Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from staff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: here at how Stuff Works, and I love all things tech,
Speaker 1: and today I thought I would look into a pretty
Speaker 1: cool company, one that's been around longer than I realized,
Speaker 1: and one that has created a lot of interesting stuff
Speaker 1: and yet nothing that you can actually buy. So when
Speaker 1: am I talking about? Well, a few years ago, there
Speaker 1: were some videos that came out of a company called
Speaker 1: Boston Dynamics that went absolutely viral, and those videos showed
Speaker 1: four legged robots traversing various types of terrain, sometimes while
Speaker 1: enduring some rather abusive behavior courtesy of some humans, and
Speaker 1: that kind of served as an introduction for a lot
Speaker 1: of people to this company, Boston Dynamics. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, it had been around a lot longer than
Speaker 1: you might have anticipated based on those videos. In fact,
Speaker 1: it turned twenty five years old in seventeen. So what
Speaker 1: is the story behind the company and its robots. Well,
Speaker 1: the founder of Boston Dynamics is Mark rayber. Raber was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen forty nine and he was a studious Fellow.
Speaker 1: He attended Northeastern University from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three and earned a degree in electrical engineering. He
Speaker 1: then went on to pursue his PhD at the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology better known as m i T, and
Speaker 1: upon graduating, Dr Rayber got a job at the NASA
Speaker 1: Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a member of the technacal staff.
Speaker 1: So you could say that he was a rocket scientist,
Speaker 1: although really he worked with rocket scientists. His main focus
Speaker 1: was obviously on robotics, and he worked there for about
Speaker 1: three years, leaving in nineteen eighty. His next gig was
Speaker 1: a pretty just went as well. He was an associate
Speaker 1: professor at Carnegie Melon University's Computer science department and the
Speaker 1: Robotics Institute. Now, if you've been listening to tech stuff recently,
Speaker 1: you may remember I mentioned this particular group in a
Speaker 1: recent episode about Uber, because Uber rated Carnegie Melon and
Speaker 1: hired about forty of their robotics experts over to help
Speaker 1: them with their efforts in developing autonomous car programs. Of course,
Speaker 1: by that time Dr Raber was long gone from Carnegie Melon.
Speaker 1: But I just I mentioned it because it's another link
Speaker 1: to a recent episode. In nine six, Dr rayber took
Speaker 1: a position of Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Speaker 1: over at m I T, and there he founded the
Speaker 1: m I T Leg Lab, which sounds a bit weird,
Speaker 1: but stick with me. So this was a lab specifically
Speaker 1: dedicated to researching and designing legged robots, not leg lamps,
Speaker 1: as I was first led to believe. It was a
Speaker 1: very difficult realization to say that it wasn't a major reward.
Speaker 1: But it turns out building robots that use legs for
Speaker 1: locomotion it's really really hard. Now why is that? Why
Speaker 1: is it so difficult to build a robot that uses
Speaker 1: legs to get around? Well, first, let's consider the wheel. Now,
Speaker 1: wheels aren't really found in organisms. There are some microscopic
Speaker 1: critters that have components that are vaguely wheel and axle like,
Speaker 1: but they're not really wheels the way are various inventions
Speaker 1: have wheels. A wheel as a limb is not likely
Speaker 1: to ever evolve in nature for several reasons. For one,
Speaker 1: any mutation that would set an organism on the path
Speaker 1: figuratively speaking to developing wheels would likely at first be
Speaker 1: a negative rather than a positive mutation. So in other words,
Speaker 1: an animal with some sort of pro to wheel limb,
Speaker 1: something that's maybe like part of a wheel but not
Speaker 1: a complete wheel, probably wouldn't have very many advantages and
Speaker 1: perhaps have distinct disadvantages with regards to survival, and thus
Speaker 1: it would be unlikely that such a mutation would be
Speaker 1: passed down to future generations to evolve. So that's one thing,
Speaker 1: is that the pathway for evolution is complicated, and if
Speaker 1: you have a mutation that is more likely to get
Speaker 1: you eaten by predators, probably not going to get passed
Speaker 1: down to a lot of offspring. For another reason, the
Speaker 1: rotation of a wheel, if not due to gravity, has
Speaker 1: to come from some source of torque, that rotational power.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to provide power to a
Speaker 1: wheel to make it turn. So locomotion for multicellular organisms
Speaker 1: typically comes from muscles, right, we have our muscles that
Speaker 1: allow us to move our limbs. But there's not really
Speaker 1: a way you could affix muscles to a wheel and
Speaker 1: allow it to turn freely indefinitely. You know, just think
Speaker 1: about how your wrist turns. Like even if you had
Speaker 1: the ability to turn your wrist completely around with no
Speaker 1: pain or anything like that, you couldn't do it indefinitely.
Speaker 1: Your muscles would continuously twist until eventually they would have
Speaker 1: to untwist like a rubber band. You couldn't just keep ongoing,
Speaker 1: so that's another problem. Wheels are almost exclusively in the
Speaker 1: domain of manufactured objects. Now that being said, they're darn't efficient.
Speaker 1: They're the easiest way to create locomotion for vehicles. It
Speaker 1: is also the most energy efficient way to travel relative
Speaker 1: to speed. So it requires a relatively simple implementation to
Speaker 1: create a wheeled robot. You don't have to worry so
Speaker 1: much about degrees of freedom. You don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about pivot points, or vector controllers or balance. I mean,
Speaker 1: as long as you've designed the robot in such a
Speaker 1: way that's relatively stable on its wheels, balance is not
Speaker 1: that big of an issue. So if you're talking about
Speaker 1: the three wheeled or four wheeled robot, balance is pretty easy.
Speaker 1: Once you get down to two wheels, then things get
Speaker 1: a little more tricky. You have to build in other
Speaker 1: systems in order for it to maintain balance, but in
Speaker 1: general it's not that hard to do. They also typically
Speaker 1: cost less to develop and less to build than a
Speaker 1: legged robot. A simple three wheel robot is stable on
Speaker 1: its own. If you've got that basic sort of triangle shape,
Speaker 1: it does not require a lot of high end technology
Speaker 1: to work, just some motors and then whatever sensors and
Speaker 1: processors you need to actually control the robot. Uh. Four
Speaker 1: wheeled robots are are even more stable than three wheeled robots,
Speaker 1: and they can excel in applications that a three wheeled
Speaker 1: robot might find difficult. For example, if you plan for
Speaker 1: your robot to lift things, you could have a three
Speaker 1: wheeled robot that would become unbalanced depending upon where you
Speaker 1: put the load on top of the robot right If
Speaker 1: it's too far off to one side of its center
Speaker 1: of gravity, it can make the robots sort of tip over.
Speaker 1: Our four wheeled robot tends to be more stable in
Speaker 1: those cases. You can also design a wheeled robot to
Speaker 1: operate even if it's been flipped upside down. So if
Speaker 1: the robot is such that the wheels can make contact,
Speaker 1: whether it's right side up or upside down, you could
Speaker 1: of the option of continuously operating that robot even if
Speaker 1: it were to flip over. In fact, I remember some
Speaker 1: remote controlled cars that were designed this way. They were
Speaker 1: marketed as that you would purposefully drive your car and
Speaker 1: to say a wall, make it flip over, and then
Speaker 1: you could keep on driving the car just kind of fun.
Speaker 1: That's the same basic idea, but wheels are not ideal
Speaker 1: across all different types of terrain. They work best on
Speaker 1: tracks if you have them, but if you don't have tracks,
Speaker 1: they work best on smooth even ground. Depending upon the
Speaker 1: wheel design and the torque available, they may be able
Speaker 1: to travel over semi rough terrain too fairly rough terrain,
Speaker 1: but they aren't great for everything, and if the ground
Speaker 1: is really challenging, they can prove to be ineffective. So
Speaker 1: that challenge could be that the ground is just too
Speaker 1: rocky or covered in debris, or it's composed of loose
Speaker 1: elements like sand, and in those situations, legs might be
Speaker 1: more effective. Your wheels might otherwise spin needlessly, just completely
Speaker 1: without motion. You're just turning around and you're digging yourself
Speaker 1: into a hole. Or they could end up catching on
Speaker 1: debris and pulling them into the works of the robot,
Speaker 1: gumming everything up. A legged robot with the right control
Speaker 1: system or programming can step over obstacles and move smoothly
Speaker 1: over different types of terrain, robots can use legs to
Speaker 1: select a precise spot on the ground to place its
Speaker 1: weight and then shift to move. A wheel has little
Speaker 1: choice but to just roll ahead, but a legged robot
Speaker 1: can place its legs and then shift its weight in
Speaker 1: a very specific way, which is helpful on uneven ground
Speaker 1: or going up and down the stairs. And depending upon
Speaker 1: the design of the robot, you can make it where
Speaker 1: the way it places its leg down, the way it
Speaker 1: shifts its weight, it can maintain its relative position over
Speaker 1: the ground. So it looks like if you if you
Speaker 1: were to remove the legs magically from the image, like
Speaker 1: it's just floating over the landscape. But it's all because
Speaker 1: the way it's able to place its legs and move
Speaker 1: its weight around. But legs, as it turns out, are
Speaker 1: super hard to design. They require joints and points of articulation,
Speaker 1: and you have to have power to move everything and
Speaker 1: figure out how you're going to create the force necessary
Speaker 1: to open and close those various joints, and you have
Speaker 1: to have lots of precise directions to work effectively. So
Speaker 1: you need a very efficient computer and you need really
Speaker 1: good programming so that it can actually maneuver over these
Speaker 1: different terrain. A leg needs to have more moving parts
Speaker 1: than a wheel, with at least three actuators to make
Speaker 1: the leg more useful than a wheel. You can have
Speaker 1: fewer than three actuators and have a leg, but it's
Speaker 1: not going to be more useful than a wheel unless
Speaker 1: you have at least three actuators. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the work in legged robots concentrates on how to move
Speaker 1: those legs. So, for example, you might use artificial muscles
Speaker 1: with stuff like electroactive polymers. Now, those are materials made
Speaker 1: out of long chain molecules that change their shape when
Speaker 1: they encounter an electric field. So here's an example, and
Speaker 1: this is just one I pulled off the top of
Speaker 1: my head, and it's not really indicative of how they
Speaker 1: all work, but it's way they at work. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you build a structure and it's made off of
Speaker 1: this material, and that structure is elongated, it's extended, but
Speaker 1: if it encounters an electric field, it contracts, it pulls together.
Speaker 1: This would make it work in a way similar to
Speaker 1: the way our muscles work. Now, there's not just that
Speaker 1: kind of method to power legs. In fact, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty rare one. You're more likely to find electric actuators
Speaker 1: or hydraulic actuators. But that's another challenge is how do
Speaker 1: you actually get the legs to move. Then there's a
Speaker 1: ton of work on that processing side to calculate things
Speaker 1: like balanced momentum, weight distribution, path finding, all of these
Speaker 1: different things that we take for granted we learn it intuitively,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't work with robots necessarily. And there's a
Speaker 1: long history of studies that happened before robotics were even
Speaker 1: a thing that would eventually inform the design of legged robots,
Speaker 1: and some of those studies which went on to help
Speaker 1: future engineers when they were building out these robot legs
Speaker 1: for the first time. We're pretty grim, as it turns out.
Speaker 1: So get ready for a gross story that I'm about
Speaker 1: to tell you. One study that the Leg Lab cites
Speaker 1: as being an important milestone in the development of legged
Speaker 1: robots comes from an eighteen thirty six journal and it
Speaker 1: involves dead people. The title of this study was Mechanic
Speaker 1: derminsch lichen I and a Thomish physiologic unter schung fondap
Speaker 1: rudin Wilhelm Weber w Edward web Webber. All right, so
Speaker 1: translated to English because that was a terrible German, I know,
Speaker 1: my German's awful kind of Deutsches. It turns out it
Speaker 1: actually means the mechanics of the human and anatomical physiological
Speaker 1: examination of the brothers Wilhelm and Edward Webber. Now their
Speaker 1: work is available to read if you read German. But
Speaker 1: they found that if you took the leg of a
Speaker 1: corps and you swung the leg of the corpse, so
Speaker 1: it acted like a compound pendulum. The swinging motion was
Speaker 1: very similar to the cadence of a leg with a
Speaker 1: live person is walking around. That's cheerful. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, that would actually be one of those fundamental
Speaker 1: studies that would go on to inform people who were
Speaker 1: trying to build artificial legs and mechanical legs. Most of
Speaker 1: the studies the lab sites aren't nearly so grim and
Speaker 1: don't involve nearly as many corpses. So for example, another
Speaker 1: important contribution came from a guy named Edward Moybridge. Now
Speaker 1: this was an English photographer who developed stop motion photography.
Speaker 1: Moybridge was hired by a fat cat named Leland Stanford.
Speaker 1: He was a former governor and a railroad tycoon and
Speaker 1: Stanford had this idea, and he needed evidence to support
Speaker 1: his idea. His idea was that when a horse is
Speaker 1: in full gallop, at some point during its gait, it
Speaker 1: will have all four hoofs off the ground simultaneously, and
Speaker 1: moy Bridge was essentially contracted to prove that Stanford had
Speaker 1: a leg to stand on as it were. So Moybridge
Speaker 1: invented away to use a series of twelve cameras to
Speaker 1: take photos with an exposure lasting only a fraction of
Speaker 1: a second, which at the time it was pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1: Most photo photography. Early photography had very long exposure time
Speaker 1: in order to get enough light to actually create the effect,
Speaker 1: which is why you have lots of portraits of very
Speaker 1: dour looking people in early photography, because it meant they
Speaker 1: had to sit still for several minutes at a time,
Speaker 1: and you know, if you're trying to hold a smile,
Speaker 1: pretty soon you hate the world and everything in it,
Speaker 1: so you typically have these very kind of neutral or
Speaker 1: dour expressions in those early photographs. Well, Moybridge wanted to
Speaker 1: find a way of doing this much faster, so he
Speaker 1: created this camera system where in a fraction of a
Speaker 1: second it could expose film to enough light to create
Speaker 1: an image. He said, twelve of these cameras in a row,
Speaker 1: and then he used little trip wires not to trip
Speaker 1: up the horses, but rather the wires themselves would trip
Speaker 1: when a horse ran through them, and it would cause
Speaker 1: the cameras to take these photos in sequence, and then
Speaker 1: you could look at them and see a horse's gallop
Speaker 1: in progress. The photos showed that Stanford was in fact correct.
Speaker 1: There was a brief moment in the horse's stride in
Speaker 1: which all four legs were off the ground, and Moybridge's
Speaker 1: innovation became valuable for scientists who wanted to study animal movement,
Speaker 1: and later for engineers and roboticists who wished to mimic
Speaker 1: those movements when they were developing robotic legs. Uh, Moybridge
Speaker 1: and stop motion animation and stop motion photography, I should say,
Speaker 1: are really fascinating subjects, and I'm sure I'll cover them
Speaker 1: in another episode of tech Stuff at some point. Back
Speaker 1: to milestones, Well, there are a lot of others that
Speaker 1: the lab acknowledgeist as being really important moments in the
Speaker 1: development of robotic legs, and they even include a few
Speaker 1: of Dr Rabur's contributions to the fields, such as three.
Speaker 1: When Rayber build a one legged hopping machine, it could
Speaker 1: keep its own balance and travel at a specified rate.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like a UFO on a pogo stick.
Speaker 1: It's constantly bouncing around. The main trick here was just
Speaker 1: getting that balance right. So Rayber was able to create
Speaker 1: this robot that uses a computer that calculates where that
Speaker 1: one foot needs to come down in order to keep
Speaker 1: the overall robot balanced while still traveling in the desired direction.
Speaker 1: Those calculations had to be done fast enough so that
Speaker 1: they were complete before the robot would come crashing down
Speaker 1: after its last hops. So as it hops up in
Speaker 1: the air, the computer has to figure out the trajectory,
Speaker 1: the momentum, all of these different elements that the robot
Speaker 1: is experiencing in order to compensate with the leg so
Speaker 1: that it can hit the ground at just the right
Speaker 1: spot with just the right amount of force to propel
Speaker 1: the robot up again and continue moving it in whatever
Speaker 1: direction you wanted to go in. So it's actually pretty complicated,
Speaker 1: It took a lot of work and it's pretty fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff off. That basic principle would then later be adapted
Speaker 1: and applied into multi legged robots with a computer determining
Speaker 1: where each leg needs to go, how it needs to
Speaker 1: make contact with the ground, how much force, all just
Speaker 1: so that the robot doesn't fall over. Rayber would end
Speaker 1: up writing a book about his research. In the book
Speaker 1: has the title legged robots that Balance. Pretty much sums
Speaker 1: up the whole thing, doesn't it. It sounds like it's
Speaker 1: a trivial thing. But again, it was really tricky to
Speaker 1: do because while we're growing up, most of us, you know,
Speaker 1: as kids, we learned to walk, and we kind of
Speaker 1: have an kind of intuitive grasp of what we need
Speaker 1: to do in order to keep our balance barring any
Speaker 1: unforeseen circumstances like stepping on something that is on uh
Speaker 1: it's like uncertain ground without even realizing it, or getting
Speaker 1: shoved by someone. We're pretty good at keeping our balance
Speaker 1: generally speaking, assuming all things are you know, normal, But
Speaker 1: a robot has to think air quotes, think about how
Speaker 1: to do this. Intuition isn't an option, at least not
Speaker 1: without some really advanced machine learning algorithms, which honestly, we're
Speaker 1: not that far along. In the nineteen eighties, this was
Speaker 1: all stuff that had to be worked out by human engineers.
Speaker 1: These days if you created a really advanced machine learning algorithm,
Speaker 1: I suppose it won't be long before we start seeing
Speaker 1: robots that teach themselves how they need to walk. And
Speaker 1: we've seen some examples of that, and they look really weird,
Speaker 1: but these are mostly simulations, like we've seen computer simulations
Speaker 1: of what it would look like, where there's a virtual
Speaker 1: robot that has virtual statistics including its virtual weight and
Speaker 1: height and all these sort of things that have real
Speaker 1: world impact if you were to create an actual robot,
Speaker 1: And then there are simulations that show how a computer
Speaker 1: works out how this robot needs to move in order
Speaker 1: to actually walk without falling over, and in some cases
Speaker 1: the animations are hysterical and also nightmare inducing. But as
Speaker 1: far as I know, we don't have any actual physical
Speaker 1: robots that follow that model. I could be wrong about that.
Speaker 1: By the way, there's advances in robotics all the time,
Speaker 1: and they're very well. Maybe a project out there that's
Speaker 1: much further along than what I'm suggesting, but the ones
Speaker 1: I have seen of all been virtual representations rabs. Robots.
Speaker 1: By the way, we're mostly dynamic robots, meaning they were
Speaker 1: dynamic in the sense they needed to move in order
Speaker 1: to remain stable. You could have static stable robots, but
Speaker 1: these were ones that needed to move in order to
Speaker 1: maintain that upright position and not just fall over. And
Speaker 1: even some of those early robots, which often were tethered
Speaker 1: to control and power systems, could do really amazing things.
Speaker 1: So most of the early robots, if you see the
Speaker 1: footage from Boston Dynamics, they have all these different cables
Speaker 1: and stuff coming off of them. Those cables are frequently
Speaker 1: going to power systems and to controls the dumbs. Because
Speaker 1: the robots were meant to demonstrate specific types of locomotion,
Speaker 1: they weren't going to be used as a finished product.
Speaker 1: It was more about studying the way to build the
Speaker 1: best systems, and so you didn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: making something that was all self contained. You were studying
Speaker 1: all of this in the lab anyway. So a lot
Speaker 1: of those videos you'll see just have the this like
Speaker 1: nest of chords that are grouped up over the robot
Speaker 1: and go into some or you know, system or other
Speaker 1: multiple systems in some cases. But even in those early robots,
Speaker 1: there's some video clips of phenomenal robotic gymnastics, Like there's
Speaker 1: somewhere engineers are controlling the robots and making them do
Speaker 1: things like forward flips while traveling a path. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about like hopping robots. They'll be hopping in a circle
Speaker 1: and then they'll do an extra tall hop and do
Speaker 1: a full forward flip and land on their foot and
Speaker 1: catch their balance and continue going in the circle. This
Speaker 1: is decades before we saw the viral clips of youtu
Speaker 1: both Big Dog and the other famous robots from Boston Dynamics.
Speaker 1: So if you get a chance, do some digging on
Speaker 1: YouTube for Boston Dynamics and take a look at some
Speaker 1: of those early videos, because they're really really impressive and
Speaker 1: in some cases extremely creepy. Another Raybors contributions on the
Speaker 1: list dates from when he and his team developed quadruped
Speaker 1: robots that can move at different speeds like trotting, pacing,
Speaker 1: and bounding, and they could switch between those different modes
Speaker 1: so you didn't just have to turn it on and
Speaker 1: then put it down on the ground. You could actually
Speaker 1: go from one speed to the other and you know,
Speaker 1: knock up a notch or down a notch. If you
Speaker 1: watch slow motion footage of animals moving at different speeds,
Speaker 1: you'll see that their legs move differently at each rate
Speaker 1: of travel. So like a horse at a trot and
Speaker 1: a horse at a gallop, their legs are behaving in
Speaker 1: different ways. Well, Raybor was working very hard to create
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing in his robots. So Rayber
Speaker 1: and his team worked to push the envelope in the
Speaker 1: field of robotic low emotion. They experimented with different designs
Speaker 1: create more stable, capable robots, and many of those early
Speaker 1: designs used humans to guide the path of the robots,
Speaker 1: so it was kind of a partly human controlled, partly
Speaker 1: robotic controlled system. Frequently, the robots themselves had computers, either
Speaker 1: on board or just off board that did all the
Speaker 1: actual work to determine the particulars like where does the
Speaker 1: leg go and how would it need to shift its
Speaker 1: weight in order to obey the commands. So the human
Speaker 1: is essentially giving commands like I want you to move
Speaker 1: over forward five feet, but it was the robots computer
Speaker 1: that was actually doing the work of how does it
Speaker 1: achieve that goal. In n Rayber founded a company to
Speaker 1: continue this work and find commercial applications for the technologies
Speaker 1: he was developing, and that company was Boston Dynamics. So
Speaker 1: we're finally at the point where Boston Dynamics is its
Speaker 1: own company, which means it's time to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and thank our sponsor. All right, So it's the
Speaker 1: early nine nineties and bust and Dynamics as a new company.
Speaker 1: So do they start turning out commercial robots right away? Nope.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, none of the company's work has ever been
Speaker 1: turned into a commercial product. Directly, you cannot go out
Speaker 1: and buy a Boston Dynamics robot for yourself. But the
Speaker 1: company's work has been extremely important to push forward the
Speaker 1: evolution of robotics, and there are some really big organizations
Speaker 1: that have been extremely interested in that, such as the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense. Now, much of Buston Dynamics funding has
Speaker 1: come from really big contracts awarded to the company by
Speaker 1: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA.
Speaker 1: And you might remember DARPA as being the group responsible
Speaker 1: for the Grand Challenge, in which self driving cars raced
Speaker 1: through courses ranging from desert landscapes to a mock up
Speaker 1: of a working city to see who could come out
Speaker 1: on top. Or maybe you remember brit DARPA as the
Speaker 1: agency which at the time was known as ARPA that
Speaker 1: funded the development of technology that became the backbone of
Speaker 1: the Internet. We wouldn't have the Internet as it stands
Speaker 1: today without the R and D arm of the Department
Speaker 1: of Defense. As it turns out, DARPA has been very
Speaker 1: much interested in robotics, and the US Army, Navy, and
Speaker 1: Marine Corps have similarly been interested in potential applications of
Speaker 1: robots that are either inspired by man or beasts. So
Speaker 1: Boston Dynamics has frequently operated as a research facility on
Speaker 1: behalf of these organizations. Now. One of the earliest projects
Speaker 1: that we ever got to hear about from Boston Dynamics
Speaker 1: was Big Dog, dynamically stable four legged robot that debuted
Speaker 1: in two thousand five. It was a predecessor of a
Speaker 1: larger project titled Legged Squad Support System or LS three.
Speaker 1: Boston Dynamics partnered with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Concord
Speaker 1: Field Station at Harvard University, and a robotics company called
Speaker 1: Foster Miller on this The concept behind the design was
Speaker 1: a robot that would be able to carry field equipment
Speaker 1: in support of deployed military squads. So rather than load
Speaker 1: down soldiers with dozens of pounds of gear, the robot
Speaker 1: would be able to carry those loads and free up
Speaker 1: the humans so they didn't have to tire so quickly
Speaker 1: and they can move around with fewer restrictions. Dr Martin Bueller,
Speaker 1: formerly of McGill University, led the Big Dog project. Dr
Speaker 1: Bueller would be the Director of robotics Research at Boston
Speaker 1: Dynamics from two thousand three to two thousand eight, but
Speaker 1: would eventually move on to work for another corporation, one
Speaker 1: called I Robot in two thousand and eight, and then
Speaker 1: later on would move on to other projects. Big Dog
Speaker 1: could carry forty or more than ninety pounds. The robot
Speaker 1: itself weighed in at a hundred nine ms. It was
Speaker 1: a meter tall, and it wasn't some battery operated robot. Instead,
Speaker 1: it actually used a gasoline fueled engine. The joints used
Speaker 1: hydraulic actuators, meaning the robot would use liquids under press
Speaker 1: sure to extend limbs or reduce pressure to allow limbs
Speaker 1: to contract to bend backward. For sensing its environment, Big
Speaker 1: Dog also had stereo cameras so it could perceive depth,
Speaker 1: and a light oar system to get an idea of
Speaker 1: the orientation of various elements in an environment. Now, a
Speaker 1: light OAR stands where light detection and ranging. Here's how
Speaker 1: it works in a nutshell, a light ar detector has
Speaker 1: two main components. First is an emitter or a light
Speaker 1: gun of some sort, which shoots out light, typically in
Speaker 1: the infrared range. The light shoots out from the emitter
Speaker 1: until it hits some sort of object, and then some
Speaker 1: of that light bounces back, and that's when light ars.
Speaker 1: Second big component, a detector picks up the returning signals.
Speaker 1: By doing some quick math, the lightar system can determine
Speaker 1: how far away the object was based on the delay
Speaker 1: between the emitted infrared light and then the detection of
Speaker 1: the infrared light when it comes back. This is the
Speaker 1: system used in modern speed guns. Oh and in a
Speaker 1: speed gun, the emitter typically shoots out a burst of
Speaker 1: these infrared way wives. So when the emitter picks up
Speaker 1: the returning waves, it can look at the difference in
Speaker 1: distances from the emitter and thus and for the speed
Speaker 1: of the object that the gun was pointed at, such
Speaker 1: as a super sweet red sports car, because we all
Speaker 1: know the red ones go faster. This is also the
Speaker 1: robot that could keep kicking and keep on ticking. I
Speaker 1: guess anyway, there are many videos showing people giving big
Speaker 1: Dog a let's call it a healthy shove with a
Speaker 1: foot to throw the robot off balance. You've probably seen
Speaker 1: one of these videos at least where there's this four
Speaker 1: legged robot and some dude comes up, puts his foot
Speaker 1: right up against the robot and gives us a big
Speaker 1: old shove, and the robot just stumbles around for a
Speaker 1: bit before picking itself back up. Now, the purpose of
Speaker 1: those videos isn't a show that robots, hey, we're still
Speaker 1: the boss of you, but rather to demonstrate the ability
Speaker 1: of the robots to catch themselves even after they've been shoved,
Speaker 1: and to regain their balance through careful, though sometimes seemingly
Speaker 1: haphazard placement of their legs. Now doesn't work every time, no,
Speaker 1: because terrain can be really unpredictable. Sometimes the robots best
Speaker 1: efforts just aren't enough to keep it from toppling over.
Speaker 1: But there are plenty of video examples of those robots,
Speaker 1: which look fairly lifelike in their locomotion getting kicked before
Speaker 1: regaining their footing. And it shouldn't come as any surprise
Speaker 1: that the robots movements look lifelike since the engineers were
Speaker 1: frequently relying upon animal movement as a model for robotic movement.
Speaker 1: As for the l S three project, it added some
Speaker 1: more requirements. This is the bigger version of Big Dog.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they would call this Alpha Dog, and it could
Speaker 1: carry up to a hundred two of gear for a
Speaker 1: distance of thirty two kilometers or duration of twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: According to Boston Dynamics, during one control test, it was
Speaker 1: actually able to carry five hundreds of mass it's more
Speaker 1: than a thousand pounds. It also could recognize a designated leader,
Speaker 1: so an actual human being, and then follow behind that
Speaker 1: specific person that leader without needing any other operators. On
Speaker 1: top of the sensors that it had from its a
Speaker 1: smaller cousin Big Dog, it also had GPS, so it
Speaker 1: had some additional sensors inside of it. And ultimately, though
Speaker 1: it wouldn't go very far beyond a few test missions
Speaker 1: with the military. So the advances in robotics locomotion were considerable,
Speaker 1: and there are many videos showing how impressive this robot
Speaker 1: is and how it maneuvers across different types of terrain.
Speaker 1: But it had a big, big problem, and that was
Speaker 1: it was noisy. The robots gasoline engine created a huge
Speaker 1: amount of noise, which meant that if you were a
Speaker 1: military squad and you had one of these in your group,
Speaker 1: your position would immediately be given away. There was nothing
Speaker 1: stealthy about it. Boston Dynamics would create a smaller, battery
Speaker 1: operated version of that robot called Spot, But spots problem
Speaker 1: was not noise, it was just carrying capacity. It wasn't
Speaker 1: as hefty, It wasn't as strong as Big Dog or
Speaker 1: Alpha Dog. It could only carry forty pounds or about
Speaker 1: eighteen kims, which wasn't really considered to be enough to
Speaker 1: be useful to the military, so it was much more
Speaker 1: quiet but had less utility. Both Big Dog and Spot
Speaker 1: would come to an end. Their projects would end, sometimes
Speaker 1: around two thousand and fifteen, but the progress made during
Speaker 1: the design and build out of the robots would inform
Speaker 1: future efforts at Boston Dynamics, So it wasn't like it
Speaker 1: was a total loss or anything. The value was really
Speaker 1: in the actual design and build out of these robots,
Speaker 1: and that becomes a story, kind of exploratory research, kind
Speaker 1: of story for Boston Dynamics throughout its entire existence. Another
Speaker 1: robot that would come out of this effort would be
Speaker 1: spot Many. This is a much more recent robot. It's
Speaker 1: a smaller variation on that four legged design spot Many
Speaker 1: debuted in two thousand seventeen, and it has a much
Speaker 1: more friendly looking appearance. A lot of the you know,
Speaker 1: Big Dog and Spot were kind of industrial and in
Speaker 1: looks like they weren't they weren't meant to be pretty.
Speaker 1: Spot Many has a little bit of a friendlier look
Speaker 1: with some three D printed parts, and it makes a
Speaker 1: little more sleek and it also has a nice bright
Speaker 1: yellow color to the ones that are on the videos anyway, um,
Speaker 1: and it's also smaller. Buston Dynamics called it their quietest
Speaker 1: robot to date, and of course it operates on battery
Speaker 1: power because hydraulics would be very loud and also unnecessarily
Speaker 1: strong for such a small form factor. The robot moves
Speaker 1: in a very fluid, organic way, and certain motions kind
Speaker 1: of give off the illusion that it is actually alive,
Speaker 1: but we have been assured by Boston Dynamics that as
Speaker 1: not the case, so I'm gonna trust them. The robot
Speaker 1: weighs as the base model, but you can also get
Speaker 1: one while you can't. But the Boston Dynamics also makes
Speaker 1: one that has an articulated arm that is mounted to
Speaker 1: the top of the robot. So think of the robot
Speaker 1: is like a platform. You've got four legs attached to
Speaker 1: it on the top front part of it. You've also
Speaker 1: got an articulated arm that can reach out and grab
Speaker 1: stuff is on a joint, so it's like it's got
Speaker 1: an elbow. And this adds an extra five kilograms to
Speaker 1: the weight of the robot. And if you just take
Speaker 1: a look at the design, the hand and arm makes
Speaker 1: it look like it's kind of a head and neck
Speaker 1: of an animal, so kind of like the spot Mini
Speaker 1: is actually a tiny frisky a pedasaurus or something. According
Speaker 1: to the company's spot Mini can prance around for about
Speaker 1: ninety minutes before it needs a recharge, and it can
Speaker 1: carry about fourteen kilograms of payload and has seventeen joints
Speaker 1: of articulation. If you haven't seen videos of that thing
Speaker 1: in motion, I highly recommend you check it out. They
Speaker 1: are fascinating and again a little unnerving because you know,
Speaker 1: they again are mocking organic creatures. So there's this sort
Speaker 1: of kind of Uncanny Valley thing going on with these
Speaker 1: robots that move like living things, but clearly are not
Speaker 1: living things. There's also Little Dog, which is a much
Speaker 1: smaller robot that Boston Dynamics created for DARPA. DARPA, in turn,
Speaker 1: relies on Little Dog as a development platform for other
Speaker 1: advances in the robotics. So if you've listened to my
Speaker 1: other episodes that involved DARPA, you know that DARPA itself
Speaker 1: does not conduct original research. Rather, it's an agency that
Speaker 1: offers up funding to other companies and organizations to do
Speaker 1: that kind of work, and that's in the interest of
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. Little Dogs Men is kind of
Speaker 1: a standard platform upon which robotics organizations can develop new
Speaker 1: technology for DARPA projects. So that might involve things like pathfinding,
Speaker 1: object recognition, uh, you know that sort of stuff, things
Speaker 1: that are maybe more on the software side of things
Speaker 1: than the hardware side of things. Other four legged robots
Speaker 1: built by Boston Dynamics include the Cheetah, which could hit
Speaker 1: a top speed of twenty eight miles per hour that's
Speaker 1: about forty five kilometers per hour. The Cheetah was not
Speaker 1: built to run free across the landscape. It was running
Speaker 1: on a treadmill. It actually had tethered power supply. Eye
Speaker 1: tethered controls, so again, this wasn't a a all inclusive robot.
Speaker 1: The purpose of the Cheetah was for robotics experts to
Speaker 1: experiment with ways to build a fast moving robot. So again,
Speaker 1: this was for them to kind of build out the
Speaker 1: technologies that would then be incorporated into future designs, rather
Speaker 1: than something that was its own self contained robot. So
Speaker 1: again it kind of a development platform. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: really fascinating to to watch though. It would run on
Speaker 1: these treadmills at blistering speeds. You'd see this treadmill start
Speaker 1: to ramp up, and at twenty eight miles per hour,
Speaker 1: it meant that it was moving faster even than Hussain Bolt. However,
Speaker 1: it couldn't balance itself, so unlike Hussain Bolt, you would
Speaker 1: not be able to Like, it couldn't take a turn
Speaker 1: to save its life. So if somehow one of these
Speaker 1: Cheetah robots were to get after you, all you need
Speaker 1: to do is take a left or right you'd be fine. Uh. Also,
Speaker 1: it be tethered to a computer and probably couldn't move
Speaker 1: very far, so you're probably fine either way. But that's
Speaker 1: just one They did, however, use that design to build
Speaker 1: out another four legged fast robot called the Wildcat. This
Speaker 1: one was a self contained robot. Buston Dynamics showed off
Speaker 1: the Wildcat robot in two thousand thirteen with videos of
Speaker 1: this four legged robot bounding and galloping outside. It was
Speaker 1: not tethered so it can run around and had a
Speaker 1: gasoline engine very similar to Big Dog. Pretty loud, but
Speaker 1: also pretty fast. It could get a top speed of
Speaker 1: about sixteen miles per hour, so not quite as fast
Speaker 1: as the Cheetah. If you are Hussain Bolt, you could
Speaker 1: outrun this particular robot. If you are me, you would
Speaker 1: be robot meat. I don't go faster than sixteen miles
Speaker 1: per unless I'm either inside another vehicle or falling off
Speaker 1: a cliff. There is another Cheetah robot by the way,
Speaker 1: if you do searches for Cheetah robot, there's a different
Speaker 1: one that comes out of the m I T Robotics apartment.
Speaker 1: This one's a really cool robot. It's a four legged
Speaker 1: robot that can detect and jump over obstacles. There's some
Speaker 1: great videos of engineers showing it uh seeing an oncoming
Speaker 1: obstacle on a treadmill and leaping over it. Even as
Speaker 1: the obstacles grow taller and taller, it's still able to
Speaker 1: get over them. It's an incredibly impressive robot, but it
Speaker 1: is not a Boston Dynamics robot. Then there's Rise, which
Speaker 1: is a wall climbing robot. This one has six legs
Speaker 1: and it's pretty small. It's about nine point six inches
Speaker 1: or long, has a tail like protrusion that makes it
Speaker 1: look sort of like a robotic horseshoe crab, and each
Speaker 1: leg has two joints, which means it has a total
Speaker 1: of twelve actuated degrees of freedom. The feet have a
Speaker 1: little micro claws on it, so it can grip to surfaces.
Speaker 1: As long as the surface isn't completely smooth, it can
Speaker 1: grip onto it and allow this little robot to climb
Speaker 1: right up a vertical surface. On top of the normal
Speaker 1: sensors that you would expect in any given robot, there
Speaker 1: were some additional ones to ensure that it wouldn't take
Speaker 1: an unplanned tumble, which included foot contact sensors so the
Speaker 1: robot would actually know when its claws had been more
Speaker 1: or less engaged in whatever surface it was climbing. They
Speaker 1: also had legs strain sensors so if any legs were
Speaker 1: having more strain on them than normal, it could either
Speaker 1: redistribute its weight in an attempt to continue its climb,
Speaker 1: or it could stop its climb rather than risking falling
Speaker 1: off of its surface and allow someone to come up
Speaker 1: and retrieve it. According to Boston Dynamics UH, this robot
Speaker 1: could actually climb faster than an average human, and unlike humans,
Speaker 1: it doesn't tire out, although it could run out a
Speaker 1: battery charge, so that's sort of similar. And this was
Speaker 1: not built for a specific purpose. It was more like
Speaker 1: building out capabilities of robots with the ultimate goal of
Speaker 1: creating robots that could be useful for people like first
Speaker 1: responders in various UH emergencies. So there wasn't a specific mission,
Speaker 1: but it was more about let's build out these capabilities
Speaker 1: that could come in handy in future robotic designs. I
Speaker 1: got a lot more to say about Boston Dynamics, but
Speaker 1: before I get into this final segment, let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about a couple more robots before we get into some
Speaker 1: interesting recent stories involving Boston Dynamics. There was also a
Speaker 1: robot called Rex and that's spelled r h e X.
Speaker 1: That's a six legged robot designed to be able to
Speaker 1: tackle particularly tough terrain. It's not a big robot. It
Speaker 1: is about fourteen centimeters tall, so it doesn't exactly tower
Speaker 1: above the landscape, but it's curved legs could propel it
Speaker 1: over lots of different surfaces better than robots much larger
Speaker 1: than itself. It relied on TELA operations, which means you know,
Speaker 1: someone's controlling it remotely using a camera to get a
Speaker 1: robot's eye view of what was in front of the critter.
Speaker 1: The legs rotate kind of like wheels, so they're these
Speaker 1: sort of semi circular legs. They don't make a full circle,
Speaker 1: but they do rotate around and they can go through
Speaker 1: pretty much anything like that shows robots going through mud
Speaker 1: and water, and because it's a fully sealed robot, it
Speaker 1: doesn't you know, it's not in danger of having water,
Speaker 1: give it any short circuits or anything like that, no disassemble.
Speaker 1: It can go over rocks and twigs and even logs
Speaker 1: and stuff. So it's a pretty interesting and robust looking
Speaker 1: little critter. And again it's sort of a proof of
Speaker 1: concept of technologies that could be used in future robots.
Speaker 1: There's also sand Flea, which is a wheeled robot, an
Speaker 1: unusual thing for Boston Dynamic or Boston Dynamics, I should say.
Speaker 1: It can jump actually, so it's a wheeled robot, but
Speaker 1: it can also leap into the air to the tune
Speaker 1: of about thirty feet in the air. It uses gyroscope
Speaker 1: hopes to maintain its orientation during jumps so it doesn't
Speaker 1: just tumble to the ground and you know, crash into
Speaker 1: lots of little bit so it can actually land on
Speaker 1: its wheels properly and then jump again. There's some great
Speaker 1: footage of it jumping from the ground onto the top
Speaker 1: of a building that I was really impressed by, so
Speaker 1: you should check that out to sand Flea is the
Speaker 1: name of that one. Then we get to the humanoid
Speaker 1: robots that Boston Dynamics has built. Now, the ones I've
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier were mostly based off of animal designs, with
Speaker 1: that exception of sand Flea because that's a wheeled robot.
Speaker 1: But these are all bipedal machines that I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about at this point. First, there's the Protection Ensemble
Speaker 1: Test mannequin, also known as pet Man. This is an
Speaker 1: anthropomorphic robot that's pretty basic. Its movements were largely influenced
Speaker 1: by the work done on the Big Dog project. In
Speaker 1: other words, it lumbers around a little bit. It when
Speaker 1: it's not wearing anything, it does not look terribly human.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basic human shape that's got legs and arms.
Speaker 1: But it does important work for humans, and that is
Speaker 1: to test out chemical protection suits to make sure they
Speaker 1: are of suitable durability for use by real, live human beings.
Speaker 1: So a suit might protect against chemicals when it's nice
Speaker 1: and new and when it's just kind of folded up,
Speaker 1: But on the real world, a suit's gonna be exposed
Speaker 1: to stresses and wear and tear, and so pet Man
Speaker 1: could simulate that by moving around while a suit is
Speaker 1: actually on the device. It would be wearing one of
Speaker 1: these chemical protection suits, and it could test the durability
Speaker 1: of the suit and actually even do this while being
Speaker 1: exposed to different types of stresses like temperature changes or
Speaker 1: even chemicals. You could spray chemicals on this thing, because
Speaker 1: it's a robot, you know, you wouldn't want to do
Speaker 1: that to a real human. You'd put them to way
Speaker 1: too much risk. If in fact, the chemical resistance suit
Speaker 1: didn't live up to its design, but with a robot,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about that, So that's exactly
Speaker 1: what they would use it for. It's kind of kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. Um and it's also fun to watch videos
Speaker 1: of it wearing the suits because then it just looks
Speaker 1: like a It kind of looks like a slasher movie monster,
Speaker 1: like Jason or Mike Myers, Mike Wires. That's just this big,
Speaker 1: lumbering hulk of a thing and uh typically camouflage chemical suits.
Speaker 1: It's kind of terrifying. Then there's Atlas, the agile anthropomorphic robot.
Speaker 1: The first generation of Atlas was a pretty monstrous beast itself.
Speaker 1: It measured six ft tall uh three centimeters in other words,
Speaker 1: and waited a hundred fifty ms or three thirty pounds.
Speaker 1: It's sensor's range finders and optical cameras communicated with a
Speaker 1: computer that was separate from the robot itself in the
Speaker 1: original prototype model, so in other words, all the computational
Speaker 1: stuff was offloaded onto a nearby unit. According to Boston Dynamics,
Speaker 1: the robot had a total of twenty eight degrees of
Speaker 1: freedom when you added up all of its various actuated joints.
Speaker 1: The earliest version required a tethered power supply, and then
Speaker 1: later builds would incorporate the power onto the robot itself,
Speaker 1: and its movement was largely based off the results of
Speaker 1: developing pet Man. So while pet Man was kind of
Speaker 1: an evolution of the work that was done on Big Dog,
Speaker 1: Atlas was an evolution of the work that was done
Speaker 1: on pet Man. And Atlas could do some pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 1: It could balance on one leg, which is really remarkable
Speaker 1: when you think about how big this thing was, and
Speaker 1: also it could recover from being shoved uh or sometimes
Speaker 1: it could. Other times it would lose its balance and
Speaker 1: unpredictably fall over, sometimes without even being shoved. First, it
Speaker 1: was that generation of Atlas that would be featured in
Speaker 1: the Team DARPA Robotics Challenge. I did a full episode
Speaker 1: about the Robotics Challenge, but I would give a quick summary. Here.
Speaker 1: You had a bunch of teams that were competing in
Speaker 1: designing a robotics solution to a series of problems that
Speaker 1: simulated the sorts of task a robot might have to
Speaker 1: complete in the wake of a disaster. The inspiration for
Speaker 1: the challenge was a real world disaster The Fukushima nuclear
Speaker 1: reactors when they malfunctioned after its tsunami um It was
Speaker 1: very dangerous to send people into that area, but a
Speaker 1: robot would be a much better choice. So this was
Speaker 1: kind of a challenge to see if any teams could
Speaker 1: design robotics platforms that could respond to the sort of
Speaker 1: things that would be necessary in another disaster of that caliber.
Speaker 1: So the robots would have to operate a vehicle, a
Speaker 1: human powered vehicle, typically not a human power, but human
Speaker 1: operated vehicle, to a specific destination, so in other words,
Speaker 1: like a golf cart. They'd have to drive this themselves,
Speaker 1: get out of that vehicle, open a door, walk through
Speaker 1: a doorway, and then complete several other challenges, including the
Speaker 1: operation of a handheld power tool. At one point, six
Speaker 1: of the competing teams would use the Atlas robot as
Speaker 1: their robotics platform. Other teams would rely on different humanoid robots,
Speaker 1: so they weren't required to use Atlas, but six teams
Speaker 1: did use Atlas. The nature of the challenges meant that
Speaker 1: the robot would have to simulate human activities, and the
Speaker 1: winning team, Team KIST, used a robot called Hubo, so
Speaker 1: it was not an Atlas. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: videos of the competition out there, including some of the
Speaker 1: various Atlas robots. There are also some great videos of
Speaker 1: heartbreaking and occasionally incredibly funny moments of robots falling over
Speaker 1: while trying to do seemingly simple things like walk through
Speaker 1: a doorway. As it turns out, that's a lot trickier
Speaker 1: than it sounds. In two thousand and sixteen, Boston Dynamics
Speaker 1: unveiled a second generation of Atlas robots that looked slightly
Speaker 1: less industrial and had more advanced sensors for navigation and
Speaker 1: orientation purposes, as well as more advanced maneuverability technology. It
Speaker 1: could walk on surfaces like snow, and even planned paths
Speaker 1: in areas where other objects are currently in motion. This
Speaker 1: one was a seventy five tall, so a little shorter.
Speaker 1: That's about five ft nine inches tall. It two ms
Speaker 1: or around a d eighty pounds, a little you know,
Speaker 1: significantly lighter than three pounds. Boston Dynamics has credited three
Speaker 1: D printing for the drastic reduction in weight and size,
Speaker 1: and there's an even smaller, lighter, and more capable generation
Speaker 1: of Atlas the debuted in late Boston Dynamics posted a
Speaker 1: video of it showing this robot in action. It could
Speaker 1: jump up on boxes, so it could walk up to
Speaker 1: an obstacle like a box, judge how tall it was,
Speaker 1: and then jump so that it landed and maintained its
Speaker 1: balance on top of the box. It could even do
Speaker 1: a full back flip off a box and land on
Speaker 1: the ground, regaining its balance so it doesn't even tip over,
Speaker 1: which is an incredible thing to see. If you haven't
Speaker 1: watched that video, you should definitely find that one. And
Speaker 1: that brings us to handle a robot that seems to
Speaker 1: look like kind of like a bucking horse on roller skates.
Speaker 1: I've seen other people refer to it as kind of
Speaker 1: like a donkey on roller skates. It's a bipedal robot,
Speaker 1: but it's lower legs don't end in feet, they end
Speaker 1: in wheels, so it has two wheels at its base,
Speaker 1: kind of like a segue, and it uses that same
Speaker 1: sort of technology to maintain its upright position. Has two
Speaker 1: upper limbs that can pick up and carry objects weighing
Speaker 1: up to and the robot is two meters tall, weighs
Speaker 1: a hundred and five kilograms, and has ten actuated joints.
Speaker 1: It uses battery power and a combination of hydraulic and
Speaker 1: electric actuators to actually work those limbs, and has depth
Speaker 1: cameras to provide perception. It can speed along the ground
Speaker 1: and even jump up onto higher surfaces. One demonstration, there's
Speaker 1: a video that you can watch of this as well.
Speaker 1: It will show the robot rolling toward a table and
Speaker 1: then the last second it jumps up and lands on
Speaker 1: the table surface, rolls across the table before landing on
Speaker 1: the other side and continuing on. It's pretty impressive, and
Speaker 1: Boston Dynamics has also pointed out that because it only
Speaker 1: has ten actuated joints, it's far less complex than some
Speaker 1: other models, and that uh that reduction in complexity could
Speaker 1: mean a reduction in cost as well. The wheels work
Speaker 1: on most services until you get into some really difficult terrain,
Speaker 1: and I find it fascinating that a company that had
Speaker 1: made its name from mostly legged robot designs had gone
Speaker 1: with this hybrid approach. But the videos show that the
Speaker 1: design is pretty effective, at least for specific applications. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I have not really covered in this episode
Speaker 1: is who owns Boston Dynamics these days, because that's actually
Speaker 1: changed a couple of times over the past few years.
Speaker 1: It operated as an independent company for more than a
Speaker 1: couple of well a couple of decades, and then on
Speaker 1: December thirteen, the top secret R and D branch of Google,
Speaker 1: known as Google X and these days just called X
Speaker 1: acquired Boston Dynamics um as X it is now a
Speaker 1: subsidiary company of Google's parent company, alphabet So. At the time,
Speaker 1: it was a division under Google. Now it's its own
Speaker 1: spin off company called x SO. Boston Dynamics was just
Speaker 1: one of nine robotics companies that Google acquired around that time,
Speaker 1: and the co founder of Android, Andy Reuben, was slated
Speaker 1: to take the helm of all nine companies under a
Speaker 1: new robotics division that was called Replicant, which isn't terrifying
Speaker 1: at all thanks a lot Blade Runner well. According to Reuben,
Speaker 1: the initial plan was to have those companies do their
Speaker 1: own thing, working on research the way they normally would
Speaker 1: and advancing the art and science of robotics, so in
Speaker 1: other words, there wouldn't be any pressure to develop commercial
Speaker 1: products right out of the gate. Instead, they would just
Speaker 1: do exploratory research and the advances in the field would
Speaker 1: guide Google's decisions on how to leverage those developments in
Speaker 1: commercial applications. But in October, Andy Reuben would leave Google.
Speaker 1: Now Reuben reportedly left to found a new company to
Speaker 1: act as an incubator for technology hardware products. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, he wanted to build a company that would
Speaker 1: help hardware developers get to market with their ideas. That
Speaker 1: company is called Essential. But later in information would leak
Speaker 1: that Reuben had apparently or allegedly i should say, left
Speaker 1: Google after a one of his employees, a woman, had
Speaker 1: filed a complaint to human resources about Reuben having an
Speaker 1: inappropriate relationship in the workplace. Now, Reuben's spokesperson over it
Speaker 1: Essential says that this report is misleading, that Reuben had
Speaker 1: never engaged in any misconduct at Google, that any relationships
Speaker 1: he had at Google were consensual, uh, and that there
Speaker 1: were no other issues there. But whatever the case, Reuben
Speaker 1: took a leave of absence at Essential to deal with
Speaker 1: quote personal matters in the quote. So back to the
Speaker 1: robotics companies under X. So Reuben leaves the company, and
Speaker 1: there was kind of a vacuuman leadership at that part
Speaker 1: of Google, and the is a lot of confusion about
Speaker 1: what was going to happen after all these companies had
Speaker 1: been told that they were going to continue operating as normal,
Speaker 1: really doing this exploratory research. But in Google management attempted
Speaker 1: to put some sort of leadership and structure in place,
Speaker 1: and reportedly the change came with an intent to make
Speaker 1: actual commercial products, so the divisions would have to dedicate
Speaker 1: themselves to building stuff that could be sold. The mission
Speaker 1: statement was effectively being changed from do exploratory research to
Speaker 1: build us something that we can market now. According to
Speaker 1: Business Insider, Boston Dynamics was told to start working on
Speaker 1: designing consumer robots. Now. These would have to be quiet,
Speaker 1: and they'd have to be suitable for operating around human
Speaker 1: beings of all ages. And this was a really narrow
Speaker 1: focus and something that many people at Boston Dynamics were
Speaker 1: not necessarily keen to work on. For one thing, they
Speaker 1: wanted to continue their work in pushing the boundaries and
Speaker 1: looking into all sorts of mechanisms to operate robots, including
Speaker 1: ones that would not be suitable for a consumer robot.
Speaker 1: For example, hydraulic actuators. You know, they're much louder than
Speaker 1: electronic ones, but more powerful, and therefore they can give
Speaker 1: a lot more uh uses applications for robots, but ones
Speaker 1: that wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for a consumer product. Jonathan Rosenberg,
Speaker 1: who had taken the helm of the replicant division, stated, quote, we,
Speaker 1: as a startup of our size, cannot spend thirty plus
Speaker 1: percent of our resources on things that take ten years
Speaker 1: end quote. So he was saying, we can't really afford
Speaker 1: the luxury of doing exploratory research with the idea that
Speaker 1: sometime down the line it's going to pay off. We
Speaker 1: have to start making things that we can actually sell.
Speaker 1: So from a business perspective, you can kind of see
Speaker 1: where he's coming from. But from the perspective of people
Speaker 1: at Boston Dynamics, this was very antithetical to what they
Speaker 1: had been doing up to that point. So Boston Dynamics
Speaker 1: would eventually go on to release a video of Atlas
Speaker 1: stacking boxes in an application that might be suitable for
Speaker 1: something like a warehouse, But apparently that quote soured the
Speaker 1: soup end quote with Google. Google management wanted a consumer
Speaker 1: facing product, not something that was going to have applications
Speaker 1: in industrial settings, and so at that point Google began
Speaker 1: to shop around for another suitor to take over Boston Dynamics. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: one of those potential parties was the Toyota Research Institute,
Speaker 1: but ultimately Google found a buyer in a Japanese company
Speaker 1: called soft Bank. Soft Bank also bought another robotics company
Speaker 1: off of Google slash alphabet called Shaft, which had competed
Speaker 1: in that DARPA robotics challenge I mentioned earlier. Masa Yoshi,
Speaker 1: san CEO of soft Bank, released this statement when news
Speaker 1: broke that the company was acquiring Boston Dynamics. Quote, today,
Speaker 1: there are many issues we still cannot solve by ourselves
Speaker 1: with human capabilities. Smart robotics are going to be a
Speaker 1: key driver of the next stage of information revolution, and
Speaker 1: Mark and his team at Boston Dynamics are the clear
Speaker 1: technology technology leaders in advanced dynamic robots. I am thrilled
Speaker 1: to welcome them to the soft Bank family and look
Speaker 1: forward to supporting them as they continue to advance the
Speaker 1: field of robotics and explore applications that can help make
Speaker 1: life easier, safer, and more fulfilling. So that's the story
Speaker 1: as it stands now with Boston Dynamics. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of hope over at Boston Dynamics that they will be
Speaker 1: able to continue their mission that they had been following
Speaker 1: for years before the Google acquisition. There's also obviously some
Speaker 1: concern that maybe soft Bank will follow suit with Google
Speaker 1: and say, hey, can you make us a robot that
Speaker 1: you know, we'll bake cheesecake and greet people at the door.
Speaker 1: And I totally want a cheesecake robot now. And I
Speaker 1: need to think these things through before I say them,
Speaker 1: because this was not in my notes. It was just
Speaker 1: kind of off the cuff. And Okay, guys, we're gonna
Speaker 1: wrap this up. So that's the story of Boston Dynamics
Speaker 1: so far. I can't wait to see what comes out
Speaker 1: of that story next. But if you guys have suggestions
Speaker 1: for things I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: you should write me the email addresses tech Stuff at
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Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both
Speaker 1: of those is tech Stuff hs W. Remember we also
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Speaker 1: tv slash tech Stuff. There's a schedule right there. You
Speaker 1: can check that out and chat with me in the
Speaker 1: chat room if you like. I'll enjoy that interaction. I'm
Speaker 1: wrapping this up because there's a cheesecake out there with
Speaker 1: my name on it. I gotta go find it. And
Speaker 1: you guys, well, I'll talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics because
Speaker 1: it has staff works dot com zo