Speaker 1: Get in Touch with Technology was tex Stuff from Hi
Speaker 1: there and welcome to textas. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland. Today,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about robots now. I've talked about
Speaker 1: robots both here on tech Stuff and on my other show,
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. One of my first assignments and How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works was to update our article on how Asimo works.
Speaker 1: That's the humanoid robot from Honda. But my fascination with
Speaker 1: robots goes back much much further. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I watched tons of movies with robots in films like
Speaker 1: Star Wars and The Black Hole. I was a huge
Speaker 1: fan of Buck Rogers and Balstar Galactica. I mean the
Speaker 1: good version of Battle Star, you know, the one that
Speaker 1: was from Night and had that really awesome theme song. Anyway,
Speaker 1: robots spectored into some of my favorite television series and movies,
Speaker 1: and that love goes strong today. One of the things
Speaker 1: I didn't appreciate as a kid but really understand now
Speaker 1: is how complicated a field robotics really is. There are
Speaker 1: enormous challenges designers face when creating a robot. Even a
Speaker 1: stationary robot that only needs to complete a few precise
Speaker 1: movements is a complicated and potentially dangerous creation. Robots that
Speaker 1: move around come with even more challenges, and a robot
Speaker 1: that can navigate through variable terrain is a huge design challenge.
Speaker 1: Then there's the AI side of the equation. Artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: is a term that gets thrown around a lot, and
Speaker 1: people often misuse it or focus on a very narrow
Speaker 1: definition of it. Most of the discussions I hear about
Speaker 1: AI are really about strong AI. That's the concept of
Speaker 1: a machine capable of simulating thought on some level. But
Speaker 1: AI isn't just about getting a computer to think. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's not even primarily about that. AI can involve building
Speaker 1: systems that allow robots to perceive their environ moments, interpret
Speaker 1: the data they receive, and respond appropriately. It might include
Speaker 1: optical systems or voice recognition software. It could require natural
Speaker 1: language processing so that the way you and I speak
Speaker 1: becomes intelligible to a machine. It could involve plotting a
Speaker 1: pathway through a new environment. Now, if you or I
Speaker 1: were to walk into a room for the first time,
Speaker 1: we probably find it pretty easy to make our way
Speaker 1: to a specific point in the room. Even if there
Speaker 1: were obstacles in the way, we could reason our way
Speaker 1: around it. Even taking the pathway that requires the least
Speaker 1: amount of work to get there. For a robot, that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the easiest task, particularly in a room that
Speaker 1: has changing conditions in it. What I'm getting at is
Speaker 1: that building robots designed to maneuver through new and potentially
Speaker 1: changing environments bring with it a host of engineering and
Speaker 1: programming challenges. It's a wonder that anyone ever tries to
Speaker 1: even do it. But that brings us to what I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about today, the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Now
Speaker 1: DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency part of
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. Before nineteen seventy two, it was
Speaker 1: known as ARPA, and it's the agency responsible for the
Speaker 1: creation of ARPA Net, which is the predecessor to today's Internet.
Speaker 1: The organization is dedicated to research and development of new technologies.
Speaker 1: It was founded in nineteen fifty eight, a year after
Speaker 1: the then Soviet Union launched the beeping satellite Sputnik. President
Speaker 1: Eisenhower directed U S Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy, to
Speaker 1: coordinate a national space program. The Department of Defense formed
Speaker 1: ARPA in February nineteen fifty eight as a special agency
Speaker 1: within the Pentagon to maintain technological superiority over potential adversaries. Originally,
Speaker 1: the agency had three presidential erectives to follow. The first
Speaker 1: was to get the U S Space program off the
Speaker 1: ground figuratively and literally. The second was to come up
Speaker 1: with the means of protecting the United States from Soviet
Speaker 1: missile attacks, and the third was to find ways to
Speaker 1: detect Soviet nuclear tests. The first director of the agency
Speaker 1: was Roy Johnson, who aggressively pursued the organization's goals. ARPA
Speaker 1: was and remains independent from the military services now. This
Speaker 1: gives the organization a huge advantage in that it can
Speaker 1: explore high risk research and development projects that the military
Speaker 1: services can't pursue. The potential payoffs for these projects might
Speaker 1: be huge, but there may be no guarantee that they'll succeed.
Speaker 1: The agency has created a culture of thinking outside the box.
Speaker 1: ARPA was responsible for much of the early work that
Speaker 1: would eventually send astronauts to space and to the Moon.
Speaker 1: As the work progressed, ARPA transitioned and shared its research
Speaker 1: and development with the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
Speaker 1: or NASA. ARPA itself was affected heavily by this transition,
Speaker 1: it stopped looking into the space race. Many people were
Speaker 1: either let go or moved to other departments, and budgets
Speaker 1: were cut. In the nineteen sixties, the organization focused on
Speaker 1: other big projects for the Department of Defense. In the process,
Speaker 1: we made great strides and several scientific fields, including geology, seismology,
Speaker 1: and radio astronomy. ARPA was identifying specific goals we needed
Speaker 1: to meet, which brought to light engineering challenges. This gave
Speaker 1: people working with and for ARPA the direction they needed
Speaker 1: to solve tough problems. Often this would create benefits beyond
Speaker 1: completing a project. Now. DARPA has been involved with robotics
Speaker 1: for years. I've talked about driverless cars on this show before,
Speaker 1: like the ones being designed by Google. Many of the
Speaker 1: cars in development right now owe a lot to DARPA.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand four, DARPA held the DARPA Grand Challenge,
Speaker 1: which created a competition between teams to build an autonomous
Speaker 1: car capable of navigating through a course. The big winner
Speaker 1: of the two thousand four Grand Challenge was nobody. Not
Speaker 1: a single team managed to complete the course, but rather
Speaker 1: than become discouraged, the various mechanics engineers, computer scientists and
Speaker 1: inventors went back to the drawing board to try again.
Speaker 1: The challenge was held again in two thousand five, and
Speaker 1: this time five teams completed the course. In first place
Speaker 1: was the Stanford Racing team with Stanley their autonomous vehicle.
Speaker 1: The course included narrow tunnels and sharp turns. On that
Speaker 1: team with Stanford was Sebastian Thrunn, who was the director
Speaker 1: of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Now he has a
Speaker 1: different job title. He's the project leader on Google's self
Speaker 1: driving car project. In two thousand seven, DARPA held another challenge,
Speaker 1: this time putting autonomous vehicles in a simulated urban environment
Speaker 1: complete with traffic signs and signals and other traffic Tartan Racing,
Speaker 1: A team from Carnegie melon University claimed first place. Five
Speaker 1: other teams successfully completed the course. Maneuvering through traffic and
Speaker 1: obeying traffic laws added new parameters to the challenge. Cars
Speaker 1: couldn't just plot a pathway and follow it. It's hard
Speaker 1: for me to get across exactly how big a deal
Speaker 1: designing an autonomous vehicle really is. It has to do
Speaker 1: things that you and I take for granted, but that
Speaker 1: in no way shape or form come naturally to a machine,
Speaker 1: and that's not where the story ends. Now it's time
Speaker 1: to talk about the DARPA Robotics Challenge, the finals for
Speaker 1: which will take place in June of this year, two
Speaker 1: thous and fifteen. But before we get into that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. You have
Speaker 1: a smartphone, what about a smart home? Smart Things has
Speaker 1: created a super easy way to control, automate, and secure
Speaker 1: every aspect of your home, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: be a tech genius to install and use it. That's
Speaker 1: why they were named one of the top ten coolest
Speaker 1: Gadgets of the Year by Time magazine. That's why they
Speaker 1: were one of the two thousand fifteen ce S Editors
Speaker 1: Award winners. Smart Things instantly turns your normal home into
Speaker 1: a smart, connected home where you can do magical things
Speaker 1: just using your smartphone as the interface. You can control lights, locks, thermostats,
Speaker 1: security with smart Things. It's all connected through a single
Speaker 1: app that works on iPhone, Android and Windows phones. Personally,
Speaker 1: I would use this for lots of different things. Here's
Speaker 1: one example. I can imagine sitting down on my couch
Speaker 1: and getting ready to watch a spooky movie. So I
Speaker 1: use my app to set the lights to the right
Speaker 1: lighting level to get that good atmosphere. Maybe turn the
Speaker 1: thermostat down a little bit, make it a little chilly,
Speaker 1: you know, really get into it so that I can
Speaker 1: enjoy the experience. And all for the convenience of the phone.
Speaker 1: I don't have to get up and do any of
Speaker 1: this manually. Now it has no required monthly fees and kits.
Speaker 1: Start at smart Things is affordable for everyone, and for
Speaker 1: my listeners, it's even more affordable. Get ten percent off
Speaker 1: any smart Things home security or solution kit and free
Speaker 1: shipping in the US. Just go to smart things dot
Speaker 1: com slash tech. The challenge is this build a robot
Speaker 1: that is capable of entering a disaster area, navigating to
Speaker 1: a specific location, and activating machinery to prevent the disaster
Speaker 1: from becoming worse. The inspiration for the challenge came from
Speaker 1: a real world incident Gil Pratt from DARPA explod eights.
Speaker 1: The Darker Robotics Challenge is a program the DARPA is
Speaker 1: running to develop technology to make our society more resilient
Speaker 1: to natural and man made disasters. Uh It was inspired
Speaker 1: directly by the Fukushima disaster in Japan that had a
Speaker 1: nuclear meltdown and the release of radioactive contamination as part
Speaker 1: of it, and our inspiration in that disaster was that
Speaker 1: if robots had been there during the first day or
Speaker 1: two of that disaster, the release of the radioactive contamination
Speaker 1: could have been prevented. In particular, there were three explosions
Speaker 1: that occurred, and had robots been able to go in
Speaker 1: there and open up some valves to release the pressure, uh,
Speaker 1: the disaster would not have been nearly as bad as
Speaker 1: it ended up being. Now, of course, we can't change
Speaker 1: the past, so um what we need to do is
Speaker 1: to prepare for the future, and the point of the
Speaker 1: Darker Robotics Challenge is to develop a kind of technology
Speaker 1: for humans and robots working together at what each one
Speaker 1: is best at, with the robots working in a contaminated
Speaker 1: area and human beings working in a safe zone to
Speaker 1: be able to emergently handle natural and man made disasters
Speaker 1: that may occur in the future. Using the Fukushima disaster
Speaker 1: as a model, DARPA has created a scenario in which
Speaker 1: robots will encounter situations similar to what was happening in Japan.
Speaker 1: The challenge isn't just a single task, it's a series
Speaker 1: of them. We're trying to emulate a real disaster, and
Speaker 1: even though we don't expect the next disaster to be
Speaker 1: the same as what happened in Fukushima, we're using that
Speaker 1: as our exemplar. And so the robots will have to
Speaker 1: begin by being placed into a vehicle in a safe
Speaker 1: area by their human handlers. The robot will then, under
Speaker 1: human supervision, have to drive a certain distance in order
Speaker 1: to get to a particular site, which is similar to
Speaker 1: the reactor site in Japan, but of course ours is
Speaker 1: just a mock up. Having gotten to the site, the
Speaker 1: robot will have to get out of the vehicle and
Speaker 1: egress on its own, open a door to get into
Speaker 1: the site, walk into the building, and then travel or
Speaker 1: some debris, move some debris out of the way, uh
Speaker 1: and then do tasks that are similar to what needed
Speaker 1: to be done in Fukushima. The established tasks present big
Speaker 1: problems for engineers to solve. A robot capable of driving
Speaker 1: a car is different from an autonomous vehicle. Teams will
Speaker 1: have to build robots that have appendages that can work
Speaker 1: with vehicles we've designed for ourselves. Navigating through debris is
Speaker 1: another tough problem. The robots will need to be able
Speaker 1: to test their pathways carefully before committing to them. But
Speaker 1: then there's the surprise. Robots don't do well with surprises. Typically,
Speaker 1: roboticists design their machines for specific purposes. You define the
Speaker 1: parameters of what your robots should be able to do,
Speaker 1: and you ignore anything that falls outside those parameters. But surprises,
Speaker 1: by their very nature can fall outside your normal consideration.
Speaker 1: So designing a robot that can adapt to situations makes
Speaker 1: things truly challenging, and in fact, we add some difficulty
Speaker 1: even beyond a surprise, which is that we make the
Speaker 1: communications more difficult than it ordinarily would be if there
Speaker 1: was no disaster. In real disasters, usually communication infrastructure is
Speaker 1: degraded and everybody's trying to talk on the radio at
Speaker 1: the same time, and so we have something called a
Speaker 1: degraded communication emulator, which is a piece of hardware that
Speaker 1: makes the communication network between the human beings and the
Speaker 1: robots much worse than it ordinarily would be if there
Speaker 1: wasn't any simulation of a disaster going on. And so
Speaker 1: the teams will have to do well despite a lot
Speaker 1: of interruption and a lot of degradation of communication. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine that you're on one of those engineering teams. Your
Speaker 1: robot has to be able to drive a vehicle to
Speaker 1: another location, get out of the vehicle, navigate into a building,
Speaker 1: climb a flight of stairs, cut a hole in a wall,
Speaker 1: manipulate cables and controls, and deal with something outside of
Speaker 1: those events. On top of that, you can't rely on
Speaker 1: communication systems to guide your robot or keep eyes on
Speaker 1: what's happening remotely. It almost sounds like an impossible challenge,
Speaker 1: but the point is that this pushes roboticists to think
Speaker 1: through these problems and create new solutions. It forces innovation,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, it gets us closer to a world
Speaker 1: in which robots can realistically and reliably respond in emergency situations.
Speaker 1: Darbas says that we should expect to see robots operating
Speaker 1: on the level of a two year old child. They
Speaker 1: will be able to carry out simple commands autonomously, but
Speaker 1: we'll need human intervention to chain together a series of
Speaker 1: simple commands to accomplish complicated goals. This, in turn, will
Speaker 1: become the foundation for more sophisticated robots in the future,
Speaker 1: perhaps some with the ability to adapt to new situations
Speaker 1: and remain flexible and its decision making process. It's an
Speaker 1: incredibly ambitious challenge and I can't wait to see how
Speaker 1: the various teams tackle them. Of course, I'll be reading
Speaker 1: about the challenge after it happens, but if you are
Speaker 1: a high school student or you know someone in high
Speaker 1: school who has an interest in robotics, you may get
Speaker 1: to witness it firsthand. That's because DARPA is holding the
Speaker 1: Robots for Us Challenge, which gives a pretty cool opportunity
Speaker 1: to students. The Robots for Us Challenge is a contest
Speaker 1: that we're having for high school aged students from the
Speaker 1: United States and its territories aimed at beginning to address
Speaker 1: societal issues with robotics, and in particular, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of buzz in the media recently about artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and robotics and what it might mean for the future.
Speaker 1: DARPA believes that it's very important for us as technologists
Speaker 1: to raise these issues with society and to let society
Speaker 1: know that they should start thinking about this. And we
Speaker 1: think high school aged students are of the right age.
Speaker 1: They're going to be the generation that's going to be
Speaker 1: most affected by this, and so uh we would like
Speaker 1: to see what high school students have to say about
Speaker 1: these issues. I think this is fantastic. While we rush
Speaker 1: to innovate in robotics, we also must think about the
Speaker 1: impact those developments will have, not just the direct impact
Speaker 1: of this technology, but the social implications that could have
Speaker 1: in the future. And while I have some thoughts on
Speaker 1: the subject, I really do love to hear what younger
Speaker 1: people have to say about it. They often approach problems
Speaker 1: with a perspective that simply would never occur to me,
Speaker 1: and Darba recognizes that potential as well. So how do
Speaker 1: students get involved? Students can enter the contest by going
Speaker 1: to the main DARKA Robotics Challenge website, which is the
Speaker 1: Robotics Challenge dot org. That's just one word, the Robotics
Speaker 1: Challenge dot org. And there they'll find a icon for
Speaker 1: the Robots for Us contest, and you click on that
Speaker 1: icon and it will take you to the forms in
Speaker 1: order to register. The submission is in the form of
Speaker 1: a two to three minute video clip that deals with
Speaker 1: some issue in robots and society. Now, this is right
Speaker 1: in my wheelhouse. I do videos like this every week. Sadly,
Speaker 1: I'm a bit outside the brackets for the contest having
Speaker 1: graduated high school back in but if I were still
Speaker 1: of the appropriate age, who would see my submission? The
Speaker 1: judges of the video entries are going to be roboticists
Speaker 1: and ethicist for our first pass, and then a second
Speaker 1: pass on the winners will be made by Darker program
Speaker 1: managers and from that we will choose five winners. These
Speaker 1: don't have to be solo projects. You can get help,
Speaker 1: but each submission needs one person designated as the representative
Speaker 1: of the video. That's the person who is eligible to
Speaker 1: win the prize and the prize that's a trip to
Speaker 1: the Robotics Challenge finals. And in addition, Darker will not
Speaker 1: only pay travel expenses for that student to come to
Speaker 1: the Darker Robotics Challenge, but also pay the travel expenses
Speaker 1: for adult chaperon for that student. Let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break for our sponsor. When you're selling online, getting your
Speaker 1: orders out the door quickly can be tough. That's why
Speaker 1: you need ship station dot Com. It's the fast, easy
Speaker 1: way to manage and ship all your orders all in
Speaker 1: one place. With ship station dot com, you can easily
Speaker 1: import customer orders from eBay, Amazon, Etsy, and more than
Speaker 1: fifty other popular market places and shopping carts. Then easily
Speaker 1: create shipping labels for all the top carriers, including UPS
Speaker 1: and fed X. Plus, get a free USPS account that
Speaker 1: gives you access to deeply discounted USPS shipping rates, the
Speaker 1: same rates once reserved for Fortune five hundred companies. It's
Speaker 1: no wonder. Ship station dot Com is the number one
Speaker 1: choice of online sellers with an incredible customer satisfaction rating.
Speaker 1: Right now, you can try ship station dot com free
Speaker 1: for third d days, Plus you can get an additional
Speaker 1: month free only if you use the offer code text stuff.
Speaker 1: Don't wait. Go to ship station dot com and before
Speaker 1: you do anything else, click on the microphone at the
Speaker 1: top of the home page and type in tech stuff.
Speaker 1: That's ships station dot Com inter text stuff add the challenge.
Speaker 1: The students will present their thoughts on the future of
Speaker 1: robots in our society to the various teams present. They
Speaker 1: will have a chance to watch the teams compete with
Speaker 1: one another and complete the tasks. This is the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff I would have loved to do as a
Speaker 1: high school student. Heck, I want to do it right now.
Speaker 1: Submissions are due by April one. You can find more
Speaker 1: information at DARPA's website for the Robots for Us Challenge
Speaker 1: at www dot the Robotics Challenge dot org. DARPA has
Speaker 1: another challenge objective right now. It's the Cyber Grand Challenge,
Speaker 1: and as you might guess, it has to do with
Speaker 1: Internet security. This is becoming increasingly important as more critical
Speaker 1: systems have connectivity to the network of networks. Take commerce
Speaker 1: for example. Every year, trillions of dollars of business rely
Speaker 1: upon the Internet in some fashion as attempting target. And
Speaker 1: as we add more devices to the Internet in our
Speaker 1: quest to create the Internet of Things, it's only going
Speaker 1: to get more complicated. A connected gadget could serve as
Speaker 1: a network vulnerability, allowing attackers and entry point into a network. Now,
Speaker 1: it might be hyperbole to suggest that a refrigerator could
Speaker 1: lead to the collapse of a bank, but we do
Speaker 1: need to pay close attention to potential security hazards and
Speaker 1: DARPA has come up with a creative challenge for programmers.
Speaker 1: You see, attackers look for soft spots in a network.
Speaker 1: They just need to find in one vulnerability to exploit.
Speaker 1: Their job is relatively easy. Now, designing a secure network
Speaker 1: that's much more difficult. It's just about impossible to anticipate
Speaker 1: all potential weak points, and so if you want to
Speaker 1: make sure your system is secure, you put it to
Speaker 1: the test on the Capture the Flag tournament circuit. In
Speaker 1: this circuit, hackers attempt to reverse engineer software in an
Speaker 1: effort to discover flaws in the programming. Anything that can
Speaker 1: be exploited is a potential victory. What DARPA is looking
Speaker 1: for is an automated system, a computer that can do
Speaker 1: the same thing as hackers. In an ideal world, a
Speaker 1: computer program could analyze billions of lines of code, discover
Speaker 1: any flaws, and even write a patch to remove the
Speaker 1: vulnerability before anyone could take advantage of it. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen, DARPA will hold an all computer Capture
Speaker 1: the Flag tournament. It will take place during the def
Speaker 1: Con conference in Las Vegas. Will computers be able to
Speaker 1: dissect software with the same precision as human hackers. We'll
Speaker 1: have to check back in two thousands sixteen to find out.
Speaker 1: I want to thank Gil Pratt for talking with me
Speaker 1: about the Robotics Challenge and the Robots for US competition,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to hear more about how it
Speaker 1: all turns out. I'm also curious what the next big
Speaker 1: challenge from DARPA might be. Got any ideas While we're
Speaker 1: on the subject, If you have suggestions for future tech
Speaker 1: stuff topics, you should throw them my way. My email
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuffworks dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also get in touch with me on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Tumbler. You can find me with a handle text
Speaker 1: stuff hs W. Now, I'll talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Because it has to works dot com. Che