone,
Speaker 1: so you actually had to You had to find the
Speaker 1: drone after it landed and retrieve it so that you
Speaker 1: could get the information that was captured. But this meant
Speaker 1: that you had an unmanned vehicle as opposed to someone
Speaker 1: flying like a Youtubo spy plane, which you know had
Speaker 1: previously been shot down. But so the Union, so that
Speaker 1: was a big issue. UH. In nineteen seventy two, the
Speaker 1: Ryan Model one four seven SC TV was introduced, which
Speaker 1: had a TV camera that sent a live feed to
Speaker 1: the d C one thirty drone controller. Aircraft. No telling
Speaker 1: if the sc TV also had Canadian humor on it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how many of you are familiar with that
Speaker 1: sketch show. That's a dated reference right there. At any rate,
Speaker 1: today we've got lots of different drones with cameras on them.
Speaker 1: They can give you a live feed, including consumer drones,
Speaker 1: the type of stuff like the Parrot a r drone
Speaker 1: where you can control it with a smartphone, get a
Speaker 1: live feed of the camera to your smartphone. You can
Speaker 1: play games with other people who owned them, and you
Speaker 1: do a little like kind of tag like games using
Speaker 1: your smartphone as the user interface. So these are a
Speaker 1: commonplace now, Yeah, yeah, it's it's kind a long way baby. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so again this is a way of us extending
Speaker 1: our presence beyond our immediate surroundings, right, although still fairly uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, with the use of the consumer drones is
Speaker 1: still fairly uh modest. You know, something that is a
Speaker 1: lot like a direct robotic avatar would be something like
Speaker 1: robotic surgery. Yeah, because that involves directly translating a humans
Speaker 1: movements into the movements of robotic arms and tools. That's
Speaker 1: sort of like just giving you this tiny direct presence
Speaker 1: inside somebody else's body, which is creepy yeah, but also
Speaker 1: cool sure, And like all robotics, this can work in
Speaker 1: a few different ways. Most of the robotic surgery things
Speaker 1: that exist today are shared control systems, and and that
Speaker 1: just means that a doctor is yes, is directly using
Speaker 1: robotic equipment to perform a surgery. The robot in question
Speaker 1: here isn't really thinking and it can't really react to
Speaker 1: anything that happens. The robot doesn't decide where to cut
Speaker 1: right exactly. Um Now, tell usurgery and doctor supervised robotic
Speaker 1: surgery systems are are in development. But you know, tell
Speaker 1: usurgery requires really good, really stable Internet connections. No one
Speaker 1: wants something to go terribly wrong in someone's body because
Speaker 1: the Internet went down. Can't. You clearly can't have any
Speaker 1: latency issues either, because you need to. For example, a
Speaker 1: lot of these systems have warning warning algorithms in place
Speaker 1: so that if you start straying too close to a
Speaker 1: very sensitive very Let's say that you are performing a
Speaker 1: surgery to remove a cancerous tumor for a sample, and
Speaker 1: you're starting, you would start to get to a point
Speaker 1: where you're going to be cutting into healthy tissue. A
Speaker 1: lot of these have a system involved where you get
Speaker 1: a feedback to the surgeon, so the surgeon knows, even
Speaker 1: though they're not in the same space as the patient,
Speaker 1: that they can't go any further without potentially harming the patient, right, right,
Speaker 1: And there's a large process of scanning and uh, data
Speaker 1: collection that happens before any of these surgeries would start,
Speaker 1: so that frequently they'll kind of mark off areas around
Speaker 1: the edges where you're supposed to cut, so that right,
Speaker 1: so that you get that feedback and get you get
Speaker 1: the margin, I think is what they call it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes they will even have stops in
Speaker 1: place to tell the robot like no, you do not
Speaker 1: move past this point, please and thank you, which makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. And then uh, doctor, supervised robotic
Speaker 1: surgery requires just so much of that scanning and programming beforehand.
Speaker 1: And you know, like we've just been saying, these machines
Speaker 1: are not the computer programs really aren't complex enough to
Speaker 1: stop or change plans if something goes wrong. So there's
Speaker 1: just an element of of oh involved. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the questions about robot surgery are
Speaker 1: also involved sort of in the idea we discussed not
Speaker 1: too long ago about what happens if a robot breaks
Speaker 1: the law. The underlying question is who's responsible for the
Speaker 1: autonomous actions of a robot? Uh, And so people probably
Speaker 1: just aren't yet comfortable with the idea of giving a
Speaker 1: robot full free reigin, even when it might do as
Speaker 1: well as a human in practice. Yeah. Even scarier than
Speaker 1: a pushing robot is a robot that's already performing lapard
Speaker 1: scopic surgery on your heart. H But but the concept
Speaker 1: is definitely awesome. You know, using tiny endoscopic cameras, a
Speaker 1: robot can show a surgical team in two D or
Speaker 1: even three D what's going on inside of a patient.
Speaker 1: And and robots can make such small, controlled movements, um
Speaker 1: so consistently, you know, without fatigue, no handshaking, right right,
Speaker 1: you know, some surgeries take hours like half a day
Speaker 1: even And and robots don't get tired and don't get
Speaker 1: shaky hands when they miss their three pm snap time,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And in that way, this really is a
Speaker 1: lot more like the idea of a robotic avatar than
Speaker 1: some of the other things we might consider, because the
Speaker 1: tools are becoming extensions of the doctor's hands, right and
Speaker 1: and they are enhancing the doctors already formidable h experience
Speaker 1: and abilities to the point where the doctor is capable
Speaker 1: of carrying out moves that may not have been possible
Speaker 1: under his or her own normal, you know, human motions.
Speaker 1: So it also one thing that this Another huge benefit
Speaker 1: this gives us is minimally invasive surgery where you don't
Speaker 1: have to do the the you know, you may not
Speaker 1: have to make a big incision in order to perform
Speaker 1: some of these surgical procedures because you're able to make
Speaker 1: these very precise movements with tools that can go into
Speaker 1: a relatively small uh cut. And that also means that
Speaker 1: you have a faster healing time and less chance for infections.
Speaker 1: So there are other benefits as well, right, and so
Speaker 1: the question of have we ever used anything like a
Speaker 1: robe abotic avatar and space exploration is a little different
Speaker 1: though than the kind of examples we've talked about before.
Speaker 1: So if you are controlling a bomb disposal robot or
Speaker 1: a robotic surgery tool like the Da Vinci robot, or
Speaker 1: even a drone that's you know, pretty far away, it's
Speaker 1: still close enough that you can have direct interaction and control.
Speaker 1: Um it might not be so like fully immersive, like
Speaker 1: you're becoming the robot. But there's some kind of analogy
Speaker 1: between that and having a robotic avatar. Space exploration is
Speaker 1: a little different for a few reasons, right, Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of those is that if we look at
Speaker 1: the history of using robots in space, you could argue
Speaker 1: that things like probes kind of sort of fit the
Speaker 1: bill in the sense that they have sensors on them
Speaker 1: that extend our ability to look or whatever into space,
Speaker 1: depending upon the sensors. Uh. They typically have an antenna
Speaker 1: that will allow them to transmit information back to Earth
Speaker 1: and occasionally receive messages saying, hey, you need to do
Speaker 1: a small course correction. That that's about the extent of
Speaker 1: the interaction between probe and Earth. It's mostly a data
Speaker 1: gathering system. There's a lot of autonomy and disconnectedness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Rovers however, those are much more recent. Uh, they date
Speaker 1: really back to the nineteen seventies when the Leno cod
Speaker 1: rover launched by the then Soviet Union to the Moon.
Speaker 1: Um That was a remote controlled rover equipped with a
Speaker 1: camera that sent back images of the Moon. The first
Speaker 1: unmanned rover to land successfully on Mars was the sojourner
Speaker 1: in that was carried aboard the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, and
Speaker 1: we've since used a few other rovers to explore Mars
Speaker 1: UH and also we've used it to look at other
Speaker 1: you know, rovers to look at other bodies as well. However,
Speaker 1: the further out we get, the more we're no longer
Speaker 1: talking about real time, and that's the big change between
Speaker 1: the ones we were talking about earlier, the ones where
Speaker 1: we're on the same planet as the robots. So the
Speaker 1: lag time and communication tends to be either undetectable or
Speaker 1: so short that we can we can adapt to it. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: a few seconds is adaptable. If you're talking about the
Speaker 1: fourteen minute lag tend to get a message back and
Speaker 1: forth to Mars, or is it? It can be even
Speaker 1: longer than that. It's fourteen minutes. It was fourteen minutes
Speaker 1: when when the Curiosity rover landed to get a message
Speaker 1: one way, but that was just because of the positions
Speaker 1: of Earth and Mars. It can actually be much longer
Speaker 1: because Mars can be and Earth can be on opposite
Speaker 1: ends of UH from the Sun, and to bounce a
Speaker 1: message back to it is is obviously twice the going rate.
Speaker 1: So yeah, twenty eight minutes between um, your your robot
Speaker 1: and yourself is a really long time. You're like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm driving towards this cliff. Oh crap, Like, oh I
Speaker 1: fell off that cliff half an hour ago. I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware of it. Yeah, um yeah, that's it's actually a
Speaker 1: real issue. So we'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the latency and lag in just a second. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, let's talk about another thing that's really cool.
Speaker 1: We have a story about something that is much closer
Speaker 1: to having a robotic avatar than any of these. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's actual purpose is to have that sense of
Speaker 1: of of ability to move around in an environment on
Speaker 1: behalf of someone. Right, Well, a a true robotic avatar,
Speaker 1: kind of like you've seen I don't know, in the
Speaker 1: movie Avatar or something. What it is that the one
Speaker 1: with him night shy, I'm along the little kid who
Speaker 1: can control you can stop talking air. Uh So, in
Speaker 1: any of these movies where you have somebody who assumes
Speaker 1: sort of a robot body, like they plug their brain
Speaker 1: into something and now they're controlling a robot, that's sort
Speaker 1: of the idea of you know, you have a robot
Speaker 1: avatar acts on your behalf, you sort of become the
Speaker 1: robot mentally. Uh, nothing like that exists today, but people
Speaker 1: are working on things like that. For example, robots that
Speaker 1: are sort of on one hand, giving you feedback through
Speaker 1: at least visual kind of screen information. Ideally it could
Speaker 1: be some kind of virtual reality or augmented reality feedback.
Speaker 1: But then you can also control them with your mind. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is referencing a really cool report that we
Speaker 1: saw in I O nine. Researchers at the c n
Speaker 1: R S A I S T Joint Robotics Laboratory and
Speaker 1: the c n R S L I R M M
Speaker 1: Interactive Digital Human Group they need to work on some
Speaker 1: of those easily pronounceable acronyms. Learn it's a great acronym.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? Iced and learn, which sounds
Speaker 1: like the aliens from Futurama. So they these two groups
Speaker 1: have collaborated on a project that could allow for thought
Speaker 1: controlled robotics. And there have been lots of experiments in
Speaker 1: recent years about thought controlled robotics. Yeah, exactly. Uh, some
Speaker 1: of which require invasive surgery in order to implant electrodes,
Speaker 1: some of which use more uh more of a contact
Speaker 1: thing like an e G cap, right exactly. So typically
Speaker 1: what we see today is that you can do a
Speaker 1: lot more with surgical implants, but the goal that people
Speaker 1: are working on is to try to be able to
Speaker 1: have significant thought control of for a brain computer interface
Speaker 1: with noninvasive methods like an e G cap on your head,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to get surgery if you want
Speaker 1: to control robot. Right, It's a lot easier sell to say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you might want to shave a little patch on your
Speaker 1: head than it is to say like, hey, can we
Speaker 1: drill a hole in your skull? Will fix it? We promise? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is definitely a big leap there, right, So this
Speaker 1: is this particular one they're calling robotic re embodiment and uh. Again,
Speaker 1: the person who is controlling the robot wears an e
Speaker 1: G cap to send commands to the robot. So there's
Speaker 1: a trade meaning process obviously where you have to both,
Speaker 1: you know, train the robot how to respond to to
Speaker 1: certain stimuli that are created by the thoughts you know
Speaker 1: that they're converted into electrical signals, and then you also
Speaker 1: have to train the person who's wearing the caps so
Speaker 1: that they are in fact concentrating on whatever whatever task
Speaker 1: they want the robot to do. Now, this particular approach
Speaker 1: is intended for people who have suffered paralysis. So again
Speaker 1: the idea of giving them some more control over their
Speaker 1: lives by having this robot be able to do things
Speaker 1: on their behalf, by them actually controlling it with their thoughts.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's even an AI component to it, which
Speaker 1: makes sense because otherwise the person wearing the cap would
Speaker 1: have to do everything to control the robot. And we
Speaker 1: haven't reached that point where we can feel like our
Speaker 1: brains are actually inside this robotic body. The robotic body
Speaker 1: is really just an extension of our own abilities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's usually very sim book commands, Yeah, are e g.
Speaker 1: Reading is not that good. Yeah, So for something like
Speaker 1: walk down the hall, you might you know, you're looking
Speaker 1: at a screen that's showing you what the robot quote
Speaker 1: unquote can see based upon cameras they're in the robot. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the picture that they had was of a humanoid robot,
Speaker 1: so that was pretty cool. You could look at say
Speaker 1: a point down the hall, and the AI would take
Speaker 1: over and walk the robot for you down the hallway,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to think, all right, now I
Speaker 1: have to lift the left leg of the robot and
Speaker 1: set it down. It would do all of that automatically,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. So it's a it's marrying remote control
Speaker 1: with a I some some autonomous behavior so it can
Speaker 1: complete certain tasks. But then other things you could, you know,
Speaker 1: think I want to pick up that glass, and the
Speaker 1: robot would, presumably if it's everything's working properly, reach out
Speaker 1: an arm, pick up the thing you wanted and bring
Speaker 1: it to you. Another thing in that realm that's obviously
Speaker 1: much simpler is telepresence robots. Yeah. I mean these are
Speaker 1: almost when you when you see how some of them
Speaker 1: are implemented, it's kind of like, oh, that counts as
Speaker 1: a robot. Yeah, but it does. I mean imagine like,
Speaker 1: for example, a an iPad doing FaceTime on top of
Speaker 1: a scooter scoots around like a little segue. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a telepresence robot. And I've seen those. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, some of them look look like it looks
Speaker 1: you know, it looks like it's a handle that's connected
Speaker 1: to two wheels, so it doesn't even look like it's
Speaker 1: a Segway type thing even, but the handle has a
Speaker 1: frame into which you can put a tablet like an iPad.
Speaker 1: You run the software which allows for two way communications.
Speaker 1: So the person who wants to control the robot would
Speaker 1: use their own mobile device or computer or whatever, which
Speaker 1: would have a camera trained on them, so their face
Speaker 1: would show up in that iPad. You would have a
Speaker 1: little framed picture of whomever is using it. Like I
Speaker 1: use the example of your boss just as general. Your
Speaker 1: boss who goes and travels a lot, uses this to
Speaker 1: check up on employees and could control the movements of
Speaker 1: the robot remotely, So you would have your own little
Speaker 1: on your device. If you're the boss, you would have
Speaker 1: some sort of controls to guide where the robot could go,
Speaker 1: and you would have a view from the camera, the
Speaker 1: ford facing camera on whatever tablet or whatever device you
Speaker 1: have plugged into that. And then you could roll up
Speaker 1: and interrupt people at work and ask them what they're
Speaker 1: doing and make sure that they're being you know, productive
Speaker 1: and not getting on Facebook for the four years time
Speaker 1: in the row or whatever, or you know, you could
Speaker 1: go up to the water cooler and participate in a conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not participate in the water That would be that uh,
Speaker 1: a bad choice for a robot. Can't wait till somebody
Speaker 1: comes up with the great hacks for these things, where
Speaker 1: they can make it seem like you're working through your
Speaker 1: telepresence robot because it plays video of you, like saying, Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you doing as it rolls around the office,
Speaker 1: But really you're out bowling well. And also, I mean
Speaker 1: you can you can really defy the expectations of your
Speaker 1: robo boss by simply walking into a room that has
Speaker 1: a door and closing it behind you, because this is
Speaker 1: a robot that's literally on wheels and nothing else. So
Speaker 1: I read about these Actually they can knock on a
Speaker 1: door just by ramming into the door. Att Yeah, the
Speaker 1: other explanations I have seen have suggested that's perhaps uh
Speaker 1: like really forward thinking offices, not our not our forward
Speaker 1: digging office, but in general could have automatic doors installed
Speaker 1: so that this problem. Yeah, there's a little motion sensor
Speaker 1: and then it opens up automatically, and then the your
Speaker 1: robo boss rolls on end to to chat with you.
Speaker 1: Where we're ruining all of Joe's dreams by suggesting this
Speaker 1: right now, he much prefers just the picture of our
Speaker 1: boss ramming too door repeatedly, get it open at any rate.
Speaker 1: This telepresence approach is something that already exists. Again, it
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't give you, uh, the the experience that
Speaker 1: Chris was talking about. Obviously. Well, part of that is
Speaker 1: the fact that our virtual reality or augmented reality systems
Speaker 1: are not up to snuff enough to to make us
Speaker 1: feel like we are that robot. Yeah, to embody a
Speaker 1: robot or to embody yourself within a robot. How would
Speaker 1: be the best way to say that, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to become a robot. To become the robot, you
Speaker 1: really do need some kind of VR, like face time
Speaker 1: is not good enough. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's VR
Speaker 1: is one of those things. It's funny because the earliest
Speaker 1: some of the earliest implementations of virtual reality were uh
Speaker 1: were military implementations, and they were to give people a
Speaker 1: better view of what was around, uh, whatever vehicle they
Speaker 1: might have been in. So islets were using this, for example,
Speaker 1: in order to get a good view underneath the aircraft
Speaker 1: if they had to drop something off at a particular target,
Speaker 1: or you know, people inside an armored vehicle. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: armored vehicle is an important element of keeping personnel safe
Speaker 1: and if you were to I don't know, put a
Speaker 1: lot of windows in it, it becomes less safe. So
Speaker 1: what you do is you end up mounting cameras on
Speaker 1: the actual armored vehicle that point out in different directions,
Speaker 1: and then you can have a head mounted display and
Speaker 1: by turning your head, it actually automatically signals which camera
Speaker 1: view you start to get and and can access them
Speaker 1: in you know, hypothetically in three sixty degrees around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen some really cool implementations of this where it
Speaker 1: has that sort of seamless overlapping technology. It's kind of
Speaker 1: it's it's not that different from stitching together photographs to
Speaker 1: make a panoramic image, except it's doing it in video,
Speaker 1: which is kind Yeah, but but these are are examples
Speaker 1: of again kind of marrying that idea of uh a
Speaker 1: mechanical presence and allowing you the ability to perceive as
Speaker 1: if you were that thing, because it's not. It's not
Speaker 1: your view of the of your surroundings. Your view of
Speaker 1: the surroundings is the interior of that vehicle. It's the
Speaker 1: view of the vehicle and within its surroundings. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of you know, you extend that to a robot,
Speaker 1: like a humanoid robot, and you could say, Oh, I
Speaker 1: that would totally work if I have a head mold
Speaker 1: display with head tracking, and when I turned my head,
Speaker 1: the robot changes its perspective, whether it turns ahead or
Speaker 1: just a camera rota exactly. Yeah, that's kind of one
Speaker 1: argument for the fact that if we were to try
Speaker 1: to create robotic avatars, they should probably be basically humanoid robots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're not going to be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: inhabit the headspace of something that's not at least sort
Speaker 1: of shaped like a human. The further away you get
Speaker 1: from the human shape, the more effort it's going to
Speaker 1: take on the part of the human controlling it to uh,
Speaker 1: to do so in a way that feels natural now
Speaker 1: it's not. And that's I don't think that's an insurmountable challenge,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that a little bit. But I
Speaker 1: think it's probably easier in the long run to get
Speaker 1: human pilots used to controlling a a roving, a rolling
Speaker 1: robot than it is to create a bi peedle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Building a robot that's humanoid, that is capable of doing
Speaker 1: things like I was thinking of picking itself up when
Speaker 1: it fell over. Really that's a big challenge. Those Boston
Speaker 1: Dynamics people are Yeah, those robots, those robots are like
Speaker 1: paper forward. No, No, they're working on two legged robots.
Speaker 1: That's true. There is the one that was running on
Speaker 1: the treadmill. Well, at any rate, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of those leunges. Yeah, well one of the big ones obviously,
Speaker 1: if we're so. So, what did Chris ask about Because
Speaker 1: we were talking about robotic avatars specifically mentioned for space exploration,
Speaker 1: right right, and Chris had said, uh, perhaps we would
Speaker 1: be able to use something like quantum communication to get
Speaker 1: around the lag and latency issues we have. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the Curiosity Rover when it when we were landing that
Speaker 1: we as in when the team was landing that I
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. I was covering it,
Speaker 1: which was cool, but I had no direct involvement. When
Speaker 1: the team was landing, they are are observing the Curiosity
Speaker 1: Rover's landing. We were doing that knowing that the events
Speaker 1: were watching had already happened. Right, That had taken that
Speaker 1: fourteen minutes for information to get back to us, And
Speaker 1: technically we're looking at what happened fourteen minutes ago. So
Speaker 1: there was a time where the robot was either safe
Speaker 1: on the surface of Mars or had crashed and was uh,
Speaker 1: you know, completely lost to us, and we had no
Speaker 1: way of knowing. We just had to wait for that
Speaker 1: time to catch up so that we would find out
Speaker 1: what had happened, which is kind of crazy when you
Speaker 1: think about it, You're like, oh, this is an event
Speaker 1: that had occurred one way or another, but we had
Speaker 1: to wait until we until the information could get to
Speaker 1: us before we learned it very briefly with short Rover. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. It kind of really was short and Rover.
Speaker 1: So that that's a great way of saying. What about
Speaker 1: quantum communication? Now, I'm not entirely certain what Chris was
Speaker 1: trying to say because there wasn't a full explanation of it.
Speaker 1: Uh So I might be misinterpreting what Chris was saying,
Speaker 1: and if so, I do apologize. However, I gotta address
Speaker 1: this in that the way we use the term quantum
Speaker 1: communication does not mean instantaneous communication, which seemed to be
Speaker 1: what Chris was saying. But I'm not entirely certain, and
Speaker 1: this is partially just a terminology thing, but but yeah, so,
Speaker 1: so what does quantum communication mean? All? Right? Now? Generally
Speaker 1: that refers to using the principles of quantum physics, which
Speaker 1: we recently talked about in our Random Number Generator episode UH,
Speaker 1: where the using quantum physics to create like truly random numbers,
Speaker 1: but at least they appear to be truly random again
Speaker 1: based upon all of our observations right as as far
Speaker 1: as we can tell, it's truly random, and it's to
Speaker 1: use those to create keys for cryptographic purposes. So you
Speaker 1: can be assured that any messages you send to someone
Speaker 1: using this methodology are completely secure across the channel as
Speaker 1: long as that session is active, but it doesn't speed
Speaker 1: up that transmission. That transmission itself still takes place over
Speaker 1: more classical communication media, so you're limited by the speed
Speaker 1: of light. Ultimately, you can't go faster than that. We're
Speaker 1: pretty fast, it's but over long distances. It's not really
Speaker 1: fast enough, and it's not instantaneous yet we can't. We
Speaker 1: can't use quantum communication for really long distances. We're limited
Speaker 1: by the actual limitations of quantum mechanics. In this case,
Speaker 1: the truly optimistic believe that maybe we're talking five hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers range max. UH. In real life, we're talking closer
Speaker 1: to hundred fifty two d kilometers or so being worked
Speaker 1: on now, And I would point out that that although
Speaker 1: longer than a car, is still shorter than the distance
Speaker 1: to other solar systems. Yeah, significantly not interstellar range here. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. One idea that this might be related to, though,
Speaker 1: is the one of quantum entanglement, and that might be
Speaker 1: what Chris was referring to. And again, if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I do apologize, But there has been discussion of quantum entanglement,
Speaker 1: which is a truly odd thing to you know, concept,
Speaker 1: to us on the cissy, it's spooky action at a distance,
Speaker 1: as of certain Albert Einstein would have would have said
Speaker 1: and did say. In fact he didn't, not would have
Speaker 1: he did. Uh. So the cons up here is is
Speaker 1: a little mind bending, right, So you've got I think,
Speaker 1: also sometimes misunderstood. It can very easily be misunderstood. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah. So so on the
Speaker 1: quantum level, you can get these quantum particles, sub atomic
Speaker 1: particles that are entangled with one another, so their states
Speaker 1: correlate with one another. They don't, they don't necessarily match,
Speaker 1: but if you know something about one, you automatically know
Speaker 1: something about the other. One right exactly. So you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different quantum states we could
Speaker 1: talk about, like the polarization of light or the spin
Speaker 1: of an electron. Let's go a spin. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you could describe spin as being either up or down.
Speaker 1: That's just two directions that we could talk about, but well,
Speaker 1: we'll limit it for this purpose. And uh, if you
Speaker 1: have two entangled electrons, one is spinning and you measure
Speaker 1: one and it's spinning up, you know that the other one,
Speaker 1: because it's entangled, is spinning down. It's the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: You know that because of the fact that they are entangled. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: here's where it gets kind of kind of crazy. These
Speaker 1: two particles will remain entangled no matter how far apart
Speaker 1: they are. So you could take those two entangled particles,
Speaker 1: take one to one side of the galaxy, the other
Speaker 1: to the other side of the galaxy. They're separated by
Speaker 1: the entire Milky Way, and if you measure one, you
Speaker 1: know what the other one state was at the moment
Speaker 1: that you measured yours because they were entangled. So some
Speaker 1: people have suggested that this is faster than like communication,
Speaker 1: But if you really stretch your mind, you realize that
Speaker 1: locality has not necessarily been violated because you're you're really
Speaker 1: only you already knew that the two were entangled, right,
Speaker 1: You already knew that, and by measuring it, all you've
Speaker 1: done is determined what state they were in at that moment.
Speaker 1: And if you wanted to try and do an experiment
Speaker 1: where you communicated something some way using this, it all
Speaker 1: falls apart. So let's talk about an example, because otherwise
Speaker 1: this is going to get super super complicated, and then
Speaker 1: I'll talk about some of the arguments about quantum entanglement
Speaker 1: because it's not a settled issue at all. Uh. I
Speaker 1: want to use this example though. All right, So I
Speaker 1: give Lauren an electron. Don't say I never gave you anything.
Speaker 1: I give Joe an electron that's entangled with Lauren's electron.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool, Yeah, always putting burdens on me. I
Speaker 1: ship you guys to oppositends of the galaxy, and at
Speaker 1: this point I am no longer involved in the in
Speaker 1: the communication of the two of them, however, So so
Speaker 1: Lauren decides she's going to measure her electron see which
Speaker 1: way it's spinning. She sees that spinning up, she knows
Speaker 1: that Joe's electron therefore is spinning down. Now, Joe, oh,
Speaker 1: if you were to measure yours and you saw it
Speaker 1: was spinning down, you would know that Laurence was spinning up.
Speaker 1: But you haven't communicated anything yet. Yeah, And what we
Speaker 1: really want to say to each other at this point
Speaker 1: is like, man, Jonathan sucks. Right, So let's say that
Speaker 1: Lauren sends the message man Jonathan sucks along with Oh.
Speaker 1: By the way, your electron is spinning down, it would
Speaker 1: have to go across classical communications channels, thus traveling at
Speaker 1: at best the speed of light across the galaxy. So
Speaker 1: even though you could measure the electron and know what
Speaker 1: state Joe's electron was in, the actual message about that
Speaker 1: information would still be limited by the speed of light.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to change the spin of your electron,
Speaker 1: as if you could, like, hey, Joe, whenever you're electron
Speaker 1: is spinning down, it means this, and whenever it's spinning
Speaker 1: up and means this. I'll control my electron from over here.
Speaker 1: You just watch yours. Everything will be fine. If you
Speaker 1: try to change the state of your electron, Lauren entanglement breaks,
Speaker 1: so Joe could still be observing the electron, and it
Speaker 1: could still that spin could be changing, but it would
Speaker 1: no longer be connected to the state of Lauren's electron.
Speaker 1: It would just be random. So no longer in superposition
Speaker 1: it has been affected by a macro scale system. And
Speaker 1: now Joe would be thinking that Laurence talking crazy talk,
Speaker 1: because it would just be random messages based upon whatever
Speaker 1: code you guys had worked out previously. So so there
Speaker 1: is no way to send the message. Man, Jonathan sucks
Speaker 1: through not through quantum entanglement as far as we understand
Speaker 1: right now. However, that being said, this is far from
Speaker 1: a settled matter in quantum physics. Yeah, so first we've
Speaker 1: got so you're admitting everything you just said is wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm admitting that everything I said could be wrong. Man,
Speaker 1: I am allowing for the first of all, I am
Speaker 1: said accept the burden of proper scientific humility on so
Speaker 1: so it could be wrong. So, first of all, this
Speaker 1: was an idea that Einstein hated. He did not the
Speaker 1: idea of particles being able to uh be entangled with
Speaker 1: one another, and that this could potentially lead to something
Speaker 1: like faster than like communication. He called it spooky action
Speaker 1: from a distance. Nature doesn't owe us liking it. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's true, And there have been people who pointed out
Speaker 1: that there are loopholes within quantum mechanics that could potentially
Speaker 1: allow for a more classical explanation of the behaviors of
Speaker 1: those sub atomic particles that does not involve entanglement. In
Speaker 1: other words, we have the illusion of entanglement, but in
Speaker 1: reality something else is happening. So for example, there there's
Speaker 1: a story about how you could use an instrument to
Speaker 1: measure uh the various uh states of quantum particles and
Speaker 1: thus see the entanglement. But there have been there's been
Speaker 1: a point, as people have pointed out that perhaps the
Speaker 1: the instrument of measurement itself has communicated the state of
Speaker 1: one to the other using classical means. So it's the
Speaker 1: speed of light is your limiting factor. So in other words,
Speaker 1: we're talking about non sentient things essentially communicating with one another.
Speaker 1: That's what happens at the quantum level, guys. So in
Speaker 1: other words, the whole thing ends up being what some
Speaker 1: folks would call a conspiracy. That one sub atomic Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that one subotomic particle, once you've determined what spin
Speaker 1: it is, the other one is told quote unquote that
Speaker 1: through the instrumentation and ends up spinning the other way.
Speaker 1: Now there's also the talk about how perhaps there could
Speaker 1: be some set of events that creates this illusion of
Speaker 1: the two particles being entangled with one another, and that
Speaker 1: in fact, you could almost think of it in a
Speaker 1: in terms of fate, that the the the steps you
Speaker 1: take to make those measurements in fact determine the effect
Speaker 1: you get. And so you see the effect of entanglement,
Speaker 1: but the effect really isn't there. You have created it yourself.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of a concept called setting independence,
Speaker 1: Like how do you determine that your actions did not
Speaker 1: lead to this? So there's a proposed um experiment. I
Speaker 1: read about this was in an article that I read
Speaker 1: back in November fourteen. That's kind of crazy. And here's
Speaker 1: the here's the proposed test. You've got a particle detector
Speaker 1: and it has different settings that you can use to
Speaker 1: measure sub atomic particles, right, and if you were to
Speaker 1: choose which setting you wanted, like quote unquote consciously choose,
Speaker 1: you could be setting into motion the series of events
Speaker 1: that determined that both of these particles appear to be entangled. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you are the cause it's not truly entangled.
Speaker 1: You have caused this to happen. So they wanted us
Speaker 1: to say, let's take all of this chance out of it.
Speaker 1: What we're going to do is we're going to look
Speaker 1: for the oldest light we can detect in the universe. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the furthest light source we can possibly
Speaker 1: find as soon as it hits Earth for the first time.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if they're looking at cosmic background
Speaker 1: radiation or not, but what they are doing is they're
Speaker 1: looking for uh, bright lights that are as furthest the
Speaker 1: furthest away from us as possible. In other words, we've
Speaker 1: just detected the light for the first time, we've never
Speaker 1: detected it before, and they're looking for a couple of
Speaker 1: different sources and uh preferably those sources have to be
Speaker 1: far enough from each other so that their light could
Speaker 1: never have touched one another before that moment, so that
Speaker 1: means this light could not have interacted with anything before
Speaker 1: that specific moment. And then taking basically the millisecond of
Speaker 1: when it hits as like, if it's an even number,
Speaker 1: then it's a zero. If it's not number, it's a one,
Speaker 1: or something along those lines. You've then determine what setting
Speaker 1: you use your particle detector. And the argument is that
Speaker 1: if in fact this means that events have come together
Speaker 1: to cause the illusion of entanglement to happen, they must
Speaker 1: date all the way back to the Big Bang. So
Speaker 1: either either of the particles are truly entangled, or everything
Speaker 1: has been predestined from the Big Bang, or they're not
Speaker 1: truly entangled by that big turtle. Possibly, So that's kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. But um, you know, at any rate, even
Speaker 1: that's one of the weirdest things we've ever talked about.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, it's pretty weird. So there are also
Speaker 1: some physicists who are looking into the possibility of maybe
Speaker 1: there is some way of working around this quantum entanglement
Speaker 1: for communications purposes. But from why I understand, the prevailing
Speaker 1: thought in in the discipline is that it is not
Speaker 1: likely to be possible, that it's it's really just an
Speaker 1: interesting phenomenon and uh is perhaps not practical anyway. Yeah. Well, also,
Speaker 1: I mean you have to take relativistic physics into account.
Speaker 1: Where didn't Einstein or some other physicist experiment sort of
Speaker 1: in their thoughts with the idea of the tachon telephone
Speaker 1: the tachyons are the particles that travel faster than light,
Speaker 1: and if you could send a signal to someone through
Speaker 1: take eons, apparently would arrive before it was sent. Now,
Speaker 1: take eons, of course, are hypothetical. We don't know evidence
Speaker 1: that actually it's it's it's convenient for math right now.
Speaker 1: So another challenge besides the communication one. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: that was huge, right because if we are to send
Speaker 1: robots out into the galaxy to explore, then if we
Speaker 1: are limited by the speed of light for communication purposes,
Speaker 1: we're never going to get that real time experience. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to propose a solution that I think may
Speaker 1: have talked about a long time ago when we were
Speaker 1: talking about space exploration earlier on in the existence or
Speaker 1: the history of this podcast, which is sort of robotic
Speaker 1: avatars enabled by teams of astronauts who don't exactly go
Speaker 1: straight into the monster's mouth. So, so you've got to
Speaker 1: explore the surface of some moon or or asteroid or
Speaker 1: something like that, and you want to do it with
Speaker 1: a robotic avatar, something that has the judgment and uh
Speaker 1: and foresight and control of a human while having all
Speaker 1: those wonderful advantages that robots provide you could, for example,
Speaker 1: have a spacecraft orbiting this object, and then from that
Speaker 1: spacecraft you could have a human who dons you know,
Speaker 1: control gloves or an exoskeleton of some kind and VR
Speaker 1: headset and then becomes that robotic probe and then's down
Speaker 1: on the surface and is close enough to communicate without
Speaker 1: too much late And Chris actually brought that to light
Speaker 1: as well, saying that that could be a possibility for
Speaker 1: something like exploring Mars or even setting up a colony
Speaker 1: for Mars in the future where you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about the Mars one proposed plan, which we need to
Speaker 1: do an update on, I think at some point, just
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the information that's come to
Speaker 1: light since the plan started, wonderfully sketchy information. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot to talk about. I think maybe
Speaker 1: we do need to revisit that at some point, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, Uh, there there's talk of there was
Speaker 1: talk of using robots to build the habitats that the
Speaker 1: Martian colonists would be living in. Yeah, and and this
Speaker 1: this approach would make a lot of sense to being
Speaker 1: able to have that real time control or close to
Speaker 1: real time control of robots by using uh an orbiting
Speaker 1: space station of some sort, or even just a spacecraft
Speaker 1: with people on it that would then be directly controlling
Speaker 1: the robots on the surface. That delay would be much shorter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot safer to that way. You don't have
Speaker 1: human construction workers down there breathing in all of those
Speaker 1: delicious perchlorates that would be good Martian soil. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not not great for your lungs breathing all that in.
Speaker 1: So we talked about licking Mars dust earlier, Yes, we did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of the first things you said, Joe. See,
Speaker 1: I think the communication challenge is probably the biggest one
Speaker 1: that we have, especially once you start about talking about
Speaker 1: going beyond our solar system. I don't know that we're
Speaker 1: going to solve that without some other breakthrough discovery that
Speaker 1: allows for some faster than like communication. But there are
Speaker 1: some other challenges to We need to make sure that
Speaker 1: whatever robots we create are safe for whatever their purposes. So,
Speaker 1: for the example of robots here on Earth, if we
Speaker 1: want to have a robot like the one that was
Speaker 1: reported to reported by in a an I O nine,
Speaker 1: we need to make sure that it's going to be
Speaker 1: safe to be around, you know, as with other humans, right,
Speaker 1: you don't want a robot that would be capable of
Speaker 1: harming someone through uh and you know, whatever action it
Speaker 1: may take. You know, like like if you ever go
Speaker 1: to a manufacturing plant with one of those giant industrial robots,
Speaker 1: they have these enormous areas set up around them to
Speaker 1: prevent people from getting too close because it's deadly and
Speaker 1: bumpers and stuff like that. Sure, sure, which is less
Speaker 1: of a problem if you're right on Mars because no
Speaker 1: one else is walking. Yeah. Yeah, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Shove over a Martian? I mean's robot? I hope not
Speaker 1: that Martian. We're going to start a world war because
Speaker 1: Q thirty eight space modulator or whatever it was. In reality,
Speaker 1: I would only make peace loving robots. You're the one
Speaker 1: who had all the shoving ones. I'm just saying mine. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's just hypothetical robots. Pathetical robots that would probably belong
Speaker 1: to Jonathan. All right, let's be fair. All right. So anyway, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you all obviously would need to build a
Speaker 1: robot that was going to be uh, you know, well
Speaker 1: designed for whatever environ it it was going to go
Speaker 1: into this kind of goes back to, you know, having
Speaker 1: a robot with wheels as opposed to legs because it's
Speaker 1: more stable. Yeah or uh. And it may not have
Speaker 1: the same number of limbs that we have, So it
Speaker 1: may be that it has a single articulated arm, or
Speaker 1: it could have a whole bunch of articulated arms. The
Speaker 1: user interface would have to be designed to allow for that, right,
Speaker 1: depending upon how much autonomy you gave the robot versus
Speaker 1: remote control. If you want true, the true sense of
Speaker 1: being present in that robot, then you want as much
Speaker 1: of that control as possible. Otherwise it feels like you're
Speaker 1: just a passive audience member um watching a movie or something,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the person who's actually making things happen um.
Speaker 1: And we'd have to make an interface that makes sense
Speaker 1: based upon what the robot is capable of. The robot
Speaker 1: is able to gather a lot more information than our
Speaker 1: human senses can detect. We have to have that information
Speaker 1: presented in a way that makes sense to us, the
Speaker 1: human operator. Right, because we can't see in every ectroum,
Speaker 1: or we can't hear certain noises. Do we have that
Speaker 1: converted into what we can here? How do we indicate
Speaker 1: that it would be normally beyond our range of sensing.
Speaker 1: These are little questions that we have to answer in
Speaker 1: order for this to make sense. And then, of course
Speaker 1: we just have to train people how to use these
Speaker 1: robots whenever we do develop them, and that's probably the
Speaker 1: easiest because humans are pretty pretty plastic with the brains, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, just just looking at the different number
Speaker 1: of video games that any given human can play, I'd
Speaker 1: say that we're pretty capable of moving through an environment
Speaker 1: with a avatar that does not move exactly how Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do. I agree. Yeah, that's a good example, although
Speaker 1: it does mean that whenever you switch from one type
Speaker 1: of robot to another, you've got to have that, you know,
Speaker 1: five to ten minutes of oh it's right be in
Speaker 1: this one means that I end up shocking a person
Speaker 1: as opposed to handing them the cup of hot coco
Speaker 1: I made them. That would be important to Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the left shoulder trigger in this one isn't poke the button,
Speaker 1: it's I are a rocket launcher. That's good to remember.
Speaker 1: Good to remember. I hope whenever they design robotic avatars
Speaker 1: they don't have any controls that rely on joystick clicks.
Speaker 1: I mean, how does the word how do you sprint?
Speaker 1: Click the left thumb stick. Oh well, that that wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion. I want to thank Chris for that
Speaker 1: amazing It was really a phenomenal, phenomenal message, and I
Speaker 1: wish we could have read the whole thing, but that
Speaker 1: would we would have had to have a second episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: but I do welcome all those kinds of messages to
Speaker 1: come on in because it's fantastic to hear from you.
Speaker 1: We love knowing what you guys want to hear more about,
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