WEBVTT - Do We Need Humanoid Robots? 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:07.520 Get in text with technology with text Stuff from stuff 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:14.000 dot com either everyone, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:18.400 Jonathan Strickland and I'm joined by a special guest host today, 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.599 someone who is on the most popular podcast in the 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:27.159 How Stuff Works suite of shows, Josh Clark Glow, co 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:29.840 host of Stuff You Should Know. Josh, thank you so 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.560 much for joining us. Thank you for having me here. 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:35.880 And Josh has been very kind. He's had me on 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:37.879 Stuff you Should Know. Way back in the day when 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:40.680 you guys were doing one on the Necronomicon. Yeah, we 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:43.680 were starting to get knee deep into it and realizing 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.320 that we were going to get a lot, a lot 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.480 of listener mail, so we came and got you. You 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:51.680 know what was funny was that no warning, you came 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.160 to me asking about pronunciation I think two times, and 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:57.120 then on the third time you're like, just come on 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:00.320 inside the studio and you came and said down and 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:05.280 talked about the Necronomicon like a promicron. I know this 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:10.080 by the way, Yeah, Nickronomicon, Necronomicon. Okay, Yeah, and um 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:12.760 I am still to this day impressed. And that was 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:15.640 five years ago. Yeah, yeah, and then they haven't had 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.720 me on since But anyway, we had Josh on today. No, 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:22.760 you guys are super busy even out. Yeah, I know, 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:25.840 I was the one dragging my feet. Yeah, And I 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:28.080 asked Josh what he would like to cover because with 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:30.160 the fact that I've got all these guests coming in 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:32.720 to sit down with me. Um. You know, some people 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.680 like to come up with their own suggestions. Some people 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.600 preferred if I pick a topic and then they research it. 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:40.639 I asked Josh what he would like to talk about, 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:44.640 and you were really interested in the idea of humanoid robots. Well, 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:48.840 you have this awesome spreadsheet of um of listeners suggestions 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:51.440 and it might as well have been a neon when 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:53.640 it was going down the sheet. I'm like humanoid robots, 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:57.320 of course, and this is a great topic. In order 0:01:57.400 --> 0:01:59.160 to really get into it, I was going to define 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:01.320 a few terms, even though a lot of these are 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:03.520 ones that I think most of us just kind of 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:07.360 understand just from the fact that this is in our 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.360 culture now. It's not just not just a reality as 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:12.440 far as technology goes, but it plays a large part 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.040 in fiction. In fact, that's where the term robot comes 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:20.119 from is from fiction. Uh, it was from Carrel Chopeck, 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:25.640 a Czechoslovakian playwright. I did, in fact listen to it 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:29.080 a couple of times. Correl Chope Yeah, because it's his 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:31.760 last name, is spelled c A p e k. And 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:36.919 it includes uh symbols that are not in the English alphabet, 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.960 like squiggly lines and little UFOs and things he wrote. 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:45.040 Are you are also known as Rossum's Universal Robots, and 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:47.679 the word robot comes from the check word robot to, 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:53.000 which means forced labor. Yeah, so a robot is a 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:57.760 an entity, a synthetic construct that is forced to do work. 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.639 Then we have humanoid, which just means resembling a human being. 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:06.919 That's a term that is relatively young. It started showing 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.720 up around the turn of the twentieth century, and uh 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.840 it started I think the first few times it was 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.120 ever mentioned was around nineteen twelve, and it was mostly 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.920 used then to describe fossils, saying these are humanoid fossils, 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:26.520 like yeah. And then we have android, which is we're 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:28.520 probably not gonna be using that word very often, but 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:31.520 android is a robot that's in the form of a human. 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.320 So all androids or robots, but not all robots are androids. 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:37.680 And you know, I ran into I looked up android 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:40.200 as well. Yeah, and apparently that's from like the early 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:45.040 eighteenth century. It's a little odd that it actually predates robots. Yeah, 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:48.800 but uh, when we look at myths and legends, there's 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:52.480 so many stories that involve a human like entity that's 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.040 not actually a person that you can see where it 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:58.000 gets translated in there. This gets a little confusing too, 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:01.920 because Star Wars they called all their abouts droids, but 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:04.280 there they aren't androids are two? T two is not 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:08.440 an android because he's not um or it's not human shaped. 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:10.840 You could even argue that C three Po is not 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.440 a true android because some people say to be an 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:16.440 android you have to appear, at least on casual glance 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:20.360 to be human. He's way too shiny, way too shiny. 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:24.560 Data from Star Trek next Generation might be uh android, 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:27.799 but he's an android who's had, you know, a long 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:31.080 time in the man cave. He hasn't seen much sun, right, Yeah, 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.360 because he's definitely got a weird complexion. Thing goes the 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.680 kid in a I would be an android David yes, 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.800 which turns out to be a popular name for droids 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:43.680 because there was well, there's David in AI and there 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.240 was also David and Prometheus. Oh you know, I never 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.839 saw Prometheus. I don't know if your listeners are going 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:52.119 to agree with me or not, because I could see 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:55.599 um getting shouted down. But I thought Prometheus was a 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:58.600 great movie. Even even upon second viewing, I thought it 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.680 was good. You know, I know that the from the 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.200 artistic level, a lot of people really loved it. And 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:05.919 then there were some people who said, how can you 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:09.480 get lost if you have a three dimensional map with 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.039 you at all time? But you know, plot versus artists, 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.239 I don't know. Then you've got replicants from Blade Runner. 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:18.800 These are more like cyborgs because they have some sort 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:24.040 of organic material attached to them. They're not completely you know, 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:28.800 synthetic material. So Terminator is another example. They have a 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:32.560 fleshy over skin on top of their metallic bodies. But 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:35.640 was that real skin that he had there was synthetic skin, 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:37.560 because that would make a difference. That's a good question. 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:40.080 And I uh, you know, I know that they referred 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:42.400 to them as cyborgs at least a few times in 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.400 the movies, which would suggest that it's actual skin. Maybe 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:52.080 it's lab grown human skin. So you know, there's some 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:56.120 fuzzy lines around these definitions. I would think that cyborgs 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.960 would be the hardest of all of the the humanoid 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.680 robots to make, because the flesh were just rot Like 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:07.919 you have your normal looking humanoid robot, your cyborg, and 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.640 it's ear would just fall off. Yeah, and it's not 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:14.520 as easy as you might think to wire together the 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:18.080 wet wear that's in our heads with hardware that runs 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:22.200 on circuits. We will often think of computers working in 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:24.160 a way that's similar to our brains, but in fact 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.120 the two work in very different ways. Well, it seems 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:31.839 like running into this, though Strickland um. The the more 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.760 we got into humanoid robotics, the more we started to 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.760 understand just how complex we are. Yeah, that's one of 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.760 the things that I think is a benefit of study 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:45.520 of humanoid robotics. The idea of pursuing the goal of 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.159 creating a humanoid robot is not just that we learn 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.560 more about all the different areas and robotics, and they're 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:53.560 a lot, and we'll talk about some of them, but 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:57.120 we also learn more about ourselves. We're trying to figure out, okay, 0:06:57.160 --> 0:06:59.920 if we're going to make something that is able to 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.840 performed tasks the way human does. Then we really got 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:06.000 to take a close look at humans. That's that's the 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:11.760 first place to start. So what makes a humanoid robot? 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.760 And generally speaking, we're talking about a robot that has 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:19.120 basic features, usually at minimum a torso, arms and legs, 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.760 and is walking up right. Uh. It may have a 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:26.000 head or it might not. Early humanoid robots didn't, or 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:31.600 at least their sensory uh, instruments were all located within 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:34.640 the top part of the torso there wasn't like a 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.880 separate head. Did you see a picture of Minerva at 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.520 the Smithsonian. No? I did not. It's a robot to 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.920 her guide, But um, she came up in the humanoid 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.560 robot research and I think she's stretching it a little bit. Yeah, 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.360 she looks a bit like a washing machine with a 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:55.360 couple of UM cameras on top. So just those alone, 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:59.240 I guess makes her eligible for the humanoid robot realm. 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.200 But to stretching that, that seems like that's a bit 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:04.520 of a you know, if it has an appendage, that 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.760 doesn't necessarily make a humanoid. I mean you could look 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:10.320 at the Mars Curiosity rover, which has several appendages. But 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:15.080 I don't think anyone would ever describe it as humanoid, right, So, uh, 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.880 ideally a humanoid robot would be able to interact with 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:23.440 humans within a human environment. Because here's the thing about we, 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:26.559 we people, we have defined our environments to a large extent, 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:30.440 especially in developed nations, where the stuff that's around us 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:35.479 we have shaped so that it works within our capabilities, 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:39.079 right with our with our human environment. Thus far, if 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.199 you look at technology though, on the whole, we've pretty 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.600 much been forced to adapt to it. So for example, 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:49.280 like a keyboard, we don't normally, naturally you know, um 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:53.360 express ideas through our fingers on a little a little board, right, 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:55.559 we don't normally do that, So we had to adapt 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:57.640 to the technology and learn to type and get good 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:02.199 at it. With humanoid robots, it's basically going the exact opposite. 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.640 It's saying we already have an environment, We already are um, 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:07.480 you know, good at all this other stuff. If we're 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.080 gonna make humanoid robots, one of the great benefits is 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.920 they can adapt to us. Right, Yeah, we don't have 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.640 to uh create a unitask or robot that's really good 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.480 at one thing. Um that may or may not be 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:23.640 something that humans can do easily. We can make a 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:27.640 robot that's good lots of things. Uh. I also think 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:30.800 usually when I think of humanoid robots, when I think 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.640 of robots in general, I normally think that they are 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:37.040 at least semi autonomous. That's that's one of the things 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.320 I usually think of. It doesn't necessarily have to be. 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.560 You could have a tel operated robot, but I almost 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:47.120 think of that closer to the realm of like a 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.000 remote controlled car or a puppet even um So I 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.439 often one of the definitions I use is that it's 0:09:54.480 --> 0:10:00.679 an autonomous or semi autonomous machine in human form, mechanical 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:05.480 and electronic, and it can thus do the sort of 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:08.679 things humans do, but do it in a totally synthetic way. 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.840 And you have to be careful when you say autonomous 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:14.400 or semi autonomous, because the state of the art right 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:18.400 now appears to be that robots display autonomy because they 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:20.839 just kind of wander off in places they're not supposed to. 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.160 But it's not because they want to. It's because their 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.880 their program just ran a foul of program. Right. There's 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.000 no determination there on the part of the robot. It's 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:35.680 not exploring its environment on its own accord. It's someone 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:38.240 made a mistake in the code somewhere and where the 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:40.600 robot was supposed to take a left hand turn at 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:45.320 this one you know, predetermined spot, and instead continued forward 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:48.439 or something exactly. Um, So I wanted to talk a 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.480 little bit about the history of humanoid robots and if 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:55.280 you wanna look way way way back, I mean, we're 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.040 talking about the first people to really kind of attempt 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:03.160 to build a humanoid machine that could mimic are the 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:05.600 movements at least of a person. You gotta go all 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.920 the way back to Greece between the years ten and 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:14.240 seventy Common era. That's when Hero of Alexandria started to 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.160 create various machines. He's also the person who made the 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:23.040 first working steam engine style tool, which is pretty impressive. Yeah. 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:25.120 He he had come up with a lot of very 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:29.680 clever designs. Whether they were built or not depends upon uh, 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:33.240 certain accounts and and if they're true. But the stuff 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:37.160 he designed is completely build a bowl. So he didn't 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:40.360 come up with any ideas where it was so you know, outlandish, 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.440 that was impossible. He wasn't just like drawing in the 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:44.839 margins of his diary or something. No, Yeah, he came 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:48.120 up with specific plans that people today have recreated, they 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.560 built their own versions. Yeah. So he created a lot 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:55.480 of designs for automata, although these are things that were 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.480 controlled by pulleys and ropes and cogged wheels, and uh 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.960 needed some form of outside influence to make them work, 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:07.720 so they're not all fully self contained like the show 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:11.680 biz pizza rockefire explosion band. Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah, some 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:16.320 one of those audio animatronic figures that that looks very robotic, 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:19.200 but you realize it's really just one tiny piece of 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:23.440 a giant system. Uh. In fourteen, we get up to 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.360 Leonardo da Vinci. He designed an automaton in the form 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:31.280 of a mechanical night which uh again supposedly he built. 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:34.720 There's no actual record of an existing one from history, 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:39.000 but they have created ones based on the design since then, 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:41.360 and it could do things like move its arms and 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:45.000 raise its visor. Who's doing this? Who's doing this? Crazy 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:50.200 engineers who are also uh, very excited about history and 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.600 very wealthy too, I would imagine. Yeah, so in this case, 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:59.880 you're talking about Mark Rossheim, who recreated this particular machine 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.520 and it it's a night. It's a night in German 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:07.640 medieval armor. And it can sit down, it can stand up, 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:09.600 it can move its arms, it can raise a visor, 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:15.040 it can work its jaw. Um, I imagine. So I 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.719 tried to find video of Rossheim's version working, and I 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:22.400 couldn't find it. He did, however, make another of da 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:27.480 Vinci's inventions, which was a self driving cart that used Yeah, 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:31.120 you you wound a spring and it had cam stops 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.800 that would allow it to steer a predetermined path. You 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.760 would actually program the cart by putting cam stops in 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:40.600 particular locations along the cam and that would tell it 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:42.520 when to turn left or when to turn right. So 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:47.960 it couldn't it couldn't navigate through uh an obstacle course 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:50.719 unless you had already previously seen the obstacle course and 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.319 you could figure out when it needed to turn ahead 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:57.000 of time. So you're essentially programming the device. Um. There 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:00.280 are lots of examples in the renaissance of automata and 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.280 semi automata, things that are really more like puppets. You've 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:08.760 heard about the mechanical turk, the chess playing robot uh 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:10.840 So it looked like it was a robot that could 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:13.640 play chess and was really really good at playing chess 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.200 and it turned out eventually to be a hoax. It 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:18.480 was actually it was actually a puppet, and there was 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.680 an actual chess master hidden in a cabinet beneath the 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:27.320 mechanical turk who sat kind of Indian style with a 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.080 chessboard in front of him and could move the pieces 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:31.640 to where it needed to be. But it was all 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:34.000 being guided by an actual chess master who was hidden 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:40.440 under When that that was late Renaissance early Enlightenment, pretty impressive, Yeah, 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.040 it was. It was neat that people were thinking about 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:45.760 these sort of things. Uh. By ninety six we get 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:49.440 the first humanoid robot to appear on film, uh Metropolis, 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.520 the character of Maria and at nine at the World's Fair, 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:58.080 Westinghouse Electric Corporation showed off a robot called Electro. Now 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.880 have you ever seen this? So he kind of looks 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.680 like the ten Man from the Wizard of Oz film. 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:07.080 I have seen him. Yes, he smokes. I have seen 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:09.000 one of the things he can do. He had a 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:13.120 little bellows in his head that allowed him to puff smoke. 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.560 He could also kind of speak. He had a seventy 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:22.320 eight revolution per minute UH record player essentially inside of him. 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:25.400 I suppose if the if the needles skipped, it would 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:28.640 at least sound like it. Um. He would repeat himself over. 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:35.479 He called the audience Twitts. That was Grandpa. Yeah, he's apparently. 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.280 The main reason he was retired from being shown off 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.840 at exhibitions was because it was very dated kind of lingo. 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:46.160 But he was used at the ninety nine World's Fair, 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.240 which was It's funny because I'll be talking about that 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:53.520 again in another episode very shortly. The World's Fair would 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:57.000 have been an amazing thing to visit. Um, I'm more 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:00.800 of I can understand that. But if you're if you're 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:02.480 going to get to the point where you're looking at 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:06.520 full scale anthropomorphic robots, you gotta get up to about nine. 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:12.560 That's when the Waybot one from the Waseda University came out. 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:16.040 That was the first full scale anthropomorphic robot developed in 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.840 the world which had limb control, a vision system, so 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:22.760 I had an optical system that could recognize its environment 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:26.680 and objects and measure distance, and it also had a 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:30.640 conversation system. Uh. It was actually a collection of a 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.080 bunch of very complex machinery. Like its hands had been 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:37.880 previously developed independently of the robots, so had its legs. 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.160 So it's like all these people coming up with these 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.400 various pieces saying, all right, let's connect all this together 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.720 and see what happens. So that was a huge, huge 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.240 leap forward. Yeah. You know, if you'll notice, we went 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:55.480 basically from um, HOAXI chess playing turks to you know, 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:58.920 a robot that could converse and interact with its environment, 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.600 and then um, it seems like we we kind of 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:04.400 went off course for a little bit and now we're 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:06.960 coming full circle back to that where, like you said, 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:11.000 a lot of different disciplines are contributing these different pieces 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.959 to what will eventually be all of the best practices 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.479 from each little sub discipline put together in you know, 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:20.520 the true humanoid robot. Well yeah, I mean, if we're 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:24.080 talking about a humanoid robot that's capable of interacting with people, 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.399 uh as if they were you know, their own person, 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:29.960 even though maybe an odd person, not like the kind 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:33.600 of person you would typically run into. There's it's a 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:38.520 multidisciplinary approach. I mean, artificial intelligence by itself is multidisciplinary 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:42.440 because you have sensing, you have so all the perception, 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:46.520 there's all these different just that's multi disciplinary. Then you've 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:51.800 got the processing, the cognition, things like planning, navigation. There 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.919 are so many things that come together to make a 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:59.600 humanoid robot a a possibility. And that's just the the 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:02.879 men toll side, right. Then you have all the physical side, 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:05.080 the how do you make it walk? How do you 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:08.280 make it keep its balance? So lots of stuff to 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:11.920 consider there. Waybot two came out in nineteen eighty that 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:14.560 was a specialist robot. It could play a keyboard trying 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:18.640 to keyboard. He could read sheet music and play music. Uh. 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:21.240 It was because it was a specialist. It was not 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.959 able to do the general functions that it's predecessor could do. 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:27.760 And that's why of the issues in robotics today is 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:32.520 that it's very challenging to build a general purpose robot. 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:35.840 It's much easier to take a specific task that you 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:37.639 need to have done and to sign a robot to 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:41.840 do that, because I mean, we already have those rombas 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:45.720 and rovers. I mean, you know, there's there's also all 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:50.520 the robots and manufacturing, all the welding robots things like that. Uh. 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:55.159 Nine Pacific Northwest National Laboratory built a robot called Manny 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.280 that was the first full scale android body and it 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.880 had forty degrees of freedom, but no AI or autonomy. 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.040 It was completely teleoperated. And um, it took me a 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:08.960 couple of times to figure out what degrees of freedom meant. Yeah, um, 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.320 I thought it meant like the it could move its 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:16.080 arm forty two degrees basically. But a degree of freedom 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:18.040 is say, like it can move its wrist. That's a 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:21.159 degree of freedom. It can turn its head left and right. 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.240 That's a degree of freedom right right. And if you 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:26.240 look at the human hand, the human hand has about 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:29.960 thirty degrees of freedom, meaning that you look at the 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:32.640 way each finger and your thumb can move. You look 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:34.400 at the way you can clench a fist, you can 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:38.159 twist your hand with your wrist. Um, those are all 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:41.320 different degrees of freedom. And uh. In fact, one of 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:44.200 the cool things about robots is that as we get 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.120 better and better at designing them, we can create robots 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:49.240 that have far more degrees of freedom than the human 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.920 body does. So I like the idea of a humanoid 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:56.639 robot in the future that has sty degree motion with 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:58.959 its wrist and then just having it changed light bulbs 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:02.080 is spin and not have to do the little twisty 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:04.560 turning motion. How many robots does it take to change 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.120 the light bulbs. Just just the one, just that one, 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.720 just one billion dollar room. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not saying 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:14.800 it's a fishing system. I'm just saying I'm a supremely 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:19.359 lazy human being with tall ceilings. Uh In nine, Honda 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:22.240 introduced the P two Robot, which was a self contained 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.760 robotic humanoid. It could walk and climb stairs. The P 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:29.000 three followed in nine and in two thousand two, Honda 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:33.639 introduced My good buddy as Emo. As the first article 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:38.320 I wrote for How Stuff Works as works an episode 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.439 on it. I have not done a full episode on 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.160 as Amo. I even was offered the opportunity to meet 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:46.560 as Amo when I first wrote the article, but it 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:48.919 would have meant having to travel to Disneyland to do it, 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:51.120 and at the time How Stuff Works was not prepared 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:55.359 to do such a I went to Disneyland by myself, 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:59.080 uh well with my wife, and we went and saw 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:01.920 the Asimo production. And at the end of it, I 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.200 talked to one of the disney cast members and I said, yeah, 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:07.320 I wrote the article about how Asthma works for How 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:09.520 Stuff Works, and she said, hang on a minute. And 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:11.440 I got to meet Asthma and it was a man 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.160 in a suit. Right. It was actually it was actually 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.040 a collection of cats that the duct taped together and 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:20.600 then plastic. No, it was a working robot that's pretty new. 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:23.320 Blown away, I was very much blown away. It was 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:25.399 cool seeing it up close. I mean, it looks like 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.240 a little tiny astronaut, right, because he's got like the 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:30.600 face plate. Especially. I love the people call it he 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:33.800 people give And I do this all the time too 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:37.080 with robots. I'll assign a gender even though technically many 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:40.360 of them are specifically genderless. As amo is is supposed 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:42.879 to be genderless, but I often refer to asthmosa he 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:44.760 as well. Well, you know why. It's the shoulders, I 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:47.399 would guess. Yeah, they go straight across and and and 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:51.600 far out. That's very masculine no matter what. Yeah, and 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:53.879 you need that, I would guess you need shoulders in 0:21:53.920 --> 0:21:58.480 a humanoid robot with flexible arms. Well, and also, I'm 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:02.160 sure every single element Asimo is built with the balance 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:05.840 in mind, because Asimo is the first robot that can run. Yes, 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:09.040 I've seen him run. It's gawky. Yeah, it kind of 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:10.840 looks like someone who really needs to get to the 0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:13.680 bathroom as a little bit of a hoppy kind of run. 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:16.840 But the the definition of run here is that there 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:20.480 are moments where both feet are off the ground. So 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.359 walking you always have one foot in contact with the ground, 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:27.160 and running both feet at some point are out of contact. 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.840 And that's a huge deal for robotics, right. I mean, 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:34.679 you have a machine that completely separates itself from contact 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:37.680 on the ground. It has no propulsion to keep it upright, 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:39.960 you know, it doesn't have like propellers or jets or 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.719 anything like that, so you have to design it so 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:45.760 it can it can propel itself off the ground and 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:48.520 then catch itself when it comes back down without falling over. 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.800