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