Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works. My love all things tech and in
Speaker 1: late June, Honda announced it would stopped production on its
Speaker 1: humanoid robot Awesomo, leveraging the work that went into creating
Speaker 1: the bot for other applications. Tech Stuff super fan Cat,
Speaker 1: who loves this robot, requested I do a show about Osomo,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to do it. Fun fact before we
Speaker 1: get into the Osomo story and what made it special
Speaker 1: and how it worked, the very first article I ever
Speaker 1: wrote for how stuff works dot Com once I was
Speaker 1: hired was how Osomo Works Now. I technically rewrote a
Speaker 1: couple of articles before, at where they wanted to test
Speaker 1: my abilities by giving me an existing article and saying
Speaker 1: could you rewrite this? Could you update it? But the
Speaker 1: first full assignment beginning to end was how Osomo works. Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to read one of my even earlier ones,
Speaker 1: I did a rewrite on electronic voting machines, but Asomo
Speaker 1: was my first full article. The article is still up
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. But it also was
Speaker 1: updated at some point by lee An Aubringer. So I
Speaker 1: didn't I wasn't consulted about that, because that's not the
Speaker 1: way it works. Typically when we write articles for how
Speaker 1: stuff works. As you know, technology evolves very quickly over time,
Speaker 1: and so articles that you write will become outdated rapidly,
Speaker 1: and so we would frequently bring in other people to
Speaker 1: help update articles while our staff writers like myself would
Speaker 1: be on other new, big assignments. So, but this is
Speaker 1: all about AWESOMO. So what was awesomo. The name is
Speaker 1: actually an acronym. It stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility,
Speaker 1: and it's a robot that's intended to interact in a
Speaker 1: human living environment, meaning that Honda was trying to build
Speaker 1: a robot that could integrate into our lives, that could
Speaker 1: move around with human beings in a seamless way, and
Speaker 1: it was meant to be a humanoid robot that could
Speaker 1: interact with our environment similar to the way we humans do,
Speaker 1: so it needed to have human like appendages. And it
Speaker 1: turns out this is a lot easier said than done,
Speaker 1: because a lot of consideration has to go into the
Speaker 1: design of such a robot. On casual glance. Awesome, Oh,
Speaker 1: looked like a child sized astronaut, complete with like a
Speaker 1: space pack and a space helmet. It's humanoid, has arms
Speaker 1: as legs as hands with fingers and thumbs, and like
Speaker 1: I said, the head looks like a like a space
Speaker 1: helmet that you would see an astronaut on the Moon wearing.
Speaker 1: And it had it's batterying a big backpack that sat
Speaker 1: on its back obvious lee which gave it this kind
Speaker 1: of little estronaut looks very cute, and in fact, that
Speaker 1: was done on purpose. They wanted the robot to look
Speaker 1: friendly and approachable because it was meant to interact with people. UH.
Speaker 1: Over time, the design of Osumo evolved a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I'll cover some of that in this episode, but
Speaker 1: I just want to illustrate it here with the earliest
Speaker 1: version of the official Osomo, with the version that was
Speaker 1: around just before they stopped production on it. In the
Speaker 1: first robot that Honda designated as Osomo, because there were
Speaker 1: some predecessors, UH, was born quote unquote on November two thousand.
Speaker 1: It stood one twenty centimeters tall that's just a little
Speaker 1: bit under four feet, and it weighed about fifty or
Speaker 1: a hundred fifteen pounds. But when it was retired in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen and Osumo's robots specs were a little different.
Speaker 1: It stood one hundred thirty centimeters tall that's about four
Speaker 1: ft three inches, so it grew a little bit, and
Speaker 1: it weighed forty eight kilograms or about a hundred six pounds,
Speaker 1: so it lost a little weight. At top speed, it
Speaker 1: could dash at a respectable nine kilometers per hour, which
Speaker 1: is about five point six miles per hour. Now, it's
Speaker 1: not like it could go toe to toe with the
Speaker 1: T one thousand from Terminator two, but it was still
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. It was a robot that could run on
Speaker 1: two legs, the first to do so. In fact, Honda
Speaker 1: chose the robot's height carefully. They wanted to design a
Speaker 1: robot that could work in human environments, so it couldn't
Speaker 1: be too small, but it also shouldn't be intimidating. They
Speaker 1: didn't want to make, you know, like a kill bot
Speaker 1: two thousand that would be terrifying. The robot size was
Speaker 1: determined to be people friendly because it'd be large enough
Speaker 1: to operate environmental elements like door knobs or light switches,
Speaker 1: and about four ft three inches meant that it would
Speaker 1: also be around eye level with a seated human adults.
Speaker 1: So if you were seated down at a desk and
Speaker 1: Osimo walked up to you to let you know that
Speaker 1: there was a visitor at the lobby, then you'd be
Speaker 1: looking pretty much I too camera with Osomo. It could
Speaker 1: also stand behind a desk and it would be at
Speaker 1: about the same height as someone who was seated behind
Speaker 1: a desk, So that made Osumo a potential receptionist, which
Speaker 1: in fact, Honda made use of Osimo as a receptionist
Speaker 1: at their headquarters. The robot also had several degrees of freedom. Now,
Speaker 1: the phrase degrees of freedom actually has a couple of
Speaker 1: different meanings depending upon what industry or context you're looking at,
Speaker 1: uh including statistics. There's a specific meaning for degrees of
Speaker 1: freedom and statistics, But in mechanical systems it refers to
Speaker 1: the number of independent movements a rigid body is capable of.
Speaker 1: So an unrestrained rigid body in space just imagine you've
Speaker 1: got a cube of something and it's magically floating in
Speaker 1: the air. It has six degrees of freedom because it
Speaker 1: can move up or down like it can levitate straight
Speaker 1: up or sink straight down. It could strafe left or
Speaker 1: right uh, or it could move back and forth toward
Speaker 1: you or away from you. Plus it can rotate around
Speaker 1: those axes, which would translate to pitch roll and yaw.
Speaker 1: So that's six different degrees of freedom. The final model
Speaker 1: of Osimo had three degrees of freedom for the head,
Speaker 1: seven degrees of freedom for each arm, so I had
Speaker 1: two arms, thirteen degrees of freedom for each hand, two hands,
Speaker 1: two degrees of freedom at the hip, and six degrees
Speaker 1: of freedom for each of the legs two legs, which
Speaker 1: meant that Osimo ultimately had fifty seven degrees of freedom
Speaker 1: for the full robot, the one that was finally retired
Speaker 1: in that was an improvement of twenty three degrees of
Speaker 1: freedom from its predecessor. Model had twenty three degrees more
Speaker 1: freedom than the previous version of Osomo. I'll go into
Speaker 1: further detail about the different sensors and systems Osumo had,
Speaker 1: but first I'd like to talk about the history of
Speaker 1: the robot itself, and to do that we need to
Speaker 1: travel back to night teen eighties six and what a
Speaker 1: year that was, guys. I mean, you could go to
Speaker 1: the theater and you could go see what came out
Speaker 1: in eight six aliens you could see Ferris Bueller's Day Off,
Speaker 1: or you could see the greatest movie made of all time,
Speaker 1: Big Trouble in Little China. Also, Howard the Duck came
Speaker 1: out in as I recall music in six include stuff
Speaker 1: like Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer or Peter STA's Glory of Love.
Speaker 1: Quite an amazing diddy there or cameos Immortal, classic word Up.
Speaker 1: But more importantly for our story engineers at Honda, we're
Speaker 1: tackling a very challenging problem. How do you make a
Speaker 1: humanoid robot walk like a person does? So they started
Speaker 1: off slowly. First, they began with designing a basic set
Speaker 1: of robotic legs that could take steps. So their first
Speaker 1: robot model in this phase, which was only meant for
Speaker 1: research and development, this was never going to be something
Speaker 1: that they were going to market, was known as the
Speaker 1: e O and it was essentially nothing more than a
Speaker 1: pair of legs connected to a narrow set of robot hips.
Speaker 1: So just legs and hips and that's it. And it
Speaker 1: was wired up and you had a control system that
Speaker 1: would tell it to walk forward. The robot was connected
Speaker 1: directly to those computer systems no wireless systems at this point,
Speaker 1: and the legs had to be very careful, very deliberate
Speaker 1: in their movements in order to maintain the robot's center
Speaker 1: of gravity on the soles of its feet. So every
Speaker 1: time it takes a step, it's it's removing weight from
Speaker 1: one foot. All of its weight is on its other foot.
Speaker 1: It had to be very careful to move its center
Speaker 1: of gravity over the the foot that was still on
Speaker 1: the ground. That also meant that the robot had to
Speaker 1: continuously make adjustments to its balance as it moved the
Speaker 1: free leg forward to take a step. That made taking
Speaker 1: a single step a slow process, sometimes taking as long
Speaker 1: as twenty seconds for one step. Now, clearly that's way
Speaker 1: too slow for a robot to move around in a
Speaker 1: human environment, but it was important for the research and
Speaker 1: development phase. The robot and all future robots i'll cover
Speaker 1: used servo motors for locomotion. Now, those are actuators. They're
Speaker 1: either linear or their rotary, which tells you the type
Speaker 1: of motion they control, and they allow for precise control
Speaker 1: of motion, including velocity and acceleration. A servo motor uses
Speaker 1: position feedback, which means the servo motor has to quote
Speaker 1: unquote no, it's position so that when it receives an
Speaker 1: incoming command to change positions, it can do so accurately.
Speaker 1: So if I translate this into human terms, it's like saying,
Speaker 1: you put your right leg in, you take your right
Speaker 1: leg out, you put your right leg in, and then
Speaker 1: you shake it all about. Humans typically possess a sense
Speaker 1: that we call a proprioception. That's describes how our brains
Speaker 1: sense our bodies, how our brains know where our limbs are.
Speaker 1: This is why if you close your eyes, you can
Speaker 1: touch your finger to your nose, assuming you're not under
Speaker 1: of the influence of something. Because we have appropriate exception,
Speaker 1: we know the location of each of our limbs, and
Speaker 1: therefore we can move those limbs from where they were
Speaker 1: to where they need to be. And that's what it's
Speaker 1: all about. But machines do not innately possess this ability.
Speaker 1: Engineers and computer scientists had to come up with ways
Speaker 1: to mimic it, and servo motors are part of systems
Speaker 1: that keep track of positions so that the overall system
Speaker 1: can behave as directed. So if you tell your robot
Speaker 1: walk forward three steps, the robot can take that command
Speaker 1: and translate it into a series of smaller commands. If
Speaker 1: one leg is already placed forward, then the back leg
Speaker 1: is the one that's going to have to come up
Speaker 1: and take a step for locomotion to begin. For example,
Speaker 1: pretty much every degree of freedom has an associated servo motor.
Speaker 1: So as ASUMO or osimo, I should say, increased in complexity,
Speaker 1: it got more servo motors. Back to EO, The type
Speaker 1: of walking EO could do was called static walking. Before
Speaker 1: it could take a second step, the robot had to
Speaker 1: be certain it's center of weight had shifted over the
Speaker 1: soul of the foot it had just placed down on
Speaker 1: the ground. This was a good start to working out
Speaker 1: the actual mechanics of limb motion, but it was a
Speaker 1: far cry from the way organic critters move around. The
Speaker 1: team was gonna have to do a lot more research,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk about that in just a second, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Engineers got to work analyzing the way humans, animals, and
Speaker 1: even insects walk. They studied hours of videos to understand
Speaker 1: what is going on from a physical or mechanical side
Speaker 1: of things. You know, physiologically, humans don't maintain their center
Speaker 1: of gravity directly over the souls of their feet as
Speaker 1: they walk. The center of gravity as we walk can
Speaker 1: move around quite a bit, so designing a robot that
Speaker 1: could do this too was gonna be pretty tricky. The
Speaker 1: robot would have to take into account a lot of
Speaker 1: different factors that we kind of grasp innately once we
Speaker 1: learn how to walk. That would include stuff like the
Speaker 1: robots fed its momentum, the ground it was walking on,
Speaker 1: whether it was level, whether it was flat, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. One thing the team did was study human skeletons.
Speaker 1: They noted the location of the joints in the human
Speaker 1: legs and determined that the toes play an important part
Speaker 1: of walking as they helped guide us in the way
Speaker 1: we support our weight from step to step, so their
Speaker 1: robots would need to be able to do a similar thing.
Speaker 1: The robots were also going to need degrees of freedom
Speaker 1: similar to what you could find in a human ankle, knee,
Speaker 1: and hip joint, so the engineers also studied walking humans
Speaker 1: to determine stuff like the range of motion every joint
Speaker 1: should be able to replicate, where the center of gravity
Speaker 1: should be for every leg, how much torque should be
Speaker 1: exerted on leg joints, and also the sensors that would
Speaker 1: be needed to replicate how we humans sense, stuff like
Speaker 1: the speed of motion and the impact of our foot
Speaker 1: hitting the ground. All that would be very important so
Speaker 1: that the robot would be able to walk in a
Speaker 1: stable way and not just hop around or fall off
Speaker 1: of its feet or otherwise have some disaster occur in
Speaker 1: the engineers designed E one. This was the first of
Speaker 1: three robots, the others being E two and E three
Speaker 1: that the engineers designed in an effort to move from
Speaker 1: the static walking model to what they called fast walking
Speaker 1: Like EO. These robots were essentially legs attached to robotic hips,
Speaker 1: and maybe you could argue as also sort of a
Speaker 1: rudimentary torso, but there were no arms, there's no head,
Speaker 1: so I was about it. Uh. Each design looked a
Speaker 1: little bit more sophisticated than its predecessor did, but they
Speaker 1: were all very almost industrial looking kind of robots. They
Speaker 1: would would not take steps as painstakingly slowly as EO did.
Speaker 1: They moved a bit more naturally, which for humans involves
Speaker 1: shifting our weight forward and leaning into a step. It's
Speaker 1: almost like we're about to fall, right like when we
Speaker 1: take a step. It's almost as if we're leaning forward
Speaker 1: and we're gonna fall if we don't catch ourselves, and
Speaker 1: then we move a foot forward and we do catch
Speaker 1: ourselves with our foot, and then we keep leaning forward
Speaker 1: and we catch ourselves again with our foot. So you
Speaker 1: can almost think of walking as consistently nearly falling over
Speaker 1: in a way if you're looking at it from a
Speaker 1: robotics way where you're trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: design a robot to do a similar thing, So it
Speaker 1: involves a lot of almost falling and catching yourself. While
Speaker 1: the robots in this phase were considered fast walkers, fast
Speaker 1: is a relative term. The E two, for example, the
Speaker 1: middle of the three models, was clocked at a top
Speaker 1: speed of one point two kilometers per hour on flat surfaces,
Speaker 1: which is about three quarters of a mile per hour.
Speaker 1: By comparison, your average humans walking speed is right around
Speaker 1: five kilometers per hour or three point one miles per hour.
Speaker 1: So these robots weren't exactly burning up the track walking
Speaker 1: around the work on E one through E three stretch
Speaker 1: from seven to and then the team moved into the
Speaker 1: next as new wave dance craze. Anyways, it's still rock
Speaker 1: and roll to me. I don't know what happened there,
Speaker 1: it's all on my notes to What I meant to
Speaker 1: say is that they began developing the next generation of
Speaker 1: walking robots that would be E four, E five, and
Speaker 1: E six, and this wasn't an effort to create stabilized walking,
Speaker 1: which meant the engineers wanted to create robots that could
Speaker 1: remain stable while walking on a variety of surfaces, including
Speaker 1: stuff like slopes or stairs, that they would be able
Speaker 1: to adjust their steps and be able to keep their
Speaker 1: weight centered so that they didn't fall over. These robots,
Speaker 1: like the one through E three also looked like an
Speaker 1: armless torso attached to legs, so still didn't look very
Speaker 1: much like Awesomo. At this point, the E four through
Speaker 1: E six models began to incorporate three areas of control
Speaker 1: to achieve stabilized walking, and they are floor reaction control
Speaker 1: that refers to the ability of the robot to absorb
Speaker 1: floor unevenness through the soles of its feet in an
Speaker 1: effort to maintain a firm stance. So the engineers had
Speaker 1: to build sensors into the feet of the robots so
Speaker 1: that the robot could gather information and about the floor
Speaker 1: and then process that information in a way that was
Speaker 1: meaningful and then adjust its stance to give the robot
Speaker 1: the best chance of not pitching over. Next would be
Speaker 1: the target zero moment point control, which is a fancy
Speaker 1: way of saying the robot needs to be able to
Speaker 1: balance itself, so the zero moment point refers to balancing
Speaker 1: different forces in order to maintain posture. Those forces include
Speaker 1: stuff like gravity and walking speed that falls into a
Speaker 1: category called total inertial force. The other force that occurs
Speaker 1: is when the robot's foot connects with the ground. That's
Speaker 1: called the ground reaction force. And you want those two
Speaker 1: forces to cancel one another out in order to maintain posture. Also,
Speaker 1: the robot has to be able to detect when it
Speaker 1: is unable to stand firmly. So first you have to
Speaker 1: incorporate sensors that can detect and imbalance in the robot.
Speaker 1: Then you have to figure out what to do without
Speaker 1: you know, how do you address and imbalance. So with
Speaker 1: these robots, the engineers designed a system which will allow
Speaker 1: the robots to make adjustments to its upper body and
Speaker 1: they would shift their upper body around to act as
Speaker 1: a counter balance. So if it's since it was going
Speaker 1: to fall forward, it might shift its upper body backward
Speaker 1: to counter that action and hopefully remain upright as a result.
Speaker 1: The third area of control was called foot planting location control.
Speaker 1: This system engaged once the ZMP control had activated, and
Speaker 1: this system would determine the length of the robot step
Speaker 1: to catch the robot and make certain it remains upright.
Speaker 1: So it's all about maintaining the proper relationship between the
Speaker 1: position and speed of the robot body with the length
Speaker 1: of the steps it takes. Now, up to this point,
Speaker 1: all the robots have been prototypes to help engineers understand
Speaker 1: the fundamentals necessary that would be needed for basic walking.
Speaker 1: The next stage involved building robots that had arms, hands,
Speaker 1: and a head, and that wasn't just for aesthetics, although
Speaker 1: that did play a part in it, but it's also
Speaker 1: for locomotion. We use our arms and our body in
Speaker 1: our head while we're walking. If the engineers wanted their
Speaker 1: robot to move like a human, they were going to
Speaker 1: need to incorporate those elements as well. Plus, if they
Speaker 1: wanted it to interact in human environments, they wanted it
Speaker 1: to look not terrifying, So giving it arms in the
Speaker 1: head was probably a step in the right direction. From
Speaker 1: the team built another series of three robots. These were
Speaker 1: designated P one, P two, and P three, and all
Speaker 1: of them were humanoid. They were all taller and heavier
Speaker 1: than Osumo would be, and this was when the team
Speaker 1: was still working out the physics and mechanics of humanoid walking,
Speaker 1: so they were more concerned with getting those elements right
Speaker 1: rather than producing a robot that would be suitable for
Speaker 1: human use, so again these were never intended to go
Speaker 1: into the workplace. The P one humanoid robot was one
Speaker 1: five centimeters tall that's about six ft three inches. It's
Speaker 1: a big robot and also weighed into a hundred which
Speaker 1: is about three eighty six pounds, so stats like that.
Speaker 1: It could have wrestled for the w w E. Now,
Speaker 1: clearly that type of robot would be too big and
Speaker 1: heavy and potentially dangerous for a human environment. If it
Speaker 1: lost its balance and fell, it could cause a serious injury.
Speaker 1: But it was one of the first of Honda's robots
Speaker 1: in this line to have arms and sort of claw
Speaker 1: like hands, and engineers worked on coordinating arm and leg
Speaker 1: movements and programmed the robots so it could operate simple
Speaker 1: things like light switches and door knobs. And pick up
Speaker 1: various objects, and coordinating all of that was also another
Speaker 1: big challenge, although to be fair, the walking and running
Speaker 1: was probably the biggest of the challenges they faced at
Speaker 1: that point. The P two robot was the first self regulating,
Speaker 1: two legged humanoid robot walking robot, i should say, and
Speaker 1: it first started strutting its stuff in December n This
Speaker 1: robot was the first to have a computer system incorporated
Speaker 1: directly into the robots design. Previous robots had been controlled
Speaker 1: by computers through a wired connection. This one was completely wireless.
Speaker 1: The P two had a battery, It also had a
Speaker 1: wireless radio, had motor drives, it had its control computer,
Speaker 1: and more systems on board. Operators would say commands to
Speaker 1: the robot through a computer, it would beam the commands over.
Speaker 1: The robot would receive these commands wirelessly, and then they
Speaker 1: would process the commands and the robot would then do
Speaker 1: whatever it was supposed to do, including pushing carts or
Speaker 1: climbing stairs. This robot was a little bit shorter than
Speaker 1: the P one. It measured a hundred a D two centimeters,
Speaker 1: so it was just a hair under six ft tall.
Speaker 1: But putting all that on board processing capability onto the
Speaker 1: robots uh skeleton meant that they added a lot of
Speaker 1: weight to it, so it was a hefty two kilograms
Speaker 1: or nearly four hundred sixty three pounds. I stumbled there
Speaker 1: for a second because in my notes, just a glance
Speaker 1: point the curtain, I wrote two ten kb. That's two bites,
Speaker 1: No two kilograms, silly typo. The P three, which was
Speaker 1: created in September, was much shorter and lighter than its predecessors.
Speaker 1: It stood one sixty centimeters tall that's about five ft
Speaker 1: three inches, and it weighed in a relatively sevelled hundred
Speaker 1: third kilograms or two seven pounds. The team was able
Speaker 1: to decentralize the control system for the P three, which
Speaker 1: helped remove a lot of that weight that it was
Speaker 1: carried around by the P two. Now, those robots helped
Speaker 1: the engineers put together the information they needed to create
Speaker 1: the first robot to be called Asomo. This robot would
Speaker 1: be smaller, it would be lighter, and it would feature
Speaker 1: a design that was meant to make it look friendly
Speaker 1: and playful. So next I'll talk about some of the
Speaker 1: tech that was used to make Osumo work and how
Speaker 1: it became the first humanoid two legged robot. To run.
Speaker 1: But first, let's take another quick break and thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Asomo represented a big breakthrough in creating a robot that
Speaker 1: can walk like a human can. For one thing, the
Speaker 1: engineers developed what they called intelligent real time flexible walking
Speaker 1: or I walk for Osomo. So Osmo can shift its
Speaker 1: center of gravity while going through a turn, and that
Speaker 1: allows it to make a turn in a gradual curve.
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's leaning into the curve, which is
Speaker 1: a big deal because earlier robots the only way they
Speaker 1: could turn is they would actually have to stop moving
Speaker 1: and then they would sort of shuffle in place. They
Speaker 1: would stand on one foot, lift their other foot, turn
Speaker 1: it slightly, put their other foot down, lift up their
Speaker 1: first foot, and put it in parallel with the second foot,
Speaker 1: and then they have to keep doing that over and
Speaker 1: over and over again until they gradually we're facing in
Speaker 1: the correct direction. So Osomo was able to do this
Speaker 1: in a much more fluid way, one that was much
Speaker 1: more human, which is very important if you're gonna have
Speaker 1: it moving through human environments. It can actually calculate the
Speaker 1: amount of momentum it will need to get through a
Speaker 1: turn and shift its weight to help compensate for all
Speaker 1: of that. Osomo is also the first humanoid two legged
Speaker 1: robot to run. I mentioned that earlier, and by run,
Speaker 1: I mean Osomo can move forward at a slightly accelerated
Speaker 1: pace and in such a way that at some point
Speaker 1: during its gait both of its feet are off the
Speaker 1: ground at the same time. That's how they define running.
Speaker 1: It's not by super top speed, but rather that at
Speaker 1: some point in the in its stride, both feet are
Speaker 1: actually off the ground. It happens for less than a second,
Speaker 1: but it means that Osumo moves around with a kind
Speaker 1: of like a little hopping motion. Some people have said
Speaker 1: that it looks like whoever is inside the space suit
Speaker 1: needs to go to the bathroom, but it is running.
Speaker 1: And it's actually a big deal for robots because when
Speaker 1: the robot has both of its feet off the ground,
Speaker 1: it no longer has any information about its balance with
Speaker 1: regard to the ground. Right it's actually completely clear of
Speaker 1: the ground for even a split second. Osumo has to
Speaker 1: be able to maintain it's balance and it's weight so
Speaker 1: that doesn't spin when it goes off the ground. It
Speaker 1: has to be able to plan a foot down for
Speaker 1: the next step and be uh, firm enough so it
Speaker 1: can continue it's run. And it has to do all
Speaker 1: of this without having any touch to the ground at all.
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty complicated problem to solve from an
Speaker 1: engineering perspective. How do you get a robot so that
Speaker 1: when it leaves the ground, it maintain aims it's orientation
Speaker 1: so that it doesn't just twist out of the way
Speaker 1: and then come crashing down. One thing I think is
Speaker 1: interesting about Osmo is that it combines pregenerated environmental models
Speaker 1: and the ability to recognize things within an environment. Now
Speaker 1: by that, I mean you can't just PLoP Osomo down
Speaker 1: into a brand new space and expect the robot to
Speaker 1: seamlessly navigate through various interactions. Osumo is not autonomous. It's
Speaker 1: not an autonomous robot. It cannot operate all on its own. Instead,
Speaker 1: it relies on a combination of programming, an operator who
Speaker 1: can run Osomo from a computer sort of like a
Speaker 1: remote controlled vehicle or both, in addition to its own ability,
Speaker 1: so it can respond to things like verbal commands and
Speaker 1: gesture commands. So it could do all those, but it
Speaker 1: can't do stuff on its own. This does not mean
Speaker 1: it's not an impressive technology. This is very impressive. If
Speaker 1: you were to take control of Osumo and make it
Speaker 1: walk forward, it could actually adjust its own steps to
Speaker 1: meet your commands, which might include move having a leg
Speaker 1: a certain way to avoid an obstacle while still navigating
Speaker 1: to the location you guide it to. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: Osmo can make small decisions like where it needs to
Speaker 1: move body parts in order to continue to fulfill whatever
Speaker 1: the command was that was given to it. But it
Speaker 1: can't decide to do something all on its own. It's
Speaker 1: making these smaller decisions about minute stuff within the context
Speaker 1: of a larger command. To do things like navigate stairways.
Speaker 1: You typically would program Osumo to have a working knowledge
Speaker 1: of the environment before having it moved through the room.
Speaker 1: That helps Osumo's navigational systems as well as it means
Speaker 1: the robot knows where things are supposed to be and
Speaker 1: can compare where things really are against that model in
Speaker 1: order to make decisions. So, for example, let's say you
Speaker 1: have Osumo walking around a hotel lobby greeting guests, and
Speaker 1: one morning, some guests have moved a few of the
Speaker 1: chairs so that they can sit together. But the chairs
Speaker 1: are no longer where they used to be in Osomo's
Speaker 1: little preplanned man model of the hotel lobby, and if
Speaker 1: it only worked off of that pre program model, then
Speaker 1: it would try and walk around chairs that weren't actually there,
Speaker 1: or it would bump into chairs that had been moved.
Speaker 1: But Osomo can also use its sensors, which I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about in the second, to locate obstacles and
Speaker 1: navigate around them within the context of the room, and
Speaker 1: knows how far out the way it can go in
Speaker 1: any given direction. To plot out its path, typically you
Speaker 1: would also mark a room with certain types of markers
Speaker 1: that Osomo can detect, and that gives Osumo more precise
Speaker 1: information about where it is in context of other things
Speaker 1: inside the room. Generally speaking, Osumo tries to take the
Speaker 1: pathway that will require the fewest number of steps or
Speaker 1: the least amount of work. And it's not that Osmo
Speaker 1: is lazy, but rather it has a fifty one point
Speaker 1: eight volt lithium ion battery and that's good for about
Speaker 1: one hour of operation, so it takes about three hours
Speaker 1: to recharge it. So Osumo wants to make the most
Speaker 1: out of its brief moments of wakefulness. So note to self,
Speaker 1: if I ever get an Osumo, make sure I also
Speaker 1: pick up a couple of extra batteries, so I always
Speaker 1: have one charged. Those batteries, by the way, account for
Speaker 1: nearly six kilograms of Ozumo's weight, or about thirteen pounds.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the sensors Ozomo has
Speaker 1: to help it navigate an environment. In order to maintain
Speaker 1: its balance, Osmo has a gyroscope, and gyroscopes are devices
Speaker 1: that measure or maintain rotational motion, and they have some
Speaker 1: interesting properties that, on a casual glance, seemed to defy
Speaker 1: common sense. A gyroscope works on the principle of angular
Speaker 1: velocity around an axis of rotation. So imagine you've got
Speaker 1: a bike wheel and you have an axle, and the
Speaker 1: bike wheel can rotate freely around the axle. So you're
Speaker 1: holding it up right with one hand on either side
Speaker 1: of this axle. You're holding it up in front of you,
Speaker 1: and your friend gives the wheel a really good spin.
Speaker 1: You're holding it vertically. You then attach a string to
Speaker 1: one side of the axle of this upright wheel, and
Speaker 1: your hand is still on the other side. Now, what
Speaker 1: would happen if you were to let go of the axle?
Speaker 1: And you might think that, well, the wheel is just
Speaker 1: gonna flop over horizontally, but it doesn't. The wheel, as
Speaker 1: long as it's rotating rounds axle will remain upright, and
Speaker 1: that effect is called precession. A spinning gyroscope will uh
Speaker 1: is stable, and once the gyroscope is spinning, it has
Speaker 1: a tendency to remain in the same orientation, and any
Speaker 1: force applied to change the orientation of the spin axis
Speaker 1: is met with a resistive force. So let's say you're
Speaker 1: still holding both sides of the axle of this bicycle
Speaker 1: wheel and your friend gives it a really good spin.
Speaker 1: You're holding it vertically, and then you try to turn
Speaker 1: the wheel horizontally while it's still spinning. You would actually
Speaker 1: feel resistance to this. This is what actually makes it
Speaker 1: easy to ride a bicycle. Once you really get going,
Speaker 1: the rotation of the wheels along their spin access will
Speaker 1: help keep you upright. In addition to the gyroscope, Osomo
Speaker 1: has an accelerometer which measures acceleration. Acceleration refers to a
Speaker 1: change in velocity, so that could be either in speed
Speaker 1: or direction or both. Osamo also has a six as
Speaker 1: to six access force sensors that's for detecting the direction
Speaker 1: and amount of force that the hand ends encounter. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also actually have two more for the feet. I
Speaker 1: forgot about that, So technically it's got four six access
Speaker 1: force sensors. Osmo also has cameras to provide a stereoscopic
Speaker 1: view of its surroundings that allows Ozomo to judge the
Speaker 1: depth of a scene and determine which objects are close
Speaker 1: to it, which one versus which ones are further away.
Speaker 1: The systems on board Osmo also have facial recognition capabilities
Speaker 1: and allow the robot to recognize objects that are in motion,
Speaker 1: and it can also respond to gesture commands like waving.
Speaker 1: So if you wave at Osmo, it can wave back
Speaker 1: at you and recognizes that as a gesture command. Osmo
Speaker 1: also has environment identifying sensors, including ultrasonic sensors that can
Speaker 1: detect obstacles that are up to three meters ahead of it,
Speaker 1: including glass. Because you know, it works off echolocation, it's
Speaker 1: not optical. They are also laser sensors and infrared sensors
Speaker 1: to help the robot detect the ground. Osimo frequently navigates
Speaker 1: by referencing those markings on the ground I mentioned before.
Speaker 1: The infrared sensor can detect those and that tells Ozomo
Speaker 1: it's in the place, or that it needs to move
Speaker 1: in a certain area that may not be in the
Speaker 1: location it thought it was. The ground sensor is located
Speaker 1: at the base of Osomo's torso, and there are ultrasonic
Speaker 1: sensors in an array both on the front and the
Speaker 1: backside of Osumo. Osmo also has three microphones that allow
Speaker 1: it to detect noise and determine the origin of the noise,
Speaker 1: as well as to receive voice commands. And for a while,
Speaker 1: you could meet Osumo at Disneyland Interventions in an attraction
Speaker 1: titled Say Hello to Honda's Asumo, and I did. I
Speaker 1: got to meet Osmo. I just went to watch the
Speaker 1: live show and that's all I was gonna do, is was
Speaker 1: was just watch it and walk away. But a cast
Speaker 1: member was talking to me and I mentioned that I
Speaker 1: had written an article about how Ozomo works, and they said,
Speaker 1: would you like to meet Osumo? And I said yes,
Speaker 1: I would please, and so they introduced me and I
Speaker 1: got to meet Osumo. Osmo, by the way, you can
Speaker 1: still be seen at Disneyland's Autopia, but Osumo itself is
Speaker 1: no longer in production. Instead, Honda plans to incorporate the
Speaker 1: technology and discoveries made during developing the robot into stuff
Speaker 1: like the unicub device or the walking assist Harness and
Speaker 1: Honda introduced four new helper robot concepts at CE, and
Speaker 1: all of them seem to incorporate some elements of Osmo's
Speaker 1: design in them. So Osumo lives on in a way,
Speaker 1: but in new products, though the form factor of the
Speaker 1: childlike space man appears to be a thing in the past.
Speaker 1: So farewell, Osumo. You're really good to me. I appreciate
Speaker 1: you giving me my first writing assignment here at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, and thank you Cat for suggesting the topic.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun to go back and
Speaker 1: revisit this and watch videos of Osimo running around and
Speaker 1: sometimes toppling over. It's sad to see, but you know,
Speaker 1: technology doesn't always work the way you wanted to, and
Speaker 1: it's good to remind ourselves of that from time to time.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for topics I should tackle
Speaker 1: in future episodes of tech Stuff, write me and let
Speaker 1: me know. The email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, or you can drop me a line
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff H. S W. Don't forget to follow
Speaker 1: the show over on Instagram and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com