Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host, John Than Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and Hell
Speaker 1: the Tech Area. It is time for a tech Stuff
Speaker 1: classic episode. This episode originally published June two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: It is titled DARPA Robotics Challenge Review. It's about the
Speaker 1: DARPA Robotics Challenge where they were simulating UH an emergency
Speaker 1: situation and putting a robot through paces of doing certain
Speaker 1: basic tasks in an effort to see if the robots
Speaker 1: could do them, you know, more or less autonomously. Turns
Speaker 1: out that some things that you might think of as
Speaker 1: being incredibly easy to accomplish turned out to be pretty hard.
Speaker 1: Let's listen in So, to start off, we got to
Speaker 1: talk about DARPA itself. Remember that's the research and development
Speaker 1: arm of the Department of Defenses technically the US Defense
Speaker 1: Advanced Research Projects Agency UH and DARPA has been responsible
Speaker 1: for a lot of cutting edge research, largely in the
Speaker 1: mode of military use. But we have seen the benefits
Speaker 1: of that research hit us in other ways. Besides, you know,
Speaker 1: the military applications, So for example, our pa net, the
Speaker 1: predecessor to the Internet, was the platform upon which the
Speaker 1: technologies that allow the Internet to work were developed. And
Speaker 1: that was a DARPA project that was back when they
Speaker 1: were first just called ARPA rather than DARPA. But we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have the Internet, at least not the way we
Speaker 1: have it today if it were not for this agency.
Speaker 1: So the agency has done a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: has benefited us in many ways. I'll talk about another
Speaker 1: one a little bit later on in the podcast, kind
Speaker 1: of draw parallels to what happened with the robotics challenge.
Speaker 1: So here we have this agency. They're all about research
Speaker 1: and development. They don't actually have lots of labs with
Speaker 1: scientists working in them. Know what this agency does is
Speaker 1: it sends out proposals to other groups and asks them
Speaker 1: to help work on various projects. Sometimes they hold challenges.
Speaker 1: In these challenges, it's kind of an open invitation for
Speaker 1: any group that can participate to uh to compete in
Speaker 1: some way, and the winner usually gets some sort of
Speaker 1: cash prize. And so often the cash prize will be
Speaker 1: less than the investment needed to actually participate in the
Speaker 1: competition to build out the thing that you need to
Speaker 1: make for us to to win, but it's still a
Speaker 1: very important UH and prestigious event to be part of
Speaker 1: if you are capable of competing. Now we're talking mostly
Speaker 1: about research departments engineering departments in universities, but there are
Speaker 1: also some private institutions, not just university type things, but
Speaker 1: actual research and development labs that will participate in DARPA
Speaker 1: projects as well. And it's collectively that these teams were
Speaker 1: kind of they're the ones that are pushing the technology forward,
Speaker 1: and DARK is kind of the facilitator. They're offering up
Speaker 1: the possibility for people to actually UH participate, and not
Speaker 1: only the possibility, but the goals. They define the goals
Speaker 1: that have to be met, and as it turns out,
Speaker 1: defining those goals is a very important part of these
Speaker 1: challenges because you have to tell the engineers what it
Speaker 1: is they need to be able to do before they
Speaker 1: can build the stuff that does it. If if you
Speaker 1: have a very vague description of what needs to be done,
Speaker 1: the possibilities of achieving it are so varied that it
Speaker 1: can often paralyze a project nothing gets done. But if
Speaker 1: you make it very specific, then it narrows down the
Speaker 1: options and it gives more focus to the project. So
Speaker 1: the DARPA Robotics project itself was inspired by a real
Speaker 1: world disaster, specifically the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Now, this
Speaker 1: was the nuclear facility, the nuclear reactor that was flooded
Speaker 1: and then suffered some massive problems because of damage to
Speaker 1: the infrastructure. And we're talking about a nuclear facility, Radiation
Speaker 1: is a factor, so it's a very dangerous environment to
Speaker 1: send responders to. Dark As approach was to create a
Speaker 1: scenario in which a robot would need to go through
Speaker 1: an environment similar to that that was at Fukushima and
Speaker 1: be able to perform the tasks necessary to help avert
Speaker 1: true devastation and catastrophe without putting people at risk. So
Speaker 1: the idea is that you can use a robot which
Speaker 1: is not going to respond to radiation the way a
Speaker 1: living organism would and be able to actually carry out
Speaker 1: the stuff you need to prevent a really huge problem
Speaker 1: from getting worse. So uh, some people have referred to
Speaker 1: the Darker Robotics Challenge as the Robolympics because it was
Speaker 1: a series of tasks that a robot has to complete
Speaker 1: and it had to all be the same. Robot teams
Speaker 1: could not build individual robots designed to complete specific tasks.
Speaker 1: If they could, it would be way easier of a
Speaker 1: challenge because most of the robots that are in use
Speaker 1: today have very narrow parameters. There's just maybe a single task,
Speaker 1: or perhaps just a couple of small, you know, a
Speaker 1: small range of tasks that the robot has to do.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to do anything outside of that. So
Speaker 1: when you're designing the robot, you just say, all right,
Speaker 1: what design elements will allow the robot to do what
Speaker 1: it has to do. Anything that's outside of that is unnecessary,
Speaker 1: we will not do it. Take the roomba as an example.
Speaker 1: It's a great example. It's a robot the vacuums that
Speaker 1: cleans floors. Anything that's not necessary for the roombot to
Speaker 1: do that is put aside. You'd want to make sure
Speaker 1: that all the design elements in your robot complement its purpose.
Speaker 1: But if you have to complete a lot of different tasks,
Speaker 1: and those tasks are not always similar to one another,
Speaker 1: you complicate the whole design process by incredible factors. It's
Speaker 1: hard to even express how much more difficult this is. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've watched any of the videos that came out
Speaker 1: of the Darker Robotics Challenge. You probably saw at least
Speaker 1: one or two that were montages of robots falling over
Speaker 1: and it's a little funny to watch. You see these
Speaker 1: big robots just topple over sometimes apparently for no reason.
Speaker 1: They just they just they're standing and then they collapse.
Speaker 1: And there's something comic about that, you know that you
Speaker 1: can't deny that it's funny, but it also demonstrates that
Speaker 1: these robots are trying to do something that while we
Speaker 1: as human beings might find easy, it's a real challenge
Speaker 1: from a robotics standpoint. So this Darker Robotics Challenge had
Speaker 1: three phases. The first one was a virtual challenge, which
Speaker 1: in which teams were to design software that would allow
Speaker 1: a virtual robot to complete um certain tasks within a
Speaker 1: virtual environment. So there were no real robotics here, but
Speaker 1: it was a test to see if if the teams
Speaker 1: could actually build the software necessary to make the robot
Speaker 1: do the tasks that needed to be done. The next
Speaker 1: had a trial where it was a physical trial where
Speaker 1: teams actually had to uh place a real robot through
Speaker 1: to you know, go to the next level. And then
Speaker 1: you had the finals, which were the ones that have
Speaker 1: happened most recently. Uh, and I'll go through each of
Speaker 1: the tasks that they had to do in just a second.
Speaker 1: If we look back at the Virtual challenge, there were
Speaker 1: twenty six teams that were part of it to build
Speaker 1: that software. The robot they were controlling was a virtual
Speaker 1: Atlas robot, which is a humanoid robot and was a
Speaker 1: popular choice for a lot of the teams. When they
Speaker 1: moved on to the more physical trials, they still would
Speaker 1: use the Atlas robots. The the challenge, by the way,
Speaker 1: did not require the teams to build their own robots
Speaker 1: from scratch. They could use pre existing robots, but they
Speaker 1: had to program them so that they could complete the
Speaker 1: necessary tasks. So not every robot out there would have
Speaker 1: been a good fit for this. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: the Roomba. The roombo would have been a terrible choice
Speaker 1: to enter into the Darbo Robotics Challenge. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with more of this classic episode of tech Stuff after
Speaker 1: this quick break. So, uh, here are some of the
Speaker 1: virtual tasks that the virtual robots had to complete using
Speaker 1: this software. They had to walk through an area of
Speaker 1: uneven ground that had debris included there, so simulated debris
Speaker 1: had to have a software that would allow the robot
Speaker 1: to maintain its balance even while tracking a path to
Speaker 1: a specific destination. Through this this uneven terrain, they had
Speaker 1: to attach a hose to a spigot and turn a valve. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also were given some artificial limits because and an
Speaker 1: emergency situation, you cannot always count on your communication lines
Speaker 1: being perfectly sound, such as that the Fukushima disaster. You
Speaker 1: need to be sure that your robot can contend with
Speaker 1: the fact that there might be lag between when you
Speaker 1: can issue a command and when the robot is ready
Speaker 1: for the next command. UH. That meant that some of
Speaker 1: the teams started to really look at ways to create
Speaker 1: a semi autonomous robot. So some of the teams built
Speaker 1: robots that were capable of taking on some tasks autonomously. UH.
Speaker 1: Some teams avoided that entirely. They focused on using the
Speaker 1: robots as a direct extension of the control roles that
Speaker 1: the humans were behind. So, in other words, you might
Speaker 1: think of those robots as enormous technological puppets. The puppets
Speaker 1: would respond to direct human commands and wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to do anything on their own. They didn't have any autonomy.
Speaker 1: There are other ones that you know, you could have
Speaker 1: semi autonomy in the show it a set of stairs
Speaker 1: and you send it the command to climb those stairs,
Speaker 1: and it could do the rest. It could calculate how
Speaker 1: high it needed to put its feet and how to
Speaker 1: shift its weight, that sort of stuff. UH, And there
Speaker 1: were a lot of different strategies employed and to varying
Speaker 1: degrees of success. It wasn't like the autonomous robots automatically
Speaker 1: were better than the human controlled or vice versa. There
Speaker 1: was actually it all depended on the implementation. So that
Speaker 1: virtual trial ended up having one team winning pretty pretty decisively. UM.
Speaker 1: It was the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, which
Speaker 1: is UH, an organization in Pensacola, Florida, and eight other
Speaker 1: teams qualified for the trials that we're going to be
Speaker 1: held in December. Now, by the time those trials happened,
Speaker 1: some of the teams had merged UH and some other
Speaker 1: teams were coming into it. Six of the teams would
Speaker 1: go on to compete at the trials that were held
Speaker 1: at the Homestead Miami Speedway, and they had eight tasks
Speaker 1: they had to complete that were similar to the ones
Speaker 1: in the Darker robotics final, and those tasks included manning
Speaker 1: a vehicle, um walking through uneven terrain, or otherwise moving
Speaker 1: through uneven terrain. Robots did not have to be bipedal.
Speaker 1: They could move around on however many limbs they had.
Speaker 1: They just had to be also able to do these
Speaker 1: other tasks. Uh. They had to be able to climb
Speaker 1: a ladder. They had to be able to remove debris
Speaker 1: from a door and then opened the door. They had
Speaker 1: to be able to break through a wall. Uh, they
Speaker 1: had to be able to handle valves and to attach
Speaker 1: a hose to a spigott. The winning team of that
Speaker 1: set of trials was a group called Shaft spelled s
Speaker 1: C H A f T. This was a group out
Speaker 1: of Japan. Now, when this group was competing, they were
Speaker 1: this little independent group. But then they got acquired by
Speaker 1: a little company that we've talked about several times on
Speaker 1: this podcast. You know him. You may or may not
Speaker 1: love them Google. So just before the trials, Google had
Speaker 1: acquired uh, this this this group, this organization. Now Shaft
Speaker 1: did really well, uh, which you know makes sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've you've heard the theme song. But out of thirty
Speaker 1: two points that it could possibly score. It earned twenty seven,
Speaker 1: so pretty good score for for a robot and also
Speaker 1: was seven points more than the next closest competitor, which
Speaker 1: was from I H M C, the same group that
Speaker 1: won the virtual trial earlier. Third place was Tartan Rescue
Speaker 1: from Carnegie Mellon And that will be important in a
Speaker 1: second to when we get into the finals. Now, Shaft
Speaker 1: did not go on to compete in the DARPA Robotics
Speaker 1: Finals because Google announced that they were refocusing the team,
Speaker 1: dedicating it to actual commercial Google projects. So uh, they
Speaker 1: were no longer being dedicated to this challenge. They were
Speaker 1: being dedicated to a real world product of some sort.
Speaker 1: Google's also had other involvement with some DARPA stuff, at
Speaker 1: least after the fact. Google does not tend to get
Speaker 1: involved in these challenges directly. Um, probably because of the
Speaker 1: military association of DARPA and Google is very careful to
Speaker 1: avoid those kind of associations. Now, the finals took place
Speaker 1: over June five and June six and Pomona, California, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was at the Fair Plex and there was quite
Speaker 1: a crowd watching these events, and the reports I read
Speaker 1: were really interesting, and also the videos I watched were
Speaker 1: interesting because the crowd was extremely enthusiastic cheering on the robots,
Speaker 1: groaning every time a robot failed a task or fell over,
Speaker 1: gasping when that sort of stuff happened, because everyone wanted
Speaker 1: to see these robots succeed. No one wanted any group
Speaker 1: to fail. And uh. Also, the other interesting thing was
Speaker 1: that it was really hard to tell if you were
Speaker 1: in the audience when a robot was operating autonomously as
Speaker 1: opposed to being controlled by humans. Um. That says two things,
Speaker 1: One that the line between these two is getting further
Speaker 1: and further blurred. And to that sometimes the robot would
Speaker 1: behave in a weird way, and you couldn't be sure
Speaker 1: if it was because the autonomous programming was lacking or
Speaker 1: because the control mechanisms were limited. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it's not that necessarily that the art has gotten so
Speaker 1: advanced that we can't tell the difference. It may be
Speaker 1: that the art has not advanced enough that we can't
Speaker 1: spot what is the cause of incompetence. And and I
Speaker 1: use the word incompetence mainly as a joke. It's just
Speaker 1: a joke because truthfully, it displays how difficult robotics as
Speaker 1: a discipline actually is how how challenging it is to
Speaker 1: design a robot that is capable of doing the same
Speaker 1: sort of things that humans can do. It shows that
Speaker 1: the things that we take for granted as being pretty
Speaker 1: simple are fiendishly difficult when you get to a design
Speaker 1: and programming level when you're actually building a robot that's
Speaker 1: going to be capable of doing the same thing. So
Speaker 1: here are the eight tasks that the robots had to complete,
Speaker 1: and one of these tasks was called Surprise. I'll get
Speaker 1: to it. But the reason it's called surprises that DARPA
Speaker 1: told all the teams, your robot will encounter a task
Speaker 1: similar to these other ones that you already know about,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to tell you what it is.
Speaker 1: And it meant that the teams knew that there was
Speaker 1: going to be something on that list of tasks that
Speaker 1: was not not defined, and that the robot would have
Speaker 1: to be able to contend with it in order to
Speaker 1: get a point for that particular task. And so the
Speaker 1: tasks were um there were eight, Like I said, eight
Speaker 1: of them. You were awarded a point if your robot
Speaker 1: could successfully complete that task. So the score the final
Speaker 1: scores once everything was done were determined by how many
Speaker 1: tasks were completed successfully and what was the time of
Speaker 1: the robots performance. Now, when they were first designing the robots,
Speaker 1: teams were told they would have half an hour per task.
Speaker 1: So you have eight tasks, half an hour per test,
Speaker 1: that's four hours total. But the actual competition they were
Speaker 1: told they would have one hour to complete all eight tests. Um.
Speaker 1: And why you might think that, how is that fair?
Speaker 1: As a as a bait and switch, you also have
Speaker 1: to understand this was all about simulating an emergency response.
Speaker 1: So under those emergency conditions, you can't expect to ask
Speaker 1: for more time. That's not realistic. Uh. And it added
Speaker 1: an extra layer of pressure on the teams. So those
Speaker 1: eight tasks, the first one was to drive, so the
Speaker 1: robots had to drive a Polaris Ranger XP nine vehicle.
Speaker 1: These if you haven't seen them, they look like sometimes
Speaker 1: you might call mcgator or you might think of it
Speaker 1: as a golf car on steroids. These are um vehicles
Speaker 1: that are similar to golf carts. They're they're largely open,
Speaker 1: They've got heavier wheels than golf carts, do more warm
Speaker 1: horsepower than a golf cart would, but it's definitely in
Speaker 1: that range between golf cart and real car. Teams had
Speaker 1: five minutes to alter the vehicle without using tools to
Speaker 1: make sure that their robots could actually operate it. So
Speaker 1: what the robots had to do was drive from the
Speaker 1: starting point to a destination, and it was only considered
Speaker 1: a success if the vehicle had completely moved past a
Speaker 1: finishing mark. The vehicle also had to go through essentially
Speaker 1: a driving course with obstacles and cones set up, and
Speaker 1: it was determined that if the robot were to collide
Speaker 1: with one of those obstacles or one of those cones
Speaker 1: and cause it to move as a result of that collision,
Speaker 1: the robot would not receive a point for that ask
Speaker 1: the robot. Also, the team could choose for the robot too,
Speaker 1: instead of driving, to walk to the destination, but in
Speaker 1: that case they would not be awarded a point for
Speaker 1: that task. They would forfeit the point um. But ideally
Speaker 1: the robot would be able to operate the accelerator and
Speaker 1: the steering wheel and maybe even the break and the shift.
Speaker 1: The cars were already or the vehicles were already started,
Speaker 1: The engines were already running, and they were already in
Speaker 1: high gear. Because it was considered to be the smoothest
Speaker 1: way for the robots to to maneuver the vehicle. But
Speaker 1: if teams wanted to, they could design a robot that
Speaker 1: would be capable of shifting gears. It was not a requirement,
Speaker 1: it was just something they could do if they wanted to.
Speaker 1: At any rate, the robot needed to be able to
Speaker 1: drive safely from the starting point to the destination and
Speaker 1: then halt the vehicle either by letting off of the
Speaker 1: accelerators so it coasted to a stop, are actually applying
Speaker 1: the brake. The next task. That was just task number one.
Speaker 1: The next task was called egress, which is really just
Speaker 1: getting out of the car. It sounds incredibly simple, and
Speaker 1: for humans, for most of us, it really is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: You know. We we intuitively know how to maintain our
Speaker 1: balance and to shift our weight so that we go
Speaker 1: from a seated position to standing. But that's not the
Speaker 1: case with the robots. You have to design the robot
Speaker 1: to do that. You have to program the robot to
Speaker 1: do that. You know, the robot be able to anticipate
Speaker 1: what a shift in its weight will do, what how
Speaker 1: it's momentum will carry it forward. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: This was one of the trickier tasks that teams had
Speaker 1: to complete to get out of a vehicle. It was
Speaker 1: not an easy thing to do um but they were
Speaker 1: told that they could get out of the vehicle in
Speaker 1: either direction. They didn't have to exit outll the left
Speaker 1: side versus the right side. That the robot could get
Speaker 1: out of either side, and again the task was considered
Speaker 1: complete if the robot could get out of the vehicle
Speaker 1: and maintain its balance and move on to the next challenge,
Speaker 1: and if they could, it would receive a point. The
Speaker 1: next one was door. Now egress was tough. Door was
Speaker 1: surprisingly tough. You would think that opening a door would
Speaker 1: be a pretty simple task. This was a push door
Speaker 1: operated by a lever style handle. You had to push
Speaker 1: up or pull you know, pull up or push down
Speaker 1: rather on the handle and then push the door to
Speaker 1: open it, then step through the door. The door did
Speaker 1: not have a threshold, so there was nothing that you
Speaker 1: had to step over. However, the door was a standard
Speaker 1: thirty six inch wide doorway and with the door jam
Speaker 1: that's closer to thirty three and a half inches, and
Speaker 1: some of these robots were too wide to walk through
Speaker 1: the door, you know, heading with their torso facing forward.
Speaker 1: They actually had to turn sideways and then shuffle through
Speaker 1: the doorway. And there were a lot of robots that
Speaker 1: fell down at this stage of the the challenge. They
Speaker 1: would lose their balance either when pushing the door or
Speaker 1: when trying to maneuver through the doorway. One robot fell
Speaker 1: down at this stage and was able to pick itself
Speaker 1: back up very very slowly and deliberately, which is remarkable
Speaker 1: because it's the only robot that managed to pick itself
Speaker 1: back up after falling over, and that was the Carnegie
Speaker 1: Melon robot, the same one we mentioned in the Trials
Speaker 1: part in just a few moments ago. But anyway, that
Speaker 1: was it. You just had to open the door and
Speaker 1: walk through the doorway, and that was the end of
Speaker 1: that task, and yet it was deceptively difficult. The next
Speaker 1: one was Valve, which was not about the game company,
Speaker 1: but rather about turning a control as if you were
Speaker 1: turning a valve to operate a fire hose or to
Speaker 1: shut down water to a specific part of the system,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. In a nuclear facility, you might have
Speaker 1: to shut off or open a valve. In that case,
Speaker 1: the valve had to be turned counterclockwise in three sixty
Speaker 1: degrees in order for the task to be complete, and
Speaker 1: the team was only told that the valve would have
Speaker 1: a size between four and sixteen inches in diameter, which
Speaker 1: meant that you had to create a robot that would
Speaker 1: be capable of gripping anything within that range and then
Speaker 1: turning it in that counterclockwise direction three sixty degrees. Again
Speaker 1: triggier than it sounds. We've got more to say in
Speaker 1: this classic episode of tech Stuff. After these quick messages
Speaker 1: the next step. The next task was called wall, in
Speaker 1: which a robot had to pick up a cordless drill.
Speaker 1: There were two of them available. They were not automatically on.
Speaker 1: The robot had to operate the cordless drill and and
Speaker 1: it on by squeezing the trigger, and use the cordless
Speaker 1: drill to cut through some drywall in a shape that
Speaker 1: was drawn on the drywall. The drywall was a half
Speaker 1: inch thick, and the robot had to hold the drill,
Speaker 1: operate the drill and move in this shape and then
Speaker 1: remove the rubble. The idea being that sometimes the robot
Speaker 1: might have to cut through a surface in order to
Speaker 1: get access to certain controls uh that might otherwise be
Speaker 1: blocked by collapse of a room or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: Also pretty tricky, you know, using tools that were designed
Speaker 1: to be held in human hands. You know, humans, we
Speaker 1: we have the ability to detect how much pressure we're
Speaker 1: using and to um to change that based upon what's happening.
Speaker 1: Robots a little more tricky. I mean, you can have
Speaker 1: sensors that alert the operator what's happening to what's happening,
Speaker 1: but it's not intuitive. Again, you have to program it.
Speaker 1: After wall was the surprise. Now, the surprise was something
Speaker 1: that DARPA could change out from day to day. There
Speaker 1: were two days of this series of challenges, and I
Speaker 1: know that on one day, I'm not sure if this
Speaker 1: was the same for the other day, but on one
Speaker 1: day it involved picking up a plug and plugging it
Speaker 1: into a socket. Uh. I think they probably changed it
Speaker 1: for the second day, But I never could find out
Speaker 1: what the surprise was on that case. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: it also ended up being pretty tricky that I saw
Speaker 1: one robot that attempted several times to plug the plug
Speaker 1: into a socket and it was sad and funny at
Speaker 1: the same time. But yeah, again, it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where it was similar to tasks the robots
Speaker 1: had had to do previously, but wasn't something they were
Speaker 1: expressly told they would have to do during the actual challenge,
Speaker 1: so that's what made it really hard. The next task
Speaker 1: was rubble, in which the robot had to walk through
Speaker 1: a debris field or on top of the debris, either
Speaker 1: through it or on top of it. Again, very challenging
Speaker 1: for robots to maintain their balance. There were lots of
Speaker 1: you know, Boston Dynamics robots that were pretty good at
Speaker 1: doing this, but still pretty tricky. You saw a lot
Speaker 1: of robots fall over at this point too. And then
Speaker 1: there were stairs that was the final task was to
Speaker 1: climb us up stairs that had a rail on the
Speaker 1: left side but no rail on the right side, And
Speaker 1: once the robot was completely on the top of the stairs,
Speaker 1: it was considered to have completed the task and the
Speaker 1: course and it's time would be logged. So again, those
Speaker 1: those tasks, for the most part, pretty simple for your
Speaker 1: average human to do. But imagine that it's your job
Speaker 1: to build a robot that could do all of those things.
Speaker 1: It has to be able to have some form of perception,
Speaker 1: has to be able to see either for the human
Speaker 1: operators to pick up various two tools, or navigate through
Speaker 1: certain areas, or for it to to see and operate
Speaker 1: autonomously and has to be able to perceive its environment
Speaker 1: understand depth. In fact, a lot of teams had trouble
Speaker 1: with the the wall task because it was very hard
Speaker 1: to perceive how far away the drill was from a
Speaker 1: hand to pick it up and then use it again.
Speaker 1: Things that are pretty easy for most of us very
Speaker 1: hard from a robotic standpoint. Um. And like I said,
Speaker 1: the door was one of the hardest ones. Uh. A
Speaker 1: lot of robots had a lot of issues just walking
Speaker 1: through a doorway, which is both funny and and really
Speaker 1: does bring to light that we've got a long way
Speaker 1: to go with robotics. Um. Well, if if you, as
Speaker 1: someone in the crowd had said, if the robotic uprising happens,
Speaker 1: just close the door and you'll be fine. Uh, Because
Speaker 1: it's tricky stuff. It really shows the automation is. We
Speaker 1: take a lot of it for granted because the examples
Speaker 1: we see tend to be pretty elegant because they're designed
Speaker 1: for a specific purpose. But as we start looking at
Speaker 1: a more general purpose robot, we begin to understand exactly
Speaker 1: how complicated we human beings are, so to design a
Speaker 1: machine that can operate within our human world seamlessly is
Speaker 1: an incredible challenge. So who won, Well, the first place
Speaker 1: went to a South Korean team k A I ST.
Speaker 1: It had its robot d d r C Hubo, which
Speaker 1: completed all eight tasks in forty four minutes and twenty
Speaker 1: eight seconds. Those eight tests forty four minutes and twenty
Speaker 1: eight seconds, remember that's driving from one point to another
Speaker 1: a very short distance, actually getting out of that vehicle,
Speaker 1: walking through a doorway, cutting a hole through a wall,
Speaker 1: turning a valve, plugging in a plug, um, walking over
Speaker 1: some debris, and climbing some stairs. Something that would take
Speaker 1: you know, a healthy person. If it took the more
Speaker 1: than ten minutes, you would wonder what was going on.
Speaker 1: So another example that the winning team did it in
Speaker 1: forty four minutes and twenty eight seconds. There's also a
Speaker 1: great preparation video for the d r C Hubo that
Speaker 1: was put out by the South Korean team that I
Speaker 1: loved because it was like a training montage from Rocky
Speaker 1: and and they It was clear the team had a
Speaker 1: sense of humor about this because it was showing the
Speaker 1: robot not just complete tasks that would be similar to
Speaker 1: the ones that were in the actual challenge, including things
Speaker 1: like climbing a ladder or um or lifting a tool,
Speaker 1: but also doing your typical, you know, training montage stuff
Speaker 1: like doing push ups or taking a fighting stance like
Speaker 1: you're a kung fu master, And that really tickled me.
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty entertaining but also very impressive
Speaker 1: about what they were capable of doing with that robot.
Speaker 1: The second place team was I H M C. That
Speaker 1: Pencacle of Florida group we talked about a minute ago.
Speaker 1: They were using the Boston Dynamics running Man Atlas butt Um.
Speaker 1: It took it took about fifty minutes in twenty six
Speaker 1: seconds to complete all eight tasks. After he did so,
Speaker 1: after it had climbed the stairs, it lifted its arms
Speaker 1: in victory and then fell over, So I guess that's Hubris.
Speaker 1: The third place team was Carnegie Melon. Their team Tartan Rescue,
Speaker 1: the one that had come in third place in the
Speaker 1: trials as well. Their robot was called Chimp, which had
Speaker 1: very long arms. Is a red robot with arms that
Speaker 1: looked kind of freakishly long if you compare it to
Speaker 1: a human, and it also had treads like a like
Speaker 1: a treadmill type thing on both of its legs and
Speaker 1: on both of its arms. And that was the robot
Speaker 1: that fell over in the door challenge and was able
Speaker 1: to right itself by itself, the only one that could
Speaker 1: get up by itself and didn't need a team of
Speaker 1: humans to actually lift it up. Now, those were the
Speaker 1: only three teams that actually completed all of the eight tasks,
Speaker 1: and they won the prizes. First place was two million dollars,
Speaker 1: second place was one million, and third place was five thousand.
Speaker 1: The other teams broke down like this. Four of them
Speaker 1: were able to complete seven of the tasks, only one
Speaker 1: was capable of completing just six tasks. You had two
Speaker 1: teams that completed five, two teams that completed four, four
Speaker 1: teams that completed three, two that completed to one that
Speaker 1: completed one, and four teams weren't able to complete any
Speaker 1: of the tasks successfully. Um. Now, the whole point of
Speaker 1: this was to really push that state of the art forward,
Speaker 1: to have engineers think, what would you need to do
Speaker 1: to build a robot capable of actually responding to real
Speaker 1: world situations? Who are the challenges that are in the
Speaker 1: way of how can we advance the technology both in
Speaker 1: the hardware and in the software to overcome these challenges.
Speaker 1: And the goal was not to build a super robot
Speaker 1: that's going to save the world. This is not you know,
Speaker 1: the Avengers age of Ultron. That's not what's going on here.
Speaker 1: It's all about incremental improvements in the art and discipline
Speaker 1: of robotics so that the next generation of robots can
Speaker 1: benefit from the research and development done in this first
Speaker 1: generation and a good way of seeing how this plays
Speaker 1: out in the real world, because you know, you might think, well,
Speaker 1: that was a clever demonstration, but what what can we
Speaker 1: expect here on our day to day lives. Take a
Speaker 1: look at how autonomous cars are coming along, because of course,
Speaker 1: DARPA held the Grand Challenge back in the mid to
Speaker 1: late two thousand's, and that was the challenge in which
Speaker 1: different groups tried to build self driving cars that could
Speaker 1: complete a core whether it was on the desert or
Speaker 1: simulated urban environment. And we are now seeing people who
Speaker 1: worked on the various teams that that competed in that
Speaker 1: DARPA Grand Challenge building what will be the first generation
Speaker 1: of driver lest cars that will eventually make it to
Speaker 1: the consumer market. Google has people on its team that
Speaker 1: competed in those Grand challenges, So we're seeing that expertise
Speaker 1: that was developed as as engineers were given a problem
Speaker 1: and told find a way to solve this. We're seeing
Speaker 1: that expertise they developed come into play in the real
Speaker 1: world now. And it's sure it's gonna be a few
Speaker 1: more years before we get autonomous cars as a reality
Speaker 1: that an actual human being can go out and purchase,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a representative of a company or you know,
Speaker 1: just uh, you know, someone who is there to demonstrate
Speaker 1: the viability of the technology. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: few more years before this becomes something that you or
Speaker 1: I could go to the dealership and actually purchase. But
Speaker 1: the reality is there on the horizon. Same here with
Speaker 1: the Darba Robotics challenge. It will likely take a decade
Speaker 1: or more to develop a humanoid robot or a robot
Speaker 1: capable of operating within a world designed by humanoids for
Speaker 1: humanoids and do so seamlessly. It will take a lot
Speaker 1: of time and a lot more development, but the foundation
Speaker 1: has been laid, so I'm particularly excited to see what
Speaker 1: the future holds for us based upon these results. And
Speaker 1: while those montages of robots falling over are really funny.
Speaker 1: I am actually optimistic about what robotics will be able
Speaker 1: to accomplish in the future. I'm just also realistic that
Speaker 1: it's going to take time. It's not We're not on
Speaker 1: the verge of a terminator like future. The state of
Speaker 1: the art and artificial intelligence has gotten gone very far
Speaker 1: in certain realms of computer science, but when it comes
Speaker 1: to robotics, there's all there are a lot of problems
Speaker 1: that are still very difficult. You know that vision is
Speaker 1: a big one. H and again, just being able to
Speaker 1: maintain balance again one of those things that we take
Speaker 1: for granted, really a challenging problem. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: that classic episode about the DARPA Robotics Challenge review. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out and let me
Speaker 1: know what you're thinking, because otherwise I'll never know. The
Speaker 1: best way to reach me is to use Twitter. The
Speaker 1: show's handle is text Stuff HSW and I'll talk to
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