Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with text Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: dot com either everyone, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm joined by a special guest host today,
Speaker 1: someone who is on the most popular podcast in the
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works suite of shows, Josh Clark Glow, co
Speaker 1: host of Stuff You Should Know. Josh, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Thank you for having me here.
Speaker 1: And Josh has been very kind. He's had me on
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. Way back in the day when
Speaker 1: you guys were doing one on the Necronomicon. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were starting to get knee deep into it and realizing
Speaker 1: that we were going to get a lot, a lot
Speaker 1: of listener mail, so we came and got you. You
Speaker 1: know what was funny was that no warning, you came
Speaker 1: to me asking about pronunciation I think two times, and
Speaker 1: then on the third time you're like, just come on
Speaker 1: inside the studio and you came and said down and
Speaker 1: talked about the Necronomicon like a promicron. I know this
Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, Nickronomicon, Necronomicon. Okay, Yeah, and um
Speaker 1: I am still to this day impressed. And that was
Speaker 1: five years ago. Yeah, yeah, and then they haven't had
Speaker 1: me on since But anyway, we had Josh on today. No,
Speaker 1: you guys are super busy even out. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I was the one dragging my feet. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: asked Josh what he would like to cover because with
Speaker 1: the fact that I've got all these guests coming in
Speaker 1: to sit down with me. Um. You know, some people
Speaker 1: like to come up with their own suggestions. Some people
Speaker 1: preferred if I pick a topic and then they research it.
Speaker 1: I asked Josh what he would like to talk about,
Speaker 1: and you were really interested in the idea of humanoid robots. Well,
Speaker 1: you have this awesome spreadsheet of um of listeners suggestions
Speaker 1: and it might as well have been a neon when
Speaker 1: it was going down the sheet. I'm like humanoid robots,
Speaker 1: of course, and this is a great topic. In order
Speaker 1: to really get into it, I was going to define
Speaker 1: a few terms, even though a lot of these are
Speaker 1: ones that I think most of us just kind of
Speaker 1: understand just from the fact that this is in our
Speaker 1: culture now. It's not just not just a reality as
Speaker 1: far as technology goes, but it plays a large part
Speaker 1: in fiction. In fact, that's where the term robot comes
Speaker 1: from is from fiction. Uh, it was from Carrel Chopeck,
Speaker 1: a Czechoslovakian playwright. I did, in fact listen to it
Speaker 1: a couple of times. Correl Chope Yeah, because it's his
Speaker 1: last name, is spelled c A p e k. And
Speaker 1: it includes uh symbols that are not in the English alphabet,
Speaker 1: like squiggly lines and little UFOs and things he wrote.
Speaker 1: Are you are also known as Rossum's Universal Robots, and
Speaker 1: the word robot comes from the check word robot to,
Speaker 1: which means forced labor. Yeah, so a robot is a
Speaker 1: an entity, a synthetic construct that is forced to do work.
Speaker 1: Then we have humanoid, which just means resembling a human being.
Speaker 1: That's a term that is relatively young. It started showing
Speaker 1: up around the turn of the twentieth century, and uh
Speaker 1: it started I think the first few times it was
Speaker 1: ever mentioned was around nineteen twelve, and it was mostly
Speaker 1: used then to describe fossils, saying these are humanoid fossils,
Speaker 1: like yeah. And then we have android, which is we're
Speaker 1: probably not gonna be using that word very often, but
Speaker 1: android is a robot that's in the form of a human.
Speaker 1: So all androids or robots, but not all robots are androids.
Speaker 1: And you know, I ran into I looked up android
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, and apparently that's from like the early
Speaker 1: eighteenth century. It's a little odd that it actually predates robots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, when we look at myths and legends, there's
Speaker 1: so many stories that involve a human like entity that's
Speaker 1: not actually a person that you can see where it
Speaker 1: gets translated in there. This gets a little confusing too,
Speaker 1: because Star Wars they called all their abouts droids, but
Speaker 1: there they aren't androids are two? T two is not
Speaker 1: an android because he's not um or it's not human shaped.
Speaker 1: You could even argue that C three Po is not
Speaker 1: a true android because some people say to be an
Speaker 1: android you have to appear, at least on casual glance
Speaker 1: to be human. He's way too shiny, way too shiny.
Speaker 1: Data from Star Trek next Generation might be uh android,
Speaker 1: but he's an android who's had, you know, a long
Speaker 1: time in the man cave. He hasn't seen much sun, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he's definitely got a weird complexion. Thing goes the
Speaker 1: kid in a I would be an android David yes,
Speaker 1: which turns out to be a popular name for droids
Speaker 1: because there was well, there's David in AI and there
Speaker 1: was also David and Prometheus. Oh you know, I never
Speaker 1: saw Prometheus. I don't know if your listeners are going
Speaker 1: to agree with me or not, because I could see
Speaker 1: um getting shouted down. But I thought Prometheus was a
Speaker 1: great movie. Even even upon second viewing, I thought it
Speaker 1: was good. You know, I know that the from the
Speaker 1: artistic level, a lot of people really loved it. And
Speaker 1: then there were some people who said, how can you
Speaker 1: get lost if you have a three dimensional map with
Speaker 1: you at all time? But you know, plot versus artists,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Then you've got replicants from Blade Runner.
Speaker 1: These are more like cyborgs because they have some sort
Speaker 1: of organic material attached to them. They're not completely you know,
Speaker 1: synthetic material. So Terminator is another example. They have a
Speaker 1: fleshy over skin on top of their metallic bodies. But
Speaker 1: was that real skin that he had there was synthetic skin,
Speaker 1: because that would make a difference. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: And I uh, you know, I know that they referred
Speaker 1: to them as cyborgs at least a few times in
Speaker 1: the movies, which would suggest that it's actual skin. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's lab grown human skin. So you know, there's some
Speaker 1: fuzzy lines around these definitions. I would think that cyborgs
Speaker 1: would be the hardest of all of the the humanoid
Speaker 1: robots to make, because the flesh were just rot Like
Speaker 1: you have your normal looking humanoid robot, your cyborg, and
Speaker 1: it's ear would just fall off. Yeah, and it's not
Speaker 1: as easy as you might think to wire together the
Speaker 1: wet wear that's in our heads with hardware that runs
Speaker 1: on circuits. We will often think of computers working in
Speaker 1: a way that's similar to our brains, but in fact
Speaker 1: the two work in very different ways. Well, it seems
Speaker 1: like running into this, though Strickland um. The the more
Speaker 1: we got into humanoid robotics, the more we started to
Speaker 1: understand just how complex we are. Yeah, that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think is a benefit of study
Speaker 1: of humanoid robotics. The idea of pursuing the goal of
Speaker 1: creating a humanoid robot is not just that we learn
Speaker 1: more about all the different areas and robotics, and they're
Speaker 1: a lot, and we'll talk about some of them, but
Speaker 1: we also learn more about ourselves. We're trying to figure out, okay,
Speaker 1: if we're going to make something that is able to
Speaker 1: performed tasks the way human does. Then we really got
Speaker 1: to take a close look at humans. That's that's the
Speaker 1: first place to start. So what makes a humanoid robot?
Speaker 1: And generally speaking, we're talking about a robot that has
Speaker 1: basic features, usually at minimum a torso, arms and legs,
Speaker 1: and is walking up right. Uh. It may have a
Speaker 1: head or it might not. Early humanoid robots didn't, or
Speaker 1: at least their sensory uh, instruments were all located within
Speaker 1: the top part of the torso there wasn't like a
Speaker 1: separate head. Did you see a picture of Minerva at
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian. No? I did not. It's a robot to
Speaker 1: her guide, But um, she came up in the humanoid
Speaker 1: robot research and I think she's stretching it a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she looks a bit like a washing machine with a
Speaker 1: couple of UM cameras on top. So just those alone,
Speaker 1: I guess makes her eligible for the humanoid robot realm.
Speaker 1: But to stretching that, that seems like that's a bit
Speaker 1: of a you know, if it has an appendage, that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily make a humanoid. I mean you could look
Speaker 1: at the Mars Curiosity rover, which has several appendages. But
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone would ever describe it as humanoid, right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: ideally a humanoid robot would be able to interact with
Speaker 1: humans within a human environment. Because here's the thing about we,
Speaker 1: we people, we have defined our environments to a large extent,
Speaker 1: especially in developed nations, where the stuff that's around us
Speaker 1: we have shaped so that it works within our capabilities,
Speaker 1: right with our with our human environment. Thus far, if
Speaker 1: you look at technology though, on the whole, we've pretty
Speaker 1: much been forced to adapt to it. So for example,
Speaker 1: like a keyboard, we don't normally, naturally you know, um
Speaker 1: express ideas through our fingers on a little a little board, right,
Speaker 1: we don't normally do that, So we had to adapt
Speaker 1: to the technology and learn to type and get good
Speaker 1: at it. With humanoid robots, it's basically going the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: It's saying we already have an environment, We already are um,
Speaker 1: you know, good at all this other stuff. If we're
Speaker 1: gonna make humanoid robots, one of the great benefits is
Speaker 1: they can adapt to us. Right, Yeah, we don't have
Speaker 1: to uh create a unitask or robot that's really good
Speaker 1: at one thing. Um that may or may not be
Speaker 1: something that humans can do easily. We can make a
Speaker 1: robot that's good lots of things. Uh. I also think
Speaker 1: usually when I think of humanoid robots, when I think
Speaker 1: of robots in general, I normally think that they are
Speaker 1: at least semi autonomous. That's that's one of the things
Speaker 1: I usually think of. It doesn't necessarily have to be.
Speaker 1: You could have a tel operated robot, but I almost
Speaker 1: think of that closer to the realm of like a
Speaker 1: remote controlled car or a puppet even um So I
Speaker 1: often one of the definitions I use is that it's
Speaker 1: an autonomous or semi autonomous machine in human form, mechanical
Speaker 1: and electronic, and it can thus do the sort of
Speaker 1: things humans do, but do it in a totally synthetic way.
Speaker 1: And you have to be careful when you say autonomous
Speaker 1: or semi autonomous, because the state of the art right
Speaker 1: now appears to be that robots display autonomy because they
Speaker 1: just kind of wander off in places they're not supposed to.
Speaker 1: But it's not because they want to. It's because their
Speaker 1: their program just ran a foul of program. Right. There's
Speaker 1: no determination there on the part of the robot. It's
Speaker 1: not exploring its environment on its own accord. It's someone
Speaker 1: made a mistake in the code somewhere and where the
Speaker 1: robot was supposed to take a left hand turn at
Speaker 1: this one you know, predetermined spot, and instead continued forward
Speaker 1: or something exactly. Um, So I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the history of humanoid robots and if
Speaker 1: you wanna look way way way back, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the first people to really kind of attempt
Speaker 1: to build a humanoid machine that could mimic are the
Speaker 1: movements at least of a person. You gotta go all
Speaker 1: the way back to Greece between the years ten and
Speaker 1: seventy Common era. That's when Hero of Alexandria started to
Speaker 1: create various machines. He's also the person who made the
Speaker 1: first working steam engine style tool, which is pretty impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he had come up with a lot of very
Speaker 1: clever designs. Whether they were built or not depends upon uh,
Speaker 1: certain accounts and and if they're true. But the stuff
Speaker 1: he designed is completely build a bowl. So he didn't
Speaker 1: come up with any ideas where it was so you know, outlandish,
Speaker 1: that was impossible. He wasn't just like drawing in the
Speaker 1: margins of his diary or something. No, Yeah, he came
Speaker 1: up with specific plans that people today have recreated, they
Speaker 1: built their own versions. Yeah. So he created a lot
Speaker 1: of designs for automata, although these are things that were
Speaker 1: controlled by pulleys and ropes and cogged wheels, and uh
Speaker 1: needed some form of outside influence to make them work,
Speaker 1: so they're not all fully self contained like the show
Speaker 1: biz pizza rockefire explosion band. Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah, some
Speaker 1: one of those audio animatronic figures that that looks very robotic,
Speaker 1: but you realize it's really just one tiny piece of
Speaker 1: a giant system. Uh. In fourteen, we get up to
Speaker 1: Leonardo da Vinci. He designed an automaton in the form
Speaker 1: of a mechanical night which uh again supposedly he built.
Speaker 1: There's no actual record of an existing one from history,
Speaker 1: but they have created ones based on the design since then,
Speaker 1: and it could do things like move its arms and
Speaker 1: raise its visor. Who's doing this? Who's doing this? Crazy
Speaker 1: engineers who are also uh, very excited about history and
Speaker 1: very wealthy too, I would imagine. Yeah, so in this case,
Speaker 1: you're talking about Mark Rossheim, who recreated this particular machine
Speaker 1: and it it's a night. It's a night in German
Speaker 1: medieval armor. And it can sit down, it can stand up,
Speaker 1: it can move its arms, it can raise a visor,
Speaker 1: it can work its jaw. Um, I imagine. So I
Speaker 1: tried to find video of Rossheim's version working, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't find it. He did, however, make another of da
Speaker 1: Vinci's inventions, which was a self driving cart that used Yeah,
Speaker 1: you you wound a spring and it had cam stops
Speaker 1: that would allow it to steer a predetermined path. You
Speaker 1: would actually program the cart by putting cam stops in
Speaker 1: particular locations along the cam and that would tell it
Speaker 1: when to turn left or when to turn right. So
Speaker 1: it couldn't it couldn't navigate through uh an obstacle course
Speaker 1: unless you had already previously seen the obstacle course and
Speaker 1: you could figure out when it needed to turn ahead
Speaker 1: of time. So you're essentially programming the device. Um. There
Speaker 1: are lots of examples in the renaissance of automata and
Speaker 1: semi automata, things that are really more like puppets. You've
Speaker 1: heard about the mechanical turk, the chess playing robot uh
Speaker 1: So it looked like it was a robot that could
Speaker 1: play chess and was really really good at playing chess
Speaker 1: and it turned out eventually to be a hoax. It
Speaker 1: was actually it was actually a puppet, and there was
Speaker 1: an actual chess master hidden in a cabinet beneath the
Speaker 1: mechanical turk who sat kind of Indian style with a
Speaker 1: chessboard in front of him and could move the pieces
Speaker 1: to where it needed to be. But it was all
Speaker 1: being guided by an actual chess master who was hidden
Speaker 1: under When that that was late Renaissance early Enlightenment, pretty impressive, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was neat that people were thinking about
Speaker 1: these sort of things. Uh. By ninety six we get
Speaker 1: the first humanoid robot to appear on film, uh Metropolis,
Speaker 1: the character of Maria and at nine at the World's Fair,
Speaker 1: Westinghouse Electric Corporation showed off a robot called Electro. Now
Speaker 1: have you ever seen this? So he kind of looks
Speaker 1: like the ten Man from the Wizard of Oz film.
Speaker 1: I have seen him. Yes, he smokes. I have seen
Speaker 1: one of the things he can do. He had a
Speaker 1: little bellows in his head that allowed him to puff smoke.
Speaker 1: He could also kind of speak. He had a seventy
Speaker 1: eight revolution per minute UH record player essentially inside of him.
Speaker 1: I suppose if the if the needles skipped, it would
Speaker 1: at least sound like it. Um. He would repeat himself over.
Speaker 1: He called the audience Twitts. That was Grandpa. Yeah, he's apparently.
Speaker 1: The main reason he was retired from being shown off
Speaker 1: at exhibitions was because it was very dated kind of lingo.
Speaker 1: But he was used at the ninety nine World's Fair,
Speaker 1: which was It's funny because I'll be talking about that
Speaker 1: again in another episode very shortly. The World's Fair would
Speaker 1: have been an amazing thing to visit. Um, I'm more
Speaker 1: of I can understand that. But if you're if you're
Speaker 1: going to get to the point where you're looking at
Speaker 1: full scale anthropomorphic robots, you gotta get up to about nine.
Speaker 1: That's when the Waybot one from the Waseda University came out.
Speaker 1: That was the first full scale anthropomorphic robot developed in
Speaker 1: the world which had limb control, a vision system, so
Speaker 1: I had an optical system that could recognize its environment
Speaker 1: and objects and measure distance, and it also had a
Speaker 1: conversation system. Uh. It was actually a collection of a
Speaker 1: bunch of very complex machinery. Like its hands had been
Speaker 1: previously developed independently of the robots, so had its legs.
Speaker 1: So it's like all these people coming up with these
Speaker 1: various pieces saying, all right, let's connect all this together
Speaker 1: and see what happens. So that was a huge, huge
Speaker 1: leap forward. Yeah. You know, if you'll notice, we went
Speaker 1: basically from um, HOAXI chess playing turks to you know,
Speaker 1: a robot that could converse and interact with its environment,
Speaker 1: and then um, it seems like we we kind of
Speaker 1: went off course for a little bit and now we're
Speaker 1: coming full circle back to that where, like you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of different disciplines are contributing these different pieces
Speaker 1: to what will eventually be all of the best practices
Speaker 1: from each little sub discipline put together in you know,
Speaker 1: the true humanoid robot. Well yeah, I mean, if we're
Speaker 1: talking about a humanoid robot that's capable of interacting with people,
Speaker 1: uh as if they were you know, their own person,
Speaker 1: even though maybe an odd person, not like the kind
Speaker 1: of person you would typically run into. There's it's a
Speaker 1: multidisciplinary approach. I mean, artificial intelligence by itself is multidisciplinary
Speaker 1: because you have sensing, you have so all the perception,
Speaker 1: there's all these different just that's multi disciplinary. Then you've
Speaker 1: got the processing, the cognition, things like planning, navigation. There
Speaker 1: are so many things that come together to make a
Speaker 1: humanoid robot a a possibility. And that's just the the
Speaker 1: men toll side, right. Then you have all the physical side,
Speaker 1: the how do you make it walk? How do you
Speaker 1: make it keep its balance? So lots of stuff to
Speaker 1: consider there. Waybot two came out in nineteen eighty that
Speaker 1: was a specialist robot. It could play a keyboard trying
Speaker 1: to keyboard. He could read sheet music and play music. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was because it was a specialist. It was not
Speaker 1: able to do the general functions that it's predecessor could do.
Speaker 1: And that's why of the issues in robotics today is
Speaker 1: that it's very challenging to build a general purpose robot.
Speaker 1: It's much easier to take a specific task that you
Speaker 1: need to have done and to sign a robot to
Speaker 1: do that, because I mean, we already have those rombas
Speaker 1: and rovers. I mean, you know, there's there's also all
Speaker 1: the robots and manufacturing, all the welding robots things like that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nine Pacific Northwest National Laboratory built a robot called Manny
Speaker 1: that was the first full scale android body and it
Speaker 1: had forty degrees of freedom, but no AI or autonomy.
Speaker 1: It was completely teleoperated. And um, it took me a
Speaker 1: couple of times to figure out what degrees of freedom meant. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I thought it meant like the it could move its
Speaker 1: arm forty two degrees basically. But a degree of freedom
Speaker 1: is say, like it can move its wrist. That's a
Speaker 1: degree of freedom. It can turn its head left and right.
Speaker 1: That's a degree of freedom right right. And if you
Speaker 1: look at the human hand, the human hand has about
Speaker 1: thirty degrees of freedom, meaning that you look at the
Speaker 1: way each finger and your thumb can move. You look
Speaker 1: at the way you can clench a fist, you can
Speaker 1: twist your hand with your wrist. Um, those are all
Speaker 1: different degrees of freedom. And uh. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the cool things about robots is that as we get
Speaker 1: better and better at designing them, we can create robots
Speaker 1: that have far more degrees of freedom than the human
Speaker 1: body does. So I like the idea of a humanoid
Speaker 1: robot in the future that has sty degree motion with
Speaker 1: its wrist and then just having it changed light bulbs
Speaker 1: is spin and not have to do the little twisty
Speaker 1: turning motion. How many robots does it take to change
Speaker 1: the light bulbs. Just just the one, just that one,
Speaker 1: just one billion dollar room. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's a fishing system. I'm just saying I'm a supremely
Speaker 1: lazy human being with tall ceilings. Uh In nine, Honda
Speaker 1: introduced the P two Robot, which was a self contained
Speaker 1: robotic humanoid. It could walk and climb stairs. The P
Speaker 1: three followed in nine and in two thousand two, Honda
Speaker 1: introduced My good buddy as Emo. As the first article
Speaker 1: I wrote for How Stuff Works as works an episode
Speaker 1: on it. I have not done a full episode on
Speaker 1: as Amo. I even was offered the opportunity to meet
Speaker 1: as Amo when I first wrote the article, but it
Speaker 1: would have meant having to travel to Disneyland to do it,
Speaker 1: and at the time How Stuff Works was not prepared
Speaker 1: to do such a I went to Disneyland by myself,
Speaker 1: uh well with my wife, and we went and saw
Speaker 1: the Asimo production. And at the end of it, I
Speaker 1: talked to one of the disney cast members and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wrote the article about how Asthma works for How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, and she said, hang on a minute. And
Speaker 1: I got to meet Asthma and it was a man
Speaker 1: in a suit. Right. It was actually it was actually
Speaker 1: a collection of cats that the duct taped together and
Speaker 1: then plastic. No, it was a working robot that's pretty new.
Speaker 1: Blown away, I was very much blown away. It was
Speaker 1: cool seeing it up close. I mean, it looks like
Speaker 1: a little tiny astronaut, right, because he's got like the
Speaker 1: face plate. Especially. I love the people call it he
Speaker 1: people give And I do this all the time too
Speaker 1: with robots. I'll assign a gender even though technically many
Speaker 1: of them are specifically genderless. As amo is is supposed
Speaker 1: to be genderless, but I often refer to asthmosa he
Speaker 1: as well. Well, you know why. It's the shoulders, I
Speaker 1: would guess. Yeah, they go straight across and and and
Speaker 1: far out. That's very masculine no matter what. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you need that, I would guess you need shoulders in
Speaker 1: a humanoid robot with flexible arms. Well, and also, I'm
Speaker 1: sure every single element Asimo is built with the balance
Speaker 1: in mind, because Asimo is the first robot that can run. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've seen him run. It's gawky. Yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: looks like someone who really needs to get to the
Speaker 1: bathroom as a little bit of a hoppy kind of run.
Speaker 1: But the the definition of run here is that there
Speaker 1: are moments where both feet are off the ground. So
Speaker 1: walking you always have one foot in contact with the ground,
Speaker 1: and running both feet at some point are out of contact.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge deal for robotics, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have a machine that completely separates itself from contact
Speaker 1: on the ground. It has no propulsion to keep it upright,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't have like propellers or jets or
Speaker 1: anything like that, so you have to design it so
Speaker 1: it can it can propel itself off the ground and
Speaker 1: then catch itself when it comes back down without falling over.
Speaker 1: And that is a non trivial challenge, No, it's an
Speaker 1: enormous challenge that robot is just UM really kind of
Speaker 1: started to tackle lately. Um. One of the ways that
Speaker 1: they've overcome it is with rounded feet, which are very
Speaker 1: helpful in keeping balanced and allowing it to run. UM.
Speaker 1: But there's drawbacks to it as well, Like the robot
Speaker 1: can't start itself, it also can't stop, so it can't
Speaker 1: stop moving, which is not something you want. Like, there's
Speaker 1: still some challenges there ahead of the robotists who are
Speaker 1: learning to teach a robot to walk, and even the
Speaker 1: ones that have taught robots to walk, um, they typically
Speaker 1: can just walk over flat surfaces with no obstacles. When
Speaker 1: they encounter stairs, there in trouble. But then you have
Speaker 1: robots that know how to go upstairs, but they can't
Speaker 1: walk on a flat surface. Eventually, all this information, all
Speaker 1: this knowledge will be brought together and you'll have a
Speaker 1: robot that can walk, no problem. Right. In fact, this
Speaker 1: kind of transitions nicely into those challenges that face designers
Speaker 1: of humanoid robots and and locomotion is the probably one
Speaker 1: of the top ones, at least from the physical engineering side.
Speaker 1: For example, you know, as Amo can can go up
Speaker 1: and downstairs, but that is a little deceptive because as
Speaker 1: Amo has to be programmed to go up or down
Speaker 1: the staircase and know exactly how many stairs are involved.
Speaker 1: It's not so much it's not a case of Asimo
Speaker 1: detecting a staircase and then uh and then navigating through
Speaker 1: oh up or down. It it's the fact that all
Speaker 1: right now we're initiating your stair climbing programs. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like smoke and mirrors robotics. Basically, it's
Speaker 1: at but that's you know, those are the little no
Speaker 1: no pun intended, Those are the little steps you have
Speaker 1: to take in order to get to the destination. What
Speaker 1: do you mean, no pun intended. I don't buy that
Speaker 1: at all. I started saying it without thinking about it,
Speaker 1: and then I mean, but then I did follow through
Speaker 1: with it, so I guess there was some intention there
Speaker 1: at the end. But uh yeah. They're also not very
Speaker 1: good at going across any kind of uneven terrain, right, So,
Speaker 1: humanoid robots in particular find it very difficult to maintain
Speaker 1: balance over anything that's not either a flat surface or,
Speaker 1: in the case of robots, that can go up or
Speaker 1: downstairs and stairs. So if you're talking about like a
Speaker 1: sidewalk that is not completely even, that would be enough
Speaker 1: to give a robot trouble because it's going to try
Speaker 1: and put its foot down to where it would believe
Speaker 1: the ground to be, and if the ground is not
Speaker 1: exactly level, then that's yeah, because they can't really catch
Speaker 1: their balance very well. There are robots that can, but
Speaker 1: they are four legged. Yeah, you've seen you've seen the
Speaker 1: Big Dog video. No, I saw the Army. It's very similar.
Speaker 1: Big Dog is essentially a robo mule type development. It
Speaker 1: is a four legged robot that is able to maintain
Speaker 1: its balance even when pushed. And the famous video shows
Speaker 1: the robot dog, the big dog kind of jogging, and
Speaker 1: then a guy just casually lifts his leg up and
Speaker 1: kicks the robot dog like he puts essentially puts a
Speaker 1: bomb of his foot against the side of it and
Speaker 1: pushes really hard, and you see the big dog stumble.
Speaker 1: It actually stumbles and then catches itself and then rights
Speaker 1: itself and continues on. And almost everyone has an emotional
Speaker 1: reaction to this, like, how dare that evil man kick
Speaker 1: that poor, defenseless robot. The robot can't feel anything, but
Speaker 1: that robot is um gasoline powered, so oh yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: that's one of the big keeping it inside. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to have one of these indoors. No, you
Speaker 1: don't bring indoor no. And uh and the the pistons
Speaker 1: that allow it to do this are quite loud. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not not a subtle system at all. So a
Speaker 1: lot of work has to go into creating better systems
Speaker 1: for robots to maintain their balance in order for the
Speaker 1: locomotion problem to really be solved. And again, I mean,
Speaker 1: like anybody who's seen short circuit knows that you can
Speaker 1: build a robot like Johnny five with arms in the
Speaker 1: head and a tore so and then like traction um
Speaker 1: shreds uh, and it can go anywhere over terrain, it
Speaker 1: can go up steps. Probably. The thing is is, again
Speaker 1: you have to remember when it comes to humanoid robots,
Speaker 1: you're trying to make the robot that can adapt to
Speaker 1: the human world. So if you had somebody like Johnny
Speaker 1: five as your house butler or something, you you couldn't
Speaker 1: You couldn't have an island in your kitchen, and who
Speaker 1: doesn't love an island in their kitchen. Johnny five couldn't
Speaker 1: maneuver around it because he's too wide. Yeah, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have You wouldn't be able to have any any space
Speaker 1: that would be narrower than the robot's body. Exactly. That's
Speaker 1: not what you want with humanoid robots. It wouldn't work
Speaker 1: well in my house. I've got a I've got a
Speaker 1: a flat style house where there's three floors. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like flat like European flat. Uh, not flat as in
Speaker 1: there's only one level. They're actually three of them, four
Speaker 1: if you count the rooftop Denck, So that counts. It
Speaker 1: makes it. You know, any robot that would not be
Speaker 1: able to navig it stairs easily would definitely have an issue,
Speaker 1: which is the main reason why I don't have a roomba,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to hear the sound of a
Speaker 1: room bag going falling down a flight of stairs. Um.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, Uh, that's a great point. Moving
Speaker 1: on from locomotion, there's also dexterous manipulation. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we should. I think that point bears repeating. What we
Speaker 1: just talked about was locomotion. Yeah, and this is you
Speaker 1: and I a couple of non robot experts talking about
Speaker 1: the problem with locomotion. That's just one of myriad challenges
Speaker 1: facing humanoid robotics designers. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's It's one
Speaker 1: that's easy to point to because it's something that we all,
Speaker 1: you know, end up at least observing or participating in
Speaker 1: all the time. Can we take it for granted? But
Speaker 1: then when you think, okay, well, how do I make
Speaker 1: a machine that does that? You start to realize this
Speaker 1: is you know, even if I have a leg that
Speaker 1: has lots of different degrees of freedom and points of articulation.
Speaker 1: I still have to design the upper part of the
Speaker 1: robots so that it does not unbalanced the lower part,
Speaker 1: and if it does unbalance, that it's able to catch itself.
Speaker 1: You know, some people just describe walking as falling and
Speaker 1: catching yourself over and over again. Yeah, yeah, they're walking
Speaker 1: right now. No, I I described walking as something that
Speaker 1: other people do. I like to keep my walking to
Speaker 1: a minimum. I thought you walked alot, Actually I do.
Speaker 1: I just joke about being lazy. I think moving forward,
Speaker 1: falling down and catching your balance every time it's lurching. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's well. As an Adam's family fan, I'm okay with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, Dexter's manipulation would be the ability to pick
Speaker 1: up and manipulate objects. Now, we're really good at that,
Speaker 1: we humans, You know. We can we can feel an
Speaker 1: object and decide at that point how to handle it,
Speaker 1: even if we've never encountered that kind of object before.
Speaker 1: So if I encounter something I've never seen before, and
Speaker 1: i've I've ascertained it's safe for me to touch it,
Speaker 1: I can touch it. I can feel like, I can
Speaker 1: get a feel for how heavy it is, I can
Speaker 1: get a feel for how delicate it might be, and
Speaker 1: then I can adjust on the fly so that I
Speaker 1: can handle it appropriately. Well, I'm not gonna hurt myself.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna hurt the object. Robots are not so
Speaker 1: good at that, Yeah, exactly, even if they don't mean
Speaker 1: to right, Yeah, if the robots, If the robots grip
Speaker 1: is too strong, it can break the object. If it's
Speaker 1: too weak, the object slips from its grip and it falls. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it may not be able to distinguish between different types.
Speaker 1: So getting those tactile sensors where a robot can tell
Speaker 1: how tightly it's gripping something and how much pressure a
Speaker 1: particular object can take before you've reached the failure point
Speaker 1: is a big deal. Now, this is also a big
Speaker 1: deal for just making robots safe for humans to be around.
Speaker 1: It is a big deal. You know that the first
Speaker 1: fatality by robot occurred um at the business end of
Speaker 1: a robotic arm in a flat rock, Michigan in nine nine.
Speaker 1: A man named Robert Williams, who's working on a Ford
Speaker 1: line YEA, his robot arm was moving a little slow
Speaker 1: for his taste in getting supplies down, so he climbed
Speaker 1: up to where the supplies were the robot arms suddenly
Speaker 1: sped up and hit him in the head and killed
Speaker 1: him instantly. Wow. Yeah, I've I've had a chance to
Speaker 1: see some of these industrial robots. Uh. And I would
Speaker 1: say up close, but you can't because because of instances
Speaker 1: like that, industrial robots usually have lots of of safety
Speaker 1: barriers around them because it's not safe to be near
Speaker 1: those robots when they're in operation. They they can't react exactly.
Speaker 1: So you leave it up to the humans to stay
Speaker 1: away from the robots because the road we haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to the point where the robots no, did not crush
Speaker 1: you or hit you in the head. Right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got the robots fall. I'm looking forward to that day
Speaker 1: when they figure out not to crush me. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: been pretty lousy days so far. Uh. Yeah. When I
Speaker 1: when I toured the Georgia Tech Robotics Lab, they talked
Speaker 1: specifically about this. This is a real challenge having robots
Speaker 1: recognize and react in a way that's going to be
Speaker 1: safe around humans. And uh, but dexterous manipulation is only
Speaker 1: that's only a part of dextrous manipulation. Obviously, the rest
Speaker 1: of it is again that object recognition and handling so
Speaker 1: that you're not destroying whatever it is you're trying to
Speaker 1: pick up. Um. Another big challenge in designing robots in general,
Speaker 1: not just humanoid robots, is just the the perception, the
Speaker 1: sensory perception of the robot. Yeah, so you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's optical systems like actual cameras in the place of eyes,
Speaker 1: or infrared so that you can see even in low
Speaker 1: light situations, radar, light ar. I mean, there's tons of
Speaker 1: different ways of sensing. Yep, there's uh, there's you know
Speaker 1: sensing obviously, it's not just site. Then you have to
Speaker 1: have the sound. That's a really tricky one actually, because
Speaker 1: for us humans, we we can kind of zero in
Speaker 1: on what's important, right, So if we're if you and
Speaker 1: I were at a party, which you know, someone made
Speaker 1: a mistake and invited me, we could have a conversation
Speaker 1: and be able to carry that conversation on even within
Speaker 1: the context of a big, bustling party because we can
Speaker 1: focus on what the other person is saying. It's called
Speaker 1: latent inhibition. Yeah, so when you don't have that, that schizophrenia, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you you can't separate the the signal from the noise
Speaker 1: and everything either. Becomes noise or everything becomes signal. Um.
Speaker 1: So for a robot that might, for example, require verbal commands,
Speaker 1: that's really tricky. What if you have the television on
Speaker 1: and someone's saying something on TV and uh, you are
Speaker 1: trying to get your robot to do something, and it's
Speaker 1: not quite sure what to do because it's hearing these
Speaker 1: different commands and isn't sure who to obey you the
Speaker 1: person pitching the bacon bowl right right exactly. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you are, you know, trying to get some help
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, but it just keeps hearing uh C
Speaker 1: s I Miami and say kill Billy. And then next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you're like, you're just desperately trying to
Speaker 1: kill the robot. Please don't kill Billy. Um. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's a silly example. It's a real problem. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then there's the tactile the responses, the tactile sensors, like
Speaker 1: the making sure you don't crush something that's delicate that
Speaker 1: falls into perception. Smell can also fall into perception. You
Speaker 1: might want to have humanoid robots that work in areas
Speaker 1: where the humanoid robot can alert humans to the presence
Speaker 1: of things that might be toxic. You know, this isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily just the robot Butler we're talking about. This could
Speaker 1: be robots that work in areas that might be dangerous
Speaker 1: for humans, and that would be an important element too.
Speaker 1: It's not a robot, but NASA already has a sensor
Speaker 1: that senses things like ammonia or smoke. It can actually
Speaker 1: sense smoke artificially, smell smoke before the fire has actually
Speaker 1: started ignited. Interesting because you know it's such a dangerous proposition, right, yes,
Speaker 1: clearly for for anything NASA related. But they can also
Speaker 1: sense ammonia because you know a lot of the refrigeration
Speaker 1: systems run on ammonia and you can't have a pneumonia
Speaker 1: leak on the space basis, right right, And I mean
Speaker 1: the same thing is true for I mean I've heard
Speaker 1: of of robots that are used in in mining operations,
Speaker 1: which you know, if you come upon a pocket of
Speaker 1: natural gas that can be a real danger that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. Then you've got the the back end of
Speaker 1: the sensory perception. That's where you have the actual interpretation
Speaker 1: of the data. Where that's the big one. That's huge,
Speaker 1: because not only do you need to have a robot
Speaker 1: that can have that has binocular vision, so it has
Speaker 1: a depth of field. Right. Um, it also has to
Speaker 1: know what it's doing, what what the information means, and
Speaker 1: how to apply it to adapted changes, right right. So,
Speaker 1: so if I were to show you, Josh a series
Speaker 1: of pictures of various types of dogs, you would very
Speaker 1: quickly pick up on the the things that mean mean
Speaker 1: dog like. You would understand the concept of dog pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Robots and various other computers machines they have a lot
Speaker 1: harder problem with this. If whatever they're looking at doesn't
Speaker 1: exactly match the parameters of the example, it's very difficult
Speaker 1: for a machine to extrapolate and say, oh, this other
Speaker 1: thing I'm looking at relates to this thing I know,
Speaker 1: even though the two examples don't aren't identical. So the
Speaker 1: same thing could be true for any object. Let's let's
Speaker 1: just use a coffee mug. And let's say that you
Speaker 1: use a a plain white coffee mug of average size
Speaker 1: as h the example for the robot, and then the
Speaker 1: robot encounters a larger blue coffee mug and the handles
Speaker 1: turned the other way. The robot might be completely befuddled
Speaker 1: by this. So this is a real problem in artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence is object identification, so that a robot knows what
Speaker 1: it's looking at and also understands the context that that
Speaker 1: object fills within the environment. So it's not just that, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a mug, it's oh, that's a mug. A mug
Speaker 1: is a container. I can put things into that mug.
Speaker 1: Here are the things that can go in the mug.
Speaker 1: You are the things that absolutely should not not go
Speaker 1: in the mug, like Billy. Those are the kind of
Speaker 1: things that yeah, Billy, well, you know we're gonna need
Speaker 1: another Billy. Um, we'll make a robot, which in which
Speaker 1: case you can just turn those suckers out right mass
Speaker 1: production of Billy. But yeah, artificial intelligence an enormous problem.
Speaker 1: And that, of course is not just with robotics. That's
Speaker 1: that's a field unto itself, and robotics is just one
Speaker 1: branch that relies upon artificial intelligence. And it's from what
Speaker 1: I came across, it looked like just out of the gate,
Speaker 1: I guess that was said a university they tried to
Speaker 1: build a robot that was just like high functioning, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they realized, like, we have no idea what we're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that Waybot one was able to converse at the
Speaker 1: level or was able to have a a a cognitive
Speaker 1: function equivalent to a one and a half year old person,
Speaker 1: which I have to when you're talking right out of
Speaker 1: the gate. Very impressive, Very impressive because we're not that
Speaker 1: much further along now. But what they found from making
Speaker 1: way about one was, Okay, this is way more difficult
Speaker 1: than we thought. You can't just program every kind of
Speaker 1: coffee cup in the world, and even if you could,
Speaker 1: then you also have to program every kind of table
Speaker 1: and every kind of light. And we need to come
Speaker 1: at this in a different way. And so they realized,
Speaker 1: number one, humans are extraordinarily more complex than we thought before.
Speaker 1: And then number two, humans make a pretty good model
Speaker 1: for a humanoid robot in the realm of things like
Speaker 1: perception and UM information systems and UH learning. So they
Speaker 1: went to these different these different disciplines like neurobiology, neurology,
Speaker 1: UM psychology, and they said, what can we learn from
Speaker 1: you guys about how humans do this that we can
Speaker 1: apply to robots. And since they started taking those steps,
Speaker 1: it seems like, uh, humanoid robotics has gotten it's it's
Speaker 1: footing a little more. Yeah, and we're seeing so many
Speaker 1: developments in other areas of a I that are really promising.
Speaker 1: I always bring up IBMS Watson because it's natural language
Speaker 1: recognition was phenomenal, the ability for it to parse clues
Speaker 1: in Jeopardy and come up with the appropriate answer, knowing
Speaker 1: that Jeopardy those clues are not always straightforward. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it again illustrates the complexity that we humans navigate without
Speaker 1: much trouble because this is the world we've created. But
Speaker 1: then we realize if we make a machine that's mostly
Speaker 1: when you get down to it based on yes or no,
Speaker 1: a one or a zero, true or false, and you're
Speaker 1: trying to build complex behaviors off of something that is
Speaker 1: incredibly simple. When you boil it down to its basic element,
Speaker 1: that's where you're like, oh, this is this is gonna
Speaker 1: require a lot of work. I mean, IBMS Watson was
Speaker 1: an enormous machine with with thousands of microprocessors just so
Speaker 1: it could be able to play Jeopardy. That's a very
Speaker 1: specific function too. So creating a robot that is able
Speaker 1: to navigate and interact with a human environment and be
Speaker 1: able to interact with humans in a way that makes
Speaker 1: sense is a big challenge. Also, just the way that
Speaker 1: a robot would socialize with humans is a huge challenge.
Speaker 1: How do how do you make a robot that is
Speaker 1: able to respond to commands and cues in an appropriate way? Uh?
Speaker 1: An appropriate way is the key there, because there are
Speaker 1: humans are pretty complex and we can be very subtle
Speaker 1: in many ways. Yeah, we speak unplainly, we use sarcasm,
Speaker 1: we we uh yeah, we use a lot of gestures
Speaker 1: rather than just words. Yep. There's a lot that goes
Speaker 1: into human communication that, if you are a human is
Speaker 1: pretty much natural, especially I mean if you're a human
Speaker 1: within that particular culture and you're familiar with that culture,
Speaker 1: because anyone who has traveled extensively knows there are cultures
Speaker 1: where things that would be commonplace at home are very
Speaker 1: different in the place where you happen to be, right then,
Speaker 1: and it may be that something that is completely innocent
Speaker 1: at home is an uh, offensive gesture in the place
Speaker 1: where you are. Now, we'll imagine a robot that is
Speaker 1: not programmed to handle these kind of subtle uh communication
Speaker 1: methods and exact Yeah, he doesn't know, he's just he's
Speaker 1: just doing as he was programmed. But even even beyond that,
Speaker 1: something that you brought up in our research when we
Speaker 1: were planning this was the Uncanny Valley. It's a big one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've never read that paper before, and I'm glad I did.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting, right, Yeah, So the Uncanny Valley. For
Speaker 1: those who are not familiar with the term, uh, it's
Speaker 1: it describes when we start to approach artificial humans that
Speaker 1: look almost but not quite like real humans. And and
Speaker 1: by look, I don't necessarily just mean the physical appearance.
Speaker 1: I also mean their behaviors, their movements. So if you
Speaker 1: are if you were to look out and see a
Speaker 1: figure that from the from a distance looked like it
Speaker 1: was a human figure, and you start walking towards it,
Speaker 1: just thinking this is another person, and then they start
Speaker 1: moving in a very herky jerky motion, very mechanical motion,
Speaker 1: then you're likely going to have a negative emotional response.
Speaker 1: Um often, revulsion is one of the words used very frequentness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I remember the C G I movies that
Speaker 1: would that were almost to the point of photo realism,
Speaker 1: where they look like people for the most part, but
Speaker 1: there's not something is just not quite right with the eye.
Speaker 1: There's a good example. And polar express polar expresses they
Speaker 1: do very well because of the Uncanny Valley. That's what
Speaker 1: they blame it on. Yeah, and the same thing applies
Speaker 1: to robots. So in fact, I saw a robot that
Speaker 1: was really disturbing to me. It was really as an
Speaker 1: um art exhibit, an installation, and um it was a
Speaker 1: robot of Confucius in a cell filled with monkeys, and
Speaker 1: uh they're live monkeys, real monkeys, and the robot would
Speaker 1: just thrash around wildly. It was It was the stuff
Speaker 1: of nightmares. I'll show it to you after the show. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So these are all big challenges and some of them
Speaker 1: are going to be harder for us than others. And
Speaker 1: maybe that the engineering challenges of locomotion are solved well
Speaker 1: before we ever get a real grip on all the
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence problems. Or it could be the other way around.
Speaker 1: Uh we but it is multidisciplinary. It's a big, big issue.
Speaker 1: So there are some people who argue for humanoid robots,
Speaker 1: there are people who argue against humanoid robots. Um. I think.
Speaker 1: I think research and development with humanoid robots is important
Speaker 1: because by having the goal of creating a humanoid robot,
Speaker 1: you drive the research and development process. You have a
Speaker 1: specific goal in mind, and in order to achieve that goal,
Speaker 1: you know what sort of problems you have to solve.
Speaker 1: And even if we never enter a future where humanoid
Speaker 1: robots are a common thing, even if they are mostly
Speaker 1: used as something in an exhibition or uh for pr
Speaker 1: or whatever, even if that's the only use for them,
Speaker 1: we're going to benefit from the research and development of
Speaker 1: making that possible in ways we can't anticipate. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the more we get into humanoid robotics, the
Speaker 1: more we understand humans, which is pretty much the only
Speaker 1: argument I've seen that stands up in favor of doing
Speaker 1: humanoid robots. Yeah, because it's it's expensive, and it's hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really a difficult problem, and it's
Speaker 1: and and to build a humanoid robot something that is
Speaker 1: capable of being a general purpose robot, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to anticipate all the things you're going to
Speaker 1: need to be able to do. If you're talking general
Speaker 1: purpose and adaptable, that's really tough. I mean, we didn't
Speaker 1: even talk about the adaptability problem very much. We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about a robot capable of learning from
Speaker 1: other people, which I find fascinating. Um you know, that's
Speaker 1: one way. Just watching humans and then mimicking humans, that's
Speaker 1: one way of robot learning. There's also, um the way
Speaker 1: where it's controlled through virtual reality by human and it
Speaker 1: just kind of logs the motions the humans making it do.
Speaker 1: Like there's a NASA has a robot not that learns
Speaker 1: like that. So I think I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of benefit to investigating artificial intelligence. Like you want your
Speaker 1: nest at home to learn so you don't have to
Speaker 1: keep adjusting the thermostat that counts. That's the that's machine learning.
Speaker 1: To me. The big argument against having humanoid robots, and
Speaker 1: the quag meyer that seems to begin, is sociability. That
Speaker 1: seems to be the whole reason anybody wants a humanoid robot,
Speaker 1: because you can make you know, you have a ruma vacuums,
Speaker 1: you can make a driverless car um As Olivia Solan
Speaker 1: wrote and wired a couple of years back. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: why why do you have to make a robot butler
Speaker 1: to park the car? Just make a car that parks itself.
Speaker 1: And it seems like that's where we're going right now. Um.
Speaker 1: So when you add this extra layer of humanoid, you
Speaker 1: add all of this additional problems and troubles and redundancies,
Speaker 1: like like, for example, if you're gonna make a humanoid
Speaker 1: robot that throws a ball, this this humanoid robot to
Speaker 1: appear real needs to have a little bit of follow through.
Speaker 1: But as far as the robot, the machine is concerned,
Speaker 1: it can throw the ball and just stop right where
Speaker 1: the releases. It doesn't need to go anymore. But it's
Speaker 1: gonna look weird and robotic if you want to get
Speaker 1: past that uncanny valley, which is an other problem, um,
Speaker 1: the thing has to have followed through. That's totally unnecessary.
Speaker 1: You can make a robot that can throw a ball
Speaker 1: and the goal is to throw the ball. You don't
Speaker 1: have to add the follow through, but you do when
Speaker 1: you're making it a sociable humanoid robots. So it seems
Speaker 1: like that's the path that will lead everyone is straight
Speaker 1: that I don't get. Yeah. I I like the idea
Speaker 1: of designing robots for specific tasks because you can really
Speaker 1: focus on getting the task done. So there I see
Speaker 1: this as two separate branches. I see the branch of
Speaker 1: developing the humanoid robot as pushing forward a lot of
Speaker 1: different areas of thought. That could be applied in multiple disciplines,
Speaker 1: so that will benefit from that. I see the development
Speaker 1: of robots as unitaskers as being important to actually handle
Speaker 1: the jobs that are the three D s. That's dirty, difficult,
Speaker 1: and dangerous, all right, So those are the jobs that
Speaker 1: maybe they revolve a lot of repetition, which can cause
Speaker 1: injury over time, or it can lead to mistakes because
Speaker 1: you've done the same task so many times that you
Speaker 1: start to kind of zone out. Robots will never zone out. Um.
Speaker 1: If it's a dirty job where it's something that's undesirable
Speaker 1: by people, robots don't care. They'll do that. Or if
Speaker 1: it's dangerous, if it's bomb disposal, or if it's something
Speaker 1: like the Mars curiosity rover. These are dangerous jobs that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily want to put a human into if
Speaker 1: you had the alternative. So all of these things, those
Speaker 1: that's where robots really makes sense to me UM to
Speaker 1: to go to the places that are difficult for us
Speaker 1: to go to. Maybe that's you know, deep sea exploration,
Speaker 1: space exploration, that kind of thing, or to do jobs
Speaker 1: that might be dangerous, having a first respond to robot
Speaker 1: to survey a scene, to make sure that a structure
Speaker 1: is remaining uh solid while maybe there was a fire
Speaker 1: and it has to make sure that the it's it's
Speaker 1: not going to collapse in on rescue mission that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Um, but do you need those things to
Speaker 1: be to come out and be able to tell a
Speaker 1: joke or something? And most of them don't need to
Speaker 1: be any sort of humanoid form factor either, which greatly
Speaker 1: simplifies the actual development of the robot and thus cuts
Speaker 1: down on the cost, so you can you can achieve
Speaker 1: the task you're trying to achieve for less money than
Speaker 1: if you are trying to build this this general purpose machine.
Speaker 1: So then we come to this ultimate question, why what's
Speaker 1: the purpose of humanoid robot? Well, I think the I
Speaker 1: think the purposes too fold. One is again to have
Speaker 1: that specific goal in mind that allows you to define
Speaker 1: where your in point is. I believe that when you
Speaker 1: have that defined in goal, it makes it easier for
Speaker 1: you to build on the things you need to achieve it,
Speaker 1: as opposed to having an open goal where it's just
Speaker 1: I want to approve improve a I that's so open
Speaker 1: that it's hard to get direction from it. But if
Speaker 1: you think I need to have an artificial intelligence that
Speaker 1: will allow a robot to Uh, here's a great example.
Speaker 1: Let's say that the challenge is to have a robot
Speaker 1: leave a room, go down a flight of stairs, leave
Speaker 1: a building, get into a vehicle, drive the vehicle to
Speaker 1: a different location, get out of the vehicle, go into
Speaker 1: another building, break through a wall, and put out a fire.
Speaker 1: That's a real, actual robotics challenge challenge. Yeah. Dr Henrik
Speaker 1: Kristensen told me about this. Is I mean, it really
Speaker 1: is a challenge. It's not just a real challenge. It's
Speaker 1: a real challenge. It's like a DARPA challenge. So it's
Speaker 1: a uh he was telling me about this, and you
Speaker 1: start to think about all the things that have to
Speaker 1: fall in line for you to be able to achieve
Speaker 1: the skull. That is a valuable thing. But I think
Speaker 1: the other thing is the social aspect. I think that
Speaker 1: there are people who would benefit from a robot that
Speaker 1: is able to give some form of social comfort. Let's
Speaker 1: say for the elderly who need to have some form
Speaker 1: of interaction. Um, you know, that could actually be a
Speaker 1: really valuable tool. And in fact, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: work that's going into robotics to help people like the
Speaker 1: elderly who may have real emotional and psychological problems, Um,
Speaker 1: due to loneliness. Do you think that robots are the
Speaker 1: answer to that? I think that robots can help. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I would never go so far as to
Speaker 1: say answer. But couldn't you also make the argument that
Speaker 1: if you created robots that displaced human jobs and also
Speaker 1: simultaneously said, hey, this, this nursing home sector is about
Speaker 1: to explode because we've got a bunch of baby boomers
Speaker 1: and ways the society of now decided that our elderly
Speaker 1: need human interaction more than we've more than we've carried
Speaker 1: it out before. So let's create this whole other industry.
Speaker 1: Or let's expand this industry of elderly caretakers and fill
Speaker 1: those jobs with people who have been displaced by roots.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be better? That might be? Or you could again,
Speaker 1: looking at the way a lot of roboticists framed this,
Speaker 1: they say, all right, well, it is a reality that
Speaker 1: robots are taking over actual jobs, but the hope is
Speaker 1: that it also ends up creating new jobs that are
Speaker 1: better paying jobs, less dangerous jobs friendly, more old books friendly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like um, the idea being that that it
Speaker 1: frees up people and encourages the pursuit of jobs and
Speaker 1: engineering in computer science. Now we live in the real
Speaker 1: world and we understand that it's a lot more complex
Speaker 1: than telling someone who's been working on a manufacturing line, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry your job's gone because there's a robot here.
Speaker 1: But guess what, we have an opening and engineering. So
Speaker 1: if you just go and pursue a four year degree
Speaker 1: and then some post graduate work, you'll be right back
Speaker 1: to work. That's that's obviously not uh something that's going
Speaker 1: to be easy, especially in the short term. But the
Speaker 1: long term hope is that more and more of these
Speaker 1: jobs that are are dangerous for people, are less desirable
Speaker 1: for people, will be taken up by robots, and then
Speaker 1: the will there will be the creation of better jobs
Speaker 1: that are higher up on the food chain. And I
Speaker 1: think that makes sense to me. It's just the once
Speaker 1: you enter the sociability, yeah, because without sociability, there's no
Speaker 1: reason to create a humanoid robot. Everything else can look
Speaker 1: like a robot. Yeah. Um, so it's it's when you
Speaker 1: enter sociability that you lose me. Not only does it
Speaker 1: can it look like a robot, but we can still
Speaker 1: socialize with it, even if it doesn't look like a
Speaker 1: human people there. You know, there's the story that Rumba
Speaker 1: owners named the Yeah yeah, so you we we end
Speaker 1: up having these kind of emotional attachments and investments in
Speaker 1: things that don't look not only do they not like human,
Speaker 1: they don't look like any other animal that we would
Speaker 1: interact with on a like owner or and pet or whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean, they they're they're just a robot. So I
Speaker 1: think at the end of the day, Josh, I think
Speaker 1: we're on the same page. We think humanoid robots are
Speaker 1: an interesting idea, but not necessarily the end goal. There's
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of of incentive to go
Speaker 1: after it for its own purposes. We can see the
Speaker 1: benefits of going after it in the sense of the
Speaker 1: developments that are made in that pursuit help us in
Speaker 1: other ways. But I don't need a human robot, Butler, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just know I don't. Well, I'm curious to hear
Speaker 1: what my listeners have to say about this. You can
Speaker 1: get in touch with me my email addresses, text stuff
Speaker 1: at hell stuff works dot com, or drop me a
Speaker 1: line on Twitter or Facebook or tumbler. Tech Stuff HSW
Speaker 1: is the handle for all three of those. Josh, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being on the show. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. I'm let do this begin now. If
Speaker 1: you have not heard stuff, you should know, you definitely
Speaker 1: need to go and check that out because it is
Speaker 1: a phenomenal podcast. Thank you. Josh is one of the
Speaker 1: two hosts, the other being Chuck Bryant, who I hope
Speaker 1: to have on tech stuff in the near future, so
Speaker 1: keep your ears up for that. And Josh, I hope
Speaker 1: I can grab you back in here for another episode
Speaker 1: in each time. Man awesome. Well, thank you again, and folks,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you again really soon for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Because it has to
Speaker 1: works dot Com