Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Either in Love and a forrard Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, they say,
Speaker 1: we are what we are, but we don't have to be.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Folk, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: So we've got a fun topic lined up today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's one that I really was thinking about
Speaker 1: recently because I saw this awesome movie, Big Hero six.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it yet, so really good. The trailer
Speaker 1: was really cute. I haven't seen it either, but Jonathan
Speaker 1: keeps talking about it, so I think we need to
Speaker 1: go see it. So before I get into what today's
Speaker 1: topic is, specifically, the thing I wanted to say about
Speaker 1: Big Hero six is the movie opens. It's set in
Speaker 1: me an alternate future really, because you have the main
Speaker 1: city is San Francikio, so it's a kind of a
Speaker 1: melding of San Francisco in Tokyo and are just world design.
Speaker 1: But the thing that really impressed me early on is
Speaker 1: that there's all this kind of science fiction ee sort
Speaker 1: of stuff going on, but a lot of it, at
Speaker 1: least has its basis in science. Fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: it is is based on you know, take take sort
Speaker 1: of the cutting edge stuff that's going on in labs
Speaker 1: right now, projected out several years, and assume that the
Speaker 1: research you know plays out and that everything is fruitful,
Speaker 1: and what do you get? And a lot of the
Speaker 1: technology you see, at least in the early part of
Speaker 1: the movie seems to go along with that. And I
Speaker 1: was just really impressed. I mean, everything from soft robotics
Speaker 1: to what we're gonna talk about today, which is self
Speaker 1: reconfiguring modular robots or as you also noted that they
Speaker 1: can be called in your script for this video episode,
Speaker 1: autonomous kinematic machines of variable morphology rolls off the tongue.
Speaker 1: So what on earth is that talking about? Well, I
Speaker 1: think we should start with the idea of the variable morphology. Okay,
Speaker 1: So something that changes shape, right more fall as he
Speaker 1: refers to like structure or form or shape as it
Speaker 1: would in biology. So so what we're talking about is
Speaker 1: a transformer, that's right, Yeah, it's a shape shifting robot.
Speaker 1: And why is a transformer? Great, well, a transformer is
Speaker 1: it's a robot in the SUI, A transformer is great
Speaker 1: unless you're talking about one of the recent movies, a
Speaker 1: cartooning transformer or a real transformer. Either one of those
Speaker 1: would be great. But it's great because it can do
Speaker 1: two jobs, whereas most robots can only do one. So
Speaker 1: a regular robot might be an autonomous car and it
Speaker 1: can drive down the highway distributing palettes of Captain Crunch.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, Captain Crunch the hyphens. I would really hope
Speaker 1: you'd be an admiral by now. But then, of course,
Speaker 1: after that autonomous truck delivers them, it can't get into
Speaker 1: big wrestling matches with other robots. Now, you might make
Speaker 1: a robot that can get into wrestling matches with other
Speaker 1: robots and stabbed them through the side of a highway
Speaker 1: with a giant sword. But that robot can't be a
Speaker 1: truck unless it's a transformer, right where it can be
Speaker 1: both you can. But but wait, let me do you
Speaker 1: one better. What's better than a transformer that can assume
Speaker 1: two morphs? A robot that can assume even more morphs?
Speaker 1: What about a robot that can assume an infinite number
Speaker 1: of morphs? So you're saying, like a robot that is
Speaker 1: capable of assuming any shape that you need at any
Speaker 1: given time to perform any given task. Bingo. Well that
Speaker 1: is something that is is in Big Hero six, the
Speaker 1: the hero whose name is Hero actually designs self self
Speaker 1: self reconfiguring modular robots. He designs a tiny robotic unit that,
Speaker 1: when it connects to others of its kind, make larger shapes.
Speaker 1: And you might think, well, that's pure science fiction, but
Speaker 1: it's not. And we want to kind of go into
Speaker 1: more detail about why such a thing would be a
Speaker 1: desirable object in the first place. And you you really
Speaker 1: hit on it, Joe, the idea that robots today tend
Speaker 1: to be really good at specific things and crappy at
Speaker 1: everything else. Yeah, they have one job. You had one, Joba,
Speaker 1: I asked you to paint a masterful painting. You had
Speaker 1: one job, and all you did was clean the floor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. You know, we do. We design robots
Speaker 1: to perform specific tasks, and so the form follows the function. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, there almost seems to be a direct proportional
Speaker 1: correlation where the more diverse a robots skill set gets,
Speaker 1: the worse it gets at all of those jobs. Instead
Speaker 1: of can be really good at one or very mediocre
Speaker 1: at several times. This is like that TV trip about
Speaker 1: about ninja and that if you have one ninja, it's great,
Speaker 1: and if you have a hundred ninja, they have about
Speaker 1: the same capacity. Is that one ninja would have just
Speaker 1: spread out amongst all of them, right right, That's why
Speaker 1: the tick can just breathe right through a horde of ninja. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: besides the fact that he's also ni invulnerable. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: they the this is that's exactly right. Yeah. That you
Speaker 1: build a robot that you want to be able to
Speaker 1: do lots of things. Usually it can do a few
Speaker 1: things and not so great. And this is you know,
Speaker 1: anyone who's who's played with any of the robots that
Speaker 1: are social bots that are meant to do like these things,
Speaker 1: like mostly in the toy department, you know, they're amusing,
Speaker 1: but they're not exactly the best at anything that they're
Speaker 1: trying to do, Okay, And there's solid design reasons for
Speaker 1: creating robots that are that that only have one job, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, creating robots is kind of expensive and time consuming,
Speaker 1: and so if you're trying to build lots of different
Speaker 1: functionality into them, that's that's a lot more expensive and
Speaker 1: a lot more time consuming if you if you're narrowing
Speaker 1: down what you wanted to do, right, if you if
Speaker 1: you pinpoint that focus, then you say, here's what the
Speaker 1: robot has to be able to do. Anything that does
Speaker 1: not directly contribute to this task, we can eliminate. That
Speaker 1: means that you can, you know, really pinpoint that focus,
Speaker 1: really make sure that that design is as efficient as
Speaker 1: possible at doing that task. But let's imagine a scenario. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say that you live in a house by yourself,
Speaker 1: and you work long hours, and you need a robot
Speaker 1: to help you clean the house. Beyond beyond something like
Speaker 1: a roomba that's just going to sweep the floor. Sure,
Speaker 1: a roomba might be really good at sucking up dust
Speaker 1: off the floor, that's its one job. But a roomba,
Speaker 1: of course, cannot clean your gutters, and it can't well
Speaker 1: I don't know, I was gonna say, it can't soap
Speaker 1: and mop the floor. But they might make rumas that
Speaker 1: can do that. They do. They do make mopping room
Speaker 1: bas but they're not usually also sweeping room bas So
Speaker 1: it's in other words, you have you have two different
Speaker 1: robots that have similar but different jobs. Okay, and one
Speaker 1: about another one thing. Yeah, another one for washing windows,
Speaker 1: and another one for doing your dishes. And there there
Speaker 1: have been lots of robots that do these things, but
Speaker 1: again they're all individual like their uni taskers, as Alton
Speaker 1: Brown would call them. So are you going to fill
Speaker 1: your house up with thirty five different kinds of robots?
Speaker 1: Well maybe if you can afford it and you don't
Speaker 1: mind occasionally getting sharp metal jabbed into you. Well, also,
Speaker 1: you just you started this up by saying you live alone.
Speaker 1: I mean that maybe they'll make you a little less
Speaker 1: lonely to have like thirty five robot friends doing all
Speaker 1: your work for you. That would make me more lonely,
Speaker 1: would it? Yeah? I just named them. I assume if
Speaker 1: you live some with somebody else, you can bully them
Speaker 1: into doing all the houses. Is that how it works
Speaker 1: in your household? Kidding? My wife is wonderful. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do the same thing, Joe. Uh yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: this is exactly the point you're making, though, is is
Speaker 1: very much on target right. The idea that it would
Speaker 1: be very beneficial to have a mod geiller robot, a
Speaker 1: robot made up of smaller robots, smaller pieces that could
Speaker 1: form any given shape to perform any task as best
Speaker 1: as it possibly could, rather than have a veritable army
Speaker 1: of robots. I mean, even if you were to say, well,
Speaker 1: let's imagine that I've gotten enough space for all those
Speaker 1: robots and I would want them all. Just the power
Speaker 1: bill alone to keep them all charged would be ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So what if you could have this group of tiny
Speaker 1: robots that joined together to form a much larger moving
Speaker 1: object that can do pretty much anything you wanted to do? Right, So,
Speaker 1: it could form into a small disc and hoover along
Speaker 1: the floor like the room but does. Or maybe it
Speaker 1: could make itself tall, rearrange itself into a long stick
Speaker 1: with arms to clean the windows, or to reach into
Speaker 1: the sink to clean the dishes. Or it could even
Speaker 1: climb over upon itself up the wall, up the side
Speaker 1: of your house to reach the roof and clean out
Speaker 1: your gutters. Yeah, yeah, all of these are I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds kind of science fiction e but these are
Speaker 1: all real things that, uh that engineers are looking into.
Speaker 1: Maybe not necessarily those use cases, but but essentially the
Speaker 1: idea of a robot that can change its shape in
Speaker 1: order to do different things. Whether that's just to get
Speaker 1: across a landscape or to actually perform a specific task. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about some of the existing
Speaker 1: models of reconfiguring or self reconfiguring modular robots that exist
Speaker 1: out there today, right because obviously we don't have anything
Speaker 1: like what we just described, this perfect self reconfiguring robot
Speaker 1: in your house, but we we we've basically got a
Speaker 1: few steps in that direction that are very encouraging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got to that we're specifically going to talk about,
Speaker 1: one of which is a reconfiguring robot, one which doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily reconfigure, like it doesn't form a larger robot, but
Speaker 1: it can act with a swarm intelligence, which it will
Speaker 1: be important in modular robotics. So we're gonna talk about those.
Speaker 1: But I should point out there are lots of different
Speaker 1: types of modular robots out there. Some of them are
Speaker 1: not self reconfiguring. Some of them are simply you get
Speaker 1: all the different components and you put them together. Yeah
Speaker 1: you can. You can sit there and make you know.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of ones that teach children the
Speaker 1: basics of robotics, and they have different units that do
Speaker 1: different things, and the way you put them together determines
Speaker 1: their function. Uh, these are modular, but they don't self reconfigure.
Speaker 1: They don't they don't manage to put themselves into whatever shape.
Speaker 1: You are the one responsible for doing it. So we're
Speaker 1: not really going to talk about those. Okay, Well let's
Speaker 1: look at M I T S M blocks. Yes, they
Speaker 1: are momentum driven magnetic modular robots. That's how the commercial
Speaker 1: would go. You know, I imagine the guy who did
Speaker 1: the micro machines ads doing it. Uh no, no, I know.
Speaker 1: How the commercial would go would be like, let M
Speaker 1: into your life. The M block, you know, M I
Speaker 1: T you can just send the checks are away. So
Speaker 1: they're cubes that they you would think because they're called blocks,
Speaker 1: Joe's already regretting absolutely going to stay in. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the M blocks are these blocks that have magnetic corners, right,
Speaker 1: so each corner has a beveled magnet in it, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. I'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: that in a second. They also contain a rotating flywheel
Speaker 1: that can move up to twenty thousand revolutions per minute.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fast, and so, uh, they don't necessarily speed
Speaker 1: turn at full speed every time, but depending on what
Speaker 1: you need the cube to do you might have it
Speaker 1: speeding spinning that quickly, and then what you do is
Speaker 1: you apply a break. Now, the laws of momentum state
Speaker 1: that that energy has to go somewhere. It gets transferred
Speaker 1: to the cube, and this makes the cube move. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what does this actually look like when we're watching
Speaker 1: these cubes move around on each other? Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen a ghost movie where objects seem to be moving
Speaker 1: on their own accord with nothing obviously moving them forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what it looks like. It looks like
Speaker 1: the blocks are possessed, kind of like kind of like
Speaker 1: the toaster jumping and Ghostbusters too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if you already said this or not,
Speaker 1: but they don't have external moving parts. No, it's all
Speaker 1: it's all kept inside. The flywheel is actually contained within
Speaker 1: the cube, right, So the momentum can move one cube
Speaker 1: onto another cube and reposition it around the outside of
Speaker 1: that cube without attaching and reattaching via clamps or hooks
Speaker 1: or anything like that. But it's it's attachment through those magnets, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so if you imagine one it's just one cube
Speaker 1: moving around another. But if you add a third, you
Speaker 1: could have two cubes moving around on each other, and
Speaker 1: then the fourth or fifth, and eventually you can end
Speaker 1: up with a large mass of moving modules that can
Speaker 1: assume shapes, especially if they're in communication with each other.
Speaker 1: And you can also include modules that don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: the flywheel inside them. They might have some other UH
Speaker 1: specific sensor or camera in them. Uh. The m I
Speaker 1: T Group has talked about the possibility of that as well,
Speaker 1: in which case the ones that have the flywheel would
Speaker 1: be responsible for moving the other ones, which they can
Speaker 1: do because that flywheel spinning so quickly. Um, these things
Speaker 1: can actually jump, so they don't just like the the
Speaker 1: videos I've watched show the cubes. I guess rolling is
Speaker 1: the best way of putting it in order to move
Speaker 1: across the floor, but they can even Let's say you've
Speaker 1: got two cubes stacked already vertically and you have a
Speaker 1: third cube roll up. It can actually spin and break
Speaker 1: in such a way to jump up and land on
Speaker 1: top of those two cubes, which is kind of spooky
Speaker 1: looking when you watch it the first time. They also,
Speaker 1: of course are making pretty loud noises because it's a
Speaker 1: flywheel spinning, and then breaking, so it's it's not silent,
Speaker 1: it's it's loud and spooky, so but it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And and those those magnets that are in those beveled
Speaker 1: points in the corners, they rotate. And the reason by
Speaker 1: the magnets rotate is so that you can always get
Speaker 1: a north south connection. Remember, you know, the opposite poles
Speaker 1: attract and similar poles repel, and you want to be
Speaker 1: able to make sure that when one block approaches another block,
Speaker 1: it's able to actually latch on properly. So the magnets
Speaker 1: in those individual points will naturally rotate so it will
Speaker 1: be a north south connection so that any two cubes
Speaker 1: from any two sides can attach exactly. And if you
Speaker 1: get two poles that are the same, then one of
Speaker 1: them will end up rotating. Everything will be fine. So
Speaker 1: there's literally no wrong way to put them together. Neat. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These also remind me of another project out of m
Speaker 1: I T when we've talked a little bit about before, previously,
Speaker 1: before previously, which is the common way to really over
Speaker 1: emphasize the point um. They're the m I T S
Speaker 1: reconfiguring robots from their self assembly lab um while researching
Speaker 1: what's called forty printing. Um. That's three D printing of
Speaker 1: materials that can then move and change with with minimal
Speaker 1: stimul lists or instruction from the outside. Uh. The kids
Speaker 1: of the Self Assembly Lab created some macro scale robots
Speaker 1: to help demonstrate the usefulness and honestly the coolness of
Speaker 1: this changeability of of structure and so so these are
Speaker 1: these reconfiguring robots are programmable folding chains constructed of of nodes,
Speaker 1: each of which is hardwired to one or more neighboring nodes.
Speaker 1: So if you give one note an instruction, it will
Speaker 1: pass information on how to move down through the chain
Speaker 1: until the programmers desired shape is is complete with with
Speaker 1: relatively minimal input from from that programmer. Right. If you
Speaker 1: do not remember us talking about it, or or if
Speaker 1: you want to refresh yourself, you can learn more about
Speaker 1: these and other self assembly techniques in our video and podcast,
Speaker 1: both of which published August. That's like over a year ago. Guys,
Speaker 1: we've been doing this a minute. Um. The episodes are
Speaker 1: called the video is forty Printing is the Future of Design,
Speaker 1: and the pod cast episode is forty Printing is One
Speaker 1: D Better. I must have titled that one, actually, I
Speaker 1: think I came up with that line. Strangely enough, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very it's a very Jonathan kind of joke. So the
Speaker 1: other one we wanted to talk about was Harvard's kill abots. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the one that is not modular robot but
Speaker 1: they do demonstrate swarm behavior, which again is going to
Speaker 1: be really important if you're talking about ultimately, if your
Speaker 1: if your goal is to create a robot, a large
Speaker 1: robot made up of smaller robots, then you have to
Speaker 1: build in some form of intelligence for each of those
Speaker 1: smaller robots to know quote unquote its place and it's
Speaker 1: uh and it's function right. And so there are some
Speaker 1: similar concepts going on between these two uh, these two
Speaker 1: ideas swarm robotics and the modular robotics. So with a
Speaker 1: self reconfiguring modular robout, we're generally imagining something that's connected
Speaker 1: to itself. It's got pieces that may all be the
Speaker 1: same kind of peace moving on one another to reshape itself.
Speaker 1: With swarm robotics, you've still got lots of pieces working together,
Speaker 1: but they're sort of moving on mass and they might
Speaker 1: not be building a shape, right, they might they often
Speaker 1: aren't physically connected together at all, right, they're all individually
Speaker 1: free to move. If if somehow one was to break
Speaker 1: free of its programming, it can make a break for it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not chained physically in any way. So
Speaker 1: whereas the ones from M I T were magnetic and
Speaker 1: linked together, and we know of a lot of others
Speaker 1: that have physical connections of some sort, either they have
Speaker 1: connectors that snap in or they have clamps that hold
Speaker 1: onto one another, these do not. These are simply to
Speaker 1: allow UH computer scientists to test various algorithms for robotic intelligence,
Speaker 1: for swarm intelligence. UH and a lot of them are
Speaker 1: looking into bio mimicry, the idea of of how animals
Speaker 1: and swarms behave in a mass. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's it's really fascinating stud At any rate. The problem
Speaker 1: with these computer algorithms was that for a very long time,
Speaker 1: there wasn't an easy way to test them. Like you
Speaker 1: might come up with what you think is a brilliant
Speaker 1: algorithm to to inform a swarm of robots how to
Speaker 1: move for any given purpose, and you can test that
Speaker 1: through computer simulation to your heart's content, which is not ideal, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, because you're depending upon the fact that the
Speaker 1: computer simulation has to be accurate enough to actually reflect
Speaker 1: what a physical object would do. So Harvard scientists came
Speaker 1: up with this idea and professors as well came up
Speaker 1: with this idea to create a relatively inexpensive tiny robot
Speaker 1: on which you could test these algorithms by by assembling
Speaker 1: enough of them to do whatever it is you need
Speaker 1: to do. And they look like, well, they're little circles
Speaker 1: like think of about the size of a quarter. But
Speaker 1: they are on long, spiny legs and there's a little motor,
Speaker 1: a vibrating motor on them that depending on how it's
Speaker 1: vibrates the assuming that this is on a level, smooth surface,
Speaker 1: the robots will skitter across the ground. Now, their their
Speaker 1: legs aren't moving, right, it's just through this vibration, so
Speaker 1: it's not like they're segmented legs. It's not that much
Speaker 1: like an insect. But they do jitter so that they
Speaker 1: move in a specific direction. Yeah, well, these things certainly
Speaker 1: do that, And there's some great videos online of these
Speaker 1: moving around in various ways. Usually it's a direct overhead shot,
Speaker 1: so you just see a little it looks like a
Speaker 1: hockey puck, just kind of slowly moving across an area,
Speaker 1: so you can even make these yourself if you really
Speaker 1: wanted to. I'll tell you more about that in a second.
Speaker 1: But the way the way the kilbots form that shape
Speaker 1: is all dependent upon the algorithm. Assuming that the algorithm
Speaker 1: was was properly constructed so that the robots know what
Speaker 1: to do quote unquote um, that they are able to
Speaker 1: detect one another and move according to whatever the plan was,
Speaker 1: and they communicate through various means like there's uh. The
Speaker 1: version I saw, they were specifically using infrared emitters and
Speaker 1: sensors so that they would be able to tell how
Speaker 1: far apart they were from their neighbors to make sure
Speaker 1: they maintained whatever the distance was that the algorithm dictated.
Speaker 1: So one of the examples I saw was a follow
Speaker 1: the leader um example, where one was designated the leader.
Speaker 1: They had actually put a green sticker on top of
Speaker 1: it so it made it easy to follow on the video,
Speaker 1: and then the next kill abot had the instruction to
Speaker 1: try and maintain the same distance with the first one.
Speaker 1: The first one's instructions were move wherever you want, but
Speaker 1: you can't get too far away from the second one.
Speaker 1: The third one's instructions were tried to keep up with
Speaker 1: the second one, but don't get too far away from
Speaker 1: the fourth one, etcetera, etcetera. So the longer the chain is,
Speaker 1: each one essentially has the same instruction maintain as as
Speaker 1: you know, as as a stable a distance as you
Speaker 1: can to the one in front of you without getting
Speaker 1: too far away from the one behind you, and it
Speaker 1: would follow the leader this way. And it was a
Speaker 1: cute little demonstration. They also had a foraging demonstration where
Speaker 1: they had one kilobot designed to look like uh, well,
Speaker 1: it just had a red sticker on it. Those designed
Speaker 1: to act as the nest this is home base. And
Speaker 1: they had another kill abot that was pound off maybe
Speaker 1: to three ft away, that had a green sticker that
Speaker 1: represented food. So if they wanted to have these robots
Speaker 1: go out and search for So we're teaching robots to
Speaker 1: be cannibals. Well, it's much better than teaching them to
Speaker 1: hate humans. I'm not worried about the killers. Things skitter
Speaker 1: at me all they want. Yeah, they're only called killer bots.
Speaker 1: And how one letter off from kill bots? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: uh yeah, and and well, at any rate, so the
Speaker 1: way this would work is that the once they got
Speaker 1: the instruction, they used their infrared sensors to look for
Speaker 1: the quote unquote food kill and once they found it,
Speaker 1: then they would travel back and forth between the food
Speaker 1: one and the next one. Uh. Some would just end
Speaker 1: up forming kind of a structure around the nest. Uh.
Speaker 1: Once they were unable to find the food, they just
Speaker 1: kind of stayed still. They wouldn't continuously move around, they
Speaker 1: would only go so far away. And that was a
Speaker 1: kind of cool demonstration as well. Now, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: you can actually get the plans on how to build
Speaker 1: one of these yourself, or lots of them, since one
Speaker 1: would not be terribly useful. You can't really test swarm
Speaker 1: intelligence on a single robot. The it's difficulty. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: just pretend you're a lot of people. Uh. But the
Speaker 1: whole design is published under Creative Commons. It's just a
Speaker 1: non commercial commercial license, so you can't you know, you
Speaker 1: obviously can't make them to sell them, but for educational
Speaker 1: purposes you can make as many as you can afford
Speaker 1: to build. And I say afford to build, because obviously
Speaker 1: you have to buy all the hardware to put these
Speaker 1: things together. Though, you know, if you're building them in bulk.
Speaker 1: Obviously the cost will go down. Yeah, although it's still
Speaker 1: pretty expensive because if you were to build say about
Speaker 1: a hundred, they price it out as being about fifty
Speaker 1: dollars per robot. It's pretty expensive. If you were to
Speaker 1: build a thousand, it's twenty dollars per robot, But that's
Speaker 1: twenty tho bucks when you take that all into consideration,
Speaker 1: and I don't have twenty tho dollars to build my
Speaker 1: robot army yet, so uh but at any rate, again,
Speaker 1: these kind of test out that idea of swarm intelligence.
Speaker 1: More recent videos have shown them do things like assume
Speaker 1: specific shapes, like they give it a command to for
Speaker 1: the all the robots and I think there were in
Speaker 1: this case more than a thousand of them in the
Speaker 1: demonstration I saw, but to form a shape like a star.
Speaker 1: And so the robots have to have information about which
Speaker 1: other robots they're supposed to be next to and how
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be configured based on that, which is
Speaker 1: really fascinating. You think, you know, this thing is again
Speaker 1: about the size of a quarter um. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: it's thicker than a quarter is, but still they're able
Speaker 1: to pack in enough of the microprocessor technology for the
Speaker 1: robots to be able to determine, oh when when they
Speaker 1: we make this shape, I'm number fourty seven. I have
Speaker 1: to make sure I'm next to four and three, six
Speaker 1: and four and thirty eight. And they do kind of
Speaker 1: go one at a time to make this shape you
Speaker 1: like it was it was like in a line, as
Speaker 1: opposed to all right and break didn't They didn't do
Speaker 1: it like that. But it was really interesting stuff. And again,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of behavior we're going to have
Speaker 1: to see for something like the modular robot that's in
Speaker 1: Big Hero six to become a reality. Well, I think
Speaker 1: this stuff is awesome, and I want to know what's
Speaker 1: currently in development. I don't know if you've looked into that, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: I looked into sort of the most recent literature, because
Speaker 1: this is one of those things where we still have
Speaker 1: people working on implementations. No one, I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: has come up with the ideal implementation yet. It's it's
Speaker 1: of course not I mean, we're in the we're in
Speaker 1: the research phase. Yeah, exactly. This This is a developmental era,
Speaker 1: which kind of makes it even more exciting really, because
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's so many people looking at different
Speaker 1: ways of doing this in different tasks that such robots
Speaker 1: could do. That it really starts to fire your imagination.
Speaker 1: So for example, here's here just some titles of some
Speaker 1: recent scholarly articles that are on the subject. Uh and
Speaker 1: and they kind of demonstrate now and like by recent,
Speaker 1: I mean these were all published in two thousand fourteen. Uh,
Speaker 1: these kind of demonstrate the the breadth of the research
Speaker 1: design of modular robot system for maintenance tasks and hazardous
Speaker 1: facilities and environments. Well that that kind of you know,
Speaker 1: you can easily imagine having a modular self reconfiguring modular
Speaker 1: robot would be incredibly useful in that source of situation.
Speaker 1: Or how about room bots. A hardware perspective on three
Speaker 1: D self reconfiguration and locomotion with homogeneous modular robot. So
Speaker 1: here we have a specific scholarly look into well this
Speaker 1: is you know, we we know what we want to achieve.
Speaker 1: What are the way is to do it? Using this
Speaker 1: specific approach where you've got robots that are all essentially
Speaker 1: the same shape that combined with one another, then we
Speaker 1: have design principles and testing of a latching modular robot
Speaker 1: connector So again looking at different ways for these different
Speaker 1: modules to join up exactly. H then you know the
Speaker 1: modular robot joint design and experienced verification for small openings
Speaker 1: and enclosed space, which again really awesome because you're you're
Speaker 1: looking at the possibility of using these robots that could
Speaker 1: go into places that you know, if it had a
Speaker 1: solid form factor that didn't change, it couldn't get there.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you have to send uh, this robot
Speaker 1: into a building that is you know, perhaps it's a
Speaker 1: really old building and it's got U faulty structure, you know,
Speaker 1: structural damage, and you want to make sure it can
Speaker 1: navigate all the way through and actually investigate that structural damage.
Speaker 1: That could be really useful. Sure, yeah, if there's a
Speaker 1: collapsed path or something like that and you need to
Speaker 1: get under it or round it or whatever that it is,
Speaker 1: that that is right right, being able to break down
Speaker 1: into all of its creepy little robot parts and skirt
Speaker 1: her on through is terrifically useful. You know, it's stasis
Speaker 1: on the terror. You know. It strikes me that there
Speaker 1: are sort of like two main ways that this technology
Speaker 1: can move forward, and really both of them seem crucial,
Speaker 1: but one of them is about working on the modules themselves,
Speaker 1: like making each individual piece, and we're assuming we're working
Speaker 1: with robots that are made of pieces that are all
Speaker 1: identical pretty much, Uh, that making each individual piece cost
Speaker 1: effective but very versatile, able to move around, sturdy, able
Speaker 1: to communicate, without being a gazillion dollars apiece. But then
Speaker 1: also talking about the overall swarm intelligence, how do you
Speaker 1: program the robot through these modules to have some kind
Speaker 1: of collective brain that enables it to do its work effectively? Right? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And this is I mean, these are a lot of
Speaker 1: unanswered questions right now, right can could there be an
Speaker 1: emergent artificial intelligence from the swarm intelligence that would allow
Speaker 1: you to essentially tell it here's what I need you
Speaker 1: to do, you figure out how to do it. Or
Speaker 1: would you always need to have some sort of controlling
Speaker 1: system that would essentially send instructions to that swarm of
Speaker 1: robots to form a particular shape to complete that test.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's an interesting approach. I hadn't even thought
Speaker 1: about that because I was just imagining we're assuming this
Speaker 1: has to be autonomous in one way or another, but
Speaker 1: you could just I guess, have a laptop that's bluetoothed
Speaker 1: up to your modular robots swarm, and this thing is
Speaker 1: reconfiguring itself to do work based on orders that are
Speaker 1: sent to it from the software on your computer. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean when it comes down to it, the question
Speaker 1: is how autonomous does it get? Because there's some autonomy
Speaker 1: that is necessary, right, because if you're talking about thousands
Speaker 1: of robots, you don't have the time to tell every
Speaker 1: single individual robot where it fits in this grand scheme. Sure. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, if you think about something like
Speaker 1: like having a a lead butt with a green sticker
Speaker 1: on it or what have you, um, that you can
Speaker 1: bluetooth up with and give a command too, and then
Speaker 1: have it break that down into commands to give to
Speaker 1: everyone else in the swarms that you don't have to
Speaker 1: literally contact every single microbot, right. I think there will
Speaker 1: be a bridging system. Yeah, I was assuming the commands
Speaker 1: would be given by software, not like manually by well well, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, no EI either way though, Um,
Speaker 1: there are lots of different factors of trying to communicate
Speaker 1: with a swarm like that, and how you would go
Speaker 1: about making it the most efficient, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like when we talked about neural networks, how every time
Speaker 1: you add a node, it complicates the entire structure. I
Speaker 1: don't want to say exponentially, but quite a bit large fold.
Speaker 1: So same sort of thing with modular robots. The more
Speaker 1: modular robots that are in the system, the more complex
Speaker 1: it's going to be to command it. But that's what
Speaker 1: you know that swarm and eligence is all about. So
Speaker 1: that's really exciting and uh, you know, kind of looking
Speaker 1: into the future, like let's assume again kind of like
Speaker 1: Big Hero six did. Let's assume that this this research
Speaker 1: pans out and that we come up with some implementation.
Speaker 1: It doesn't you know which which one is immaterial for
Speaker 1: this discussion, but some implementation that works. And then in
Speaker 1: the case of Big Hero six, Uh, it was all
Speaker 1: magnetics that held everything together, and the individual modules look
Speaker 1: like a sphere with two little uh protrusions that stuck
Speaker 1: out that could that were a kind of hinge. They
Speaker 1: could move independently of each other. So uh, that's what
Speaker 1: the individual component was, and then together they could form
Speaker 1: pretty much any shape you you wanted. Um, and they
Speaker 1: did so using a brain computer interface, which was really cool.
Speaker 1: Is essentially a headband you could wear where your thoughts
Speaker 1: get transmitted into computer commands that tell the robots what
Speaker 1: it needs, what they need to do. Uh, that's awesome. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're quite a ways away from that too, But people
Speaker 1: are working on brain computer interfaces just as they're working
Speaker 1: on this modular robot issue. So you would want, in
Speaker 1: an ideal implementation to have your microbots as small as
Speaker 1: you could possibly make them, right, because that that would
Speaker 1: increase their versatility. But also, you know, you can think
Speaker 1: of it kind of like an image of digital image
Speaker 1: and in pixels. You know, if you have smaller pixels,
Speaker 1: you have better resolution. The picture looks better as opposed
Speaker 1: to large blocks of color than it looks blocky and
Speaker 1: and jagged. Same sort of thing with your modular robots.
Speaker 1: The smaller the unit, the more smooth the robot's going
Speaker 1: to be, the more versatile it's gonna be. Um, but
Speaker 1: that also comes with some pretty big issue problems. But
Speaker 1: another one is that this ideal implementation would allow it
Speaker 1: to move through those small spaces we were talking about,
Speaker 1: whether individually, you know, so it splits apart and all
Speaker 1: the individual pieces creep through an area, or it forms
Speaker 1: some other shape, like a snakelike shape to get through
Speaker 1: certain areas. I've actually seen some really awesome snake bots
Speaker 1: that are incredibly disturbing to watch on video. Uh, we'll
Speaker 1: probably need to power these suckers with something that we
Speaker 1: haven't thought up yet. Yeah, this is a real problem.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, you know, well, any significant pushing or pulling
Speaker 1: or lifting or other interaction requires really a lot of
Speaker 1: power right now. Hydraulics are really the most efficient systems
Speaker 1: for for that kind of stuff, and they're you know,
Speaker 1: for example, what what drive the most badass exo suits
Speaker 1: for for lack of a better term, um, but they're
Speaker 1: also really clunky and don't really lend themselves to this
Speaker 1: microbot kind of format because you need like a tank
Speaker 1: of fluid in order to drive. I can't imagine having
Speaker 1: like super small lines to each microbot and still having
Speaker 1: any kind of degree of freedom. Yeah, it would be problematic.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so I mean, you know, maybe the answer
Speaker 1: to this is that we were not going to use
Speaker 1: this kind of system for any kind of heavy lifting. Um.
Speaker 1: But even so, just powering small things that you want
Speaker 1: to keep lightweight is a problem. All the time. We
Speaker 1: talk about it always add weight. So one other challenge,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this, is the fact that we
Speaker 1: need to have these these individual units be able to
Speaker 1: communicate with each other at least on some basic level
Speaker 1: so that they quote unquote know what they're supposed to
Speaker 1: do and where they're supposed to go. And that's where
Speaker 1: we're seeing this this work with, like in the Harvard
Speaker 1: kill abuts of of Swarm Intelligence. It's it's one thing
Speaker 1: to see the work that's being done with things like
Speaker 1: the the M blocks where you're seeing maybe six or
Speaker 1: seven of the units working together. It's another thing when
Speaker 1: you start talking about you know, large collections of these devices.
Speaker 1: We talked about that a little bit before too, in
Speaker 1: our episodes about ants and also about biommicry as a
Speaker 1: whole um and also in our upset about right emergent behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are all things that you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: answers for because we're still asking the questions. But it's
Speaker 1: really exciting again to see the work and while knowing
Speaker 1: about the stuff because you know what, we've researched so
Speaker 1: much into robots and artificial intelligence just for this show. Uh,
Speaker 1: the not not just this episode, but the forward thinking
Speaker 1: series overall that when I went in and saw this movie,
Speaker 1: when I was watching Big Hero six, That's why I
Speaker 1: was like, I had a huge grin on my face
Speaker 1: because I was thinking, these are all the things we
Speaker 1: talk about on our show. Uh that where we are
Speaker 1: now in a world in this movie where all those
Speaker 1: things have been realized, where all the problems and challenges
Speaker 1: we talk about have been overcome, people have figured out
Speaker 1: the way to engineer a system that meets those challenges,
Speaker 1: and to look at the potential of that world was phenomenal.
Speaker 1: I was like, Ah, it's like I'm watching the outcome
Speaker 1: of a forward thinking podcast where we have that bit
Speaker 1: where we say, what will the future like? And this
Speaker 1: is what the future would be like? And it's it's
Speaker 1: an amazing vision of that future. So um yeah. The
Speaker 1: first ten minutes of that movie, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I wish they had called me because this is awesome.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's the outcome of a forward thinking show.
Speaker 1: Um but you know, and then of course it gets
Speaker 1: into more fantastical elements as it goes on, and and
Speaker 1: the science and technology get a little more loosey goosey,
Speaker 1: but they had already won me over at that point,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. So you have a hard heart for
Speaker 1: scientific implause. There's I can get pretty nitpicky. I admit
Speaker 1: it wouldn't happen like that. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: they're there. Definitely comes a point in that movie where
Speaker 1: you gonna say, all right, I just gotta go along
Speaker 1: with the ride Bernell or I want to be it's
Speaker 1: it's it's worth seeing you guys should definitely see it.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know the Smudgler robot research. We're
Speaker 1: going to keep an eye on it. It's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: We're learning so much about robot intelligence and robot mobility
Speaker 1: through this kind of stuff that it's just a fun
Speaker 1: thing to keep our eye on. So, guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes, maybe there's something else
Speaker 1: about robotics you've always wanted to hear about. Obviously we
Speaker 1: don't shy away from that topic. Let us know. Or
Speaker 1: if there's anything else you know, just something you're wondering about,
Speaker 1: what would that be like in the future, send us
Speaker 1: a request. We read all of them, we're happy to
Speaker 1: get them, and we would love to hear what you think.
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