Kind: captions
Language: en
when people think about robots they
usually imagine something like a Boston
Dynamics robot metallic and humanoid but
the robots we'll see in the future might
not look like that at all I mean if
humans are interacting with something on
a daily basis it's probably best not to
make it sharp delicate and heavy how
rude instead Advanced robots might be
made safer if they're soft flexible and
all kinds of shapes and sizes so instead
of Sunny from iroot no something like
Baymax from Big Hero 6 might be closer
to what's in our
future this is a compilation video of
five of my videos on the surprisingly
different ways robots can look and why
we build them that way this is my first
time trying out a series and honestly
it's been a busy time for the veritasium
team we're working on some exciting
things in the background but in the
meantime we wanted to put this together
for all of you and I also caught up with
Dr Elliot Hawks the scientist behind two
of these robots to get an update on how
they're dressing and when we can expect
to see them in our lives are there more
developments happening with the with the
jumping robots we have a whole another
project on on jumping and it doesn't
even use spring so I I won't I won't
give away our our uh our secrets yet but
um keep an eye out for that one too cuz
that's going to be fun so you have
another jumping robot which has a
totally novel design yep and you think
it's going to be better than the one
that you had before correct and I just
want to shout out our longtime sponsor
brilliant they've supported the channel
since 2021 and it's great to get to talk
about something that I actually use
myself I've had brilliant on my phone
for years and it just allows me to learn
something new every day instead of say
Doom scrolling you should make valuable
use of your time so I will tell you more
about brilliant later in the
video non-humanoid robots aren't just
safer for us to interact with one of
their biggest advantages over
traditional robots is that they don't
just do things humans already do but
better instead they're special ized to
master entirely new abilities often ones
that no human can tackle this is a robot
that can grow to hundred hundreds of
times its size and it can't be stopped
by adhesives or spikes although it looks
kind of simple and cheap it has dozens
of potential applications including one
day maybe saving your
life these robots can be made out of
almost any material but they all follow
the same basic principle powered by
compressed air they grow from the tip
that's
good and this allows the robot to pass
through tight spaces and also over
sticky surfaces something like a car
would get stuck to
[Music]
it gets stuck in the wheels now if I do
the same thing with the vine robot see
the robot is able to extend it can
navigate this curvy and twisted
passageway effortlessly which suggests
some of the applications it's well
suited for now you might think spikes
would be the downfall of an inflatable
robot but even if it's punctured as long
as you have sufficient air pressure the
robot keeps going and you might be able
to hear it it's actually leaking now so
I'll have to turn up the
pressure this by itself is not yet a
robot but once we had steering a camera
some sensors and maybe some intelligence
as to where we're directing it then we
could say it's robot so this is sort of
the backbone of a robot this is what
allows us to build our type of robots so
where did the idea for this device come
from uh I had a a Vine in my office that
was on a shelf and it was kind of out of
the sunlight and over the course of like
a year or so it slowly grew out this
tendril out and around the edge of the
Shelf in towards the sunlight I that's a
pretty cool thing it just did right so
you started thinking well is there a way
you could do that robotically the
solution is really elegant in its
Simplicity just take some airtight
tubing and fold it in on itself it's
kind of like a water Wiggly those toys
that are really hard to hold when you
inflate it with compressed air it starts
growing out from the tip and if you want
the tube to always bend at a certain
spot you could just tape the tubing on
the outside to shorten one of the sides
for example you could tape it into a
helical shape to create a Deployable
antenna what about getting them to
retract yeah that's a challenging
problem um when you're in a constrained
environment all you really have to do is
pull on uh we call it the tail so the
material that is passing through the
core of the body you pull on it and
basically UNG grows it just goes back
inside itself now if you're in a big
open area like this and you try pulling
on that instead of inverting so so
retracting it'll it tends to kind of
coil up and and make a ugly shape and
the engineers have come up with ways to
retract the two tube to prevent it from
buckling using internal
rollers but the tube doesn't have to be
the same diameter the whole way along
here there's actually a much wider
section think of it like a pillow that's
packed into the end of the robot yeah if
you could s crossle it on it crossle it
on the table this sounds super sketchy
so it grows underneath the table just as
usual and then as the pillow part starts
inflating look is this not good or is
this okay it can actually lift me
up so my balance is not great as we can
see standing on it stand on it what's
amazing is that this doesn't require
much pressure above atmospheric just a
tenth of an atmosphere applied over a
large area like a square meter can lift
something as heavy as a, kg all the
while remaining
soft woo that was great that's the
paradoxical thing about pressure you can
get a large overall force with low
pressure as long as the area is large
enough what sort of what sort of area is
that that that pillow there 600 square
in right so with one PSI 600 lbs yeah
two PSI 1200 lb and the whole time it
feels really soft yeah cuz there's a
couple PSI right it's important that the
device is still soft so it doesn't hurt
anyone so you can design these things to
have cross-section that changes along
its length so it could be a very small
body that could grow into uh for example
a collaps building and potentially lift
uh a large object off someone who's
trapped or uh maybe in a car crash or
something like that it can apply huge
forces uh with very soft and lightweight
cheap materials these robots can also be
deployed in search and rescue operations
by attaching sensors like a camera onto
the front these robots are actually
really hard to stop so you can take them
throw them into a clutter potentially a
collapse building or something like that
and and they will continue to to go
somewhere an alternative is they're so
cheap I mean they're basically free you
could grow a hundred of them let's say
into a collapse building with some
sensing on them and maybe only one of
them finds somebody but if I mean that's
a huge success if if if it does but how
do you keep a camera connected to the
front of the robot when it grows out
from the tip well one way is to use an
end cap which allows that camera just to
stay on the front pushed from behind by
the robot but there are other mechanisms
of attachment the tiny wireless camera
is mounted on an external frame but this
frame interlocks with an internal frame
which is actually inside the pressurized
part of the robot body it's similar to
how a roller Coaster's wheels go around
the track so this prevents the camera
from falling off as the robot grows
what's really interesting is how the
vine robot can be actively steered they
attach artificial muscles to the
robot so the way this Muscle Works is
that if you inflate it it expands
sideways which leads to it Contracting
in length we don't actually use these
much anymore because although it's soft
it's still somewhat stiff so what we use
instead are simply tubes of this rip
stop nylon fabric with the braid
oriented at 45° so in this sense we just
have one single layer of airtight
fabric this is the the main robot body
here then we have three pneumatic
muscles connected to it now these three
muscles are each connected to their own
Air Supply connected to Regulators over
here as the robot extends from the tip
we can steer it by shortening and
lengthening the sides so you know just
the way your hand works is if I shorten
this tendon in my arm my hand will move
this way or if I shorten the one on this
side it'll move the other way so our
Vine robot we have these muscles along
its side so as they inflate they'll turn
it one way then if I inflate the one on
the other side it'll turn the other way
so so the vine robot can fit through
tight spaces it doesn't typically get
stuck on anything and isn't bothered by
sharp objects and once you attach that
camera on the front it's ideal for
things like
archaeology the robot was actually taken
to Peru to investigate some very narrow
shafts so we were looking at this
archaeological site that was built
between somewhere between 1500 and 500
BC in the Andes Mountains of Peru and it
was an ancient Temple that had all these
underground spaces and part of the what
the archaeologists were doing was trying
to understand what the spaces were for
and what the people who built them were
trying to do with them so part of that
was unknown but there were these giant
rooms that they call Galleries and then
there were these small ducts or tunnels
that were offshoots of these rooms and
they wanted to know where these ducts
LED but they were too small for a person
to go in so we were able to success
sucessfully used the vinot to explore
three of the tunnels that couldn't have
been seen through other means which was
super exciting and we got video in
inside the entire tunnels and and gave
it to the archaeology team there's an
application where I feel like this
solution is just so obvious I wonder why
it didn't exist before intubation is
literally the process of putting a tube
into a patient the purpose is to breathe
for the patient when the patient isn't
breathing and so traditional you know a
highly trained Medical Professional
would take their endoscope come above
the patient and once they see the
trachea you start to pass your tube down
inside I'm almost there I can see I can
see the light so if you can see right
now I just got it in to the trachea oh
yeah right
there and it took me a couple minutes
and I was really kind of wrenching on
this this patient here if there's
somebody who's not breathing every
second counts but by using a miniature
version of this Vine robot researchers
are hoping to make intubation faster and
safer you know somebody like me with no
training could pretty simply insert this
device aim towards the
nose
and just like that if you can see we've
already intubated and all it took was a
little bit of pressurization
just like that it almost looks like a
sort of a party favor yeah right it's
like a this reminds me a lot of those
inflatable kind of like Play-Doh
structures you see at at car lots how
does it know to go down the right tube
yeah so that's one of the kind of cool
things about Soft Robotics is the robot
is quite compliant and and we see that
in a lot of these demos you know they
can squish they can bend and so how
we've designed it is that the main robot
grows down into the esophagus and then
we have this side branch that heads
towards the trachea and it's it's quite
flexible and so it basically finds the
opening so it's really neat example of
kind of a passive intelligence
mechanical intelligence some people call
it where it can find its path even if we
don't know exactly the shape
beforehand have you tried this on a real
person yet not on a real person but
we've actually tried this in a cadaver
lab and we've shown that we you know can
move from this nice idealized version to
an actual invivo situation and
successfully intubate a patient there's
another application which is burrowing
into sand or soil when you blow
compressed air into something like sand
it
fluidizes it becomes like a liquid and
that can allow the vine robot to grow
into granular materials like sand if
you've ever been to the beach and you
try to stick like your umbrella pole
into the ground it's fairly difficult
and going try to push that probe down
into the sand no
fluidization yeah it it feels like it
sort of gets wedged in there so now turn
on the
air oh yeah you can feel it
immediately oh
wow yeah that's a lot so what we've done
here is essentially we just blow a jet
of air out the front of the robot and
that loosens up the sand enough to
reduce the force of the sand so that the
robot just by tip extension can make its
way through
[Music]
this makes Vine robots an attractive
option for NASA when they look for ways
to study the surfaces of other
[Music]
planets recently on Mars they tried to
have a burrowing robot but it got stuck
could you do it better basically with
this yeah that's a good question so the
Mars Insight Mission they have this heat
probe the idea there was to be able to
sort of hammer its way down into the
core and then place a sensor that could
detect the temperature of Mars however
the problem they ran into there is that
it turned out the material that they put
it in was more cohesive than they
expected inside the robot something
would wind up then pound it down wind up
and pound it down but it turned out
there wasn't enough friction between the
probe and the sand so what was really
happening was it would wind up Pound
Down wind up Pound Down down wind up
pound down so never actually go anywhere
the advantage of something like this
like tip extension is you'd have your
base you start the surface and you just
keep extending your way down you're not
necessarily relying on the interaction
with what is surrounding it to make it
work what amazes me about Vine robots is
how a plant inspired this simple elegant
design it's so easy in fact that you
could build one yourself in as little as
a minute there are instructions online
that I'll link to but from that basic
design have come A huge variety of
robots with different applications from
archaeology to search and rescue or
intubation to space
exploration and what else can you think
of to do with
it I've actually gotten a lot of uh
emails from from viewers about crazy
ideas that we hadn't thought of so so
keep them coming we love to hear your
ideas are there any ideas that uh that
you can share with us that are like oh
like that's that's actually really cool
that's uh one idea was for for clearing
mines land mines so the idea was that
you'd actually run a Vine robot through
the field and then detonate the
landmines and basically make a path that
that um civilians could walk through the
field so I thought that was a kind of a
cool idea do you think they'd create
enough pressure to you know trigger
these things I think the idea was they
were going to actually put explosive in
the vine to detonate the um yeah the
landmines themselves I mean I I'm also
thinking now that you mentioned that
like I'm thinking you could put like you
know metal detector type sensors on the
vine robot so you know spread them
across the field and they'll pick up
where the mines are I'll have another
give you another crazy example another
one was for space applications of um
putting a docking so sh spacecraft
talking together you have to make a um
an airtight seal and so the idea was
well maybe use a Vine robot to do this
um so some sort of like air lock or
something going out in there yeah so
basic yeah you can imagine the two kind
of tubes coming together not sealed and
then the vine robot growing through and
basically making the seal are there any
updates about the vine robot like uh
have the medical
trials gotten anywhere so we just did a
a trial with uh emergency medical um
practitioners using our device we gave
them five minutes of training we gave
them the device and you know they were
90ish per uh successful in intubating in
very rapid something like 20 seconds oh
wow the nice thing about our our devices
that if it fails it fails in you know 20
seconds and so it doesn't take 3 minutes
to attempt and then realize you didn't
get it I think there's something really
nice about that is that it is so rapid
and easy that even if it does fail you
get another shot yeah I mean that one
seems like it's so close to actually you
know having a big real world application
I mean how common are intubations so
intubations uh in the O So operating
room are quite common I think like 15
million a year that's probably not our
initial charg because those are very
reliable like 99% plus the kind of the
fundamental problem is that the tools
are designed for those doctors in those
scenarios and what happens is those
similar tools get put out into the field
for in you know an ambulance uh a
paramedic is trying to do an intubation
but they're doing it maybe in the dark
with someone in a poor body position
where there's blood in the the mouth so
our device takes takes that skill
required skill out and basically lets
the vine robot find find the way into
the trachea and so prehospital there's
around a million intubations a year and
we think you know there's many
intubations aren't even attempted
because you know the tools just aren't
aren't there and then we our kind of
long shot is is eventually you know how
there's aeds the defibrillator is
everywhere one issue there is is there's
not a way to to help the person breathe
possibly if we can make this thing so
simple it could basically be packaged
with an AED where you could both get the
heart going and you could you could
intubate and get the the oxygen in but I
think we're close it's it's pretty easy
you have to come back and get another
video we'll let you intubate cab that'll
be fun so we've kind of answered this
question but are these robots Vine robot
still being worked on we have a a
project right now on anchoring
especially we're interested in so if you
think of a a plant route if you ever try
to pull out like kind of like I don't
know like a small like shrub or
something it's incredibly hard right
like you're looking at this it's got
like you know a half an inch you know
stem and you're pulling on it pulling on
it's like hundreds of pounds of force
like how is this how is this possible
and I think one of the coolest things is
that 100 lb of anchoring force was
created with almost no reaction force
initially there was like a seed that
slowly grew down into the ground right
it's like all these little tendrils and
I'm imagining sort of the friction sums
over all of those so so basically when
you're trying trying to go into the soil
the thing resisting you is the surface
area of the tip that's what you're
pushing in and then what what what's
giving you the anchoring force is the
surface area of the sides and so you can
imagine if you Clump them all together
the area in the tips doesn't change but
the surface area of the sides went down
so you basically want to split them up
into as many you know practically so
anyway we're using that concept now to
make these anchors and we're working
with nasson that one as well and so you
know it's like this Deployable anchor
where it's very light you can you could
throw it somewhere or just drop it and
then uh the The Roots grow down there's
four roots that grow down into the
ground and it was something like 100
Newtons of force to pull it out yeah it
sounds like a very sci-fi type thing
where you could like throw the root pack
down and it just like and then the you
know the roots Roots grow out and you're
like oh yeah the anchor is locked in y
yeah absolutely absolutely yeah that's
amazing after seeing the Unstoppable
robot we returned to Elliot's lab a few
years later to see a robot that has
conquered a totally different specialty
the art of jumping this tiny robot
weighs less than a tennis ball and can
jump higher than anything in the
world in the competitive world of
jumping robots the previous record was
3.7 M enough to LEAP a single story
building this jumper can reach 31 m
higher than a 10 story
building it could jump all the way from
the Statue of Liberty's feet up to eye
level
for something to count as a jump it must
satisfy two criteria first motion must
be created by pushing off the ground so
a quadcopter doesn't count because it
pushes off the air and second no Mass
can be lost so Rockets constantly
ejecting burnt fuel are not jumping and
neither is an arrow launched from a bow
the bow would have to come with the
arrow for it to count as a jump many
animals jump from Sand to grasshoppers
to Kangaroos and they launch their
bodies into the air with a single stroke
of their
muscles the amount of energy delivered
in that single stroke determines the
jump height so if you want to jump
higher you have to maximize the strength
of the muscle the best Jumper in the
animal kingdom is the galago or bush
baby and that's because 30% of their
entire muscle mass is dedicated to
Jumping this allows the squirrel sized
primate to jump over 2 m from a
standstill it has like you know very
small arms and upper body and it's just
like huge jumping legs it doesn't have
better muscles or anything it just has
more of
[Music]
them there are some clever jumping toys
I feel like
they I used to play with these poppers
as a kid and when you deform a popper
you store energy in its deformed shape
effectively it becomes a Sprint ring and
then just like an animal in one stroke
it applies a large Force to the ground
launching itself into the
air all elastic jumpers follow the same
principle of storing energy in a spring
and releasing that energy in a single
stroke to
jump but none of the jumping toys we had
could compare to this tiny
robot of all the things that I have ever
tried to film
this is the most
challenging because it's so small it
accelerates rapidly and travels a huge
distance on each jump each takeoff
happened faster than we could even
register now jumping might sound like a
niche skill but engineered jumpers would
be perfect for exploring other worlds
particularly where the atmosphere is
thin or non-existent on the moon with
one six the gravity of Earth this robot
would be able to LEAP 125 M high and
half a kilometer forward Rovers May
struggle with steep Cliffs and deep
craters but jumpers could hop in and out
fetching samples to bring back to the
Rover and you don't lose much energy
When jumping so if you could store the
kinetic energy back in the spring on
Landing the efficiency could be near
perfect the team has already started to
build an entire fleet of jumping robots
some of them can write themselves after
landing so they can take off again right
away others are steerable they have
three adjustable legs that allow the
jumper to launch in any direction
essentially what we've done is we've
added three additional legs that don't
store energy but rather allow it to form
a tripod sort of that allows it to point
a direction and launch in that
direction but how does this jumping
mechanism work well the main structure
consists of four pieces of carbon fiber
bound together by elastic bands together
they create a spring that stores all the
energy needed for the jump at the top of
the robot is a small motor a string
wrapped around the axle is connected to
the bottom of the robot so when the
motor is turned on it winds up the
string compressing the robot and this
stores energy in the carbon fiber and
rubber bands after about a minute and a
half the structure reaches maximum
compression how do you know like when to
put it down basically once the bottom
there sticks Inward and it can stand up
right now it would roll over right uh
then you put it down got it so as soon
as you can and at this point a trigger
releases the latch that's holding the
string on the axle so all the string
unspools all at once and the energy
stored in the spring is
released
yeah the jumper goes from a standstill
to over a 100 kilm an hour in only 9
milliseconds that gives an acceleration
of over 300
G's that would be enough to kill
basically any living
creature watch out watch out watch
out but how does it jump so much higher
than everything else nearly 10 times
higher than the pr previous record
holder well this jumper has three
special design features first the jumper
is incredibly light at just 30 G it
achieves this weight by employing a tiny
motor and Battery Plus its entire
structure made of lightweight carbon
fiber and rubber doubles as the spring
per unit Mass natural latex rubber can
store more energy than nearly any other
elastic material 7,000 Jew per kgam
and the design of the spring makes it
ideal for its purpose initially they
tried using only rubber bands connected
to hinged aluminum rods but with this
design when compressing it the force
Rises to a peak and then decreases just
feels like it all of a sudden got a lot
easier to pull another design with only
carbon fiber slats requires a lot of
force to get started and then it
increases linearly after that there is
more and more more and more Force
required to do this the ultimate design
is a hybrid of these two approaches the
benefit being its Force profile is
almost flat over the entire range of
compression feels like that needs a lot
of force and now it feels pretty steady
with the amount of force that I need to
apply therefore it provides double the
energy storage of a typical spring where
force is proportional to displacement
the researchers argue this is the most
efficient spring ever
made sometimes a string will snap it's
not always consistent that it releases
when it's supposed
to
oh string cut it let me go let me go
rering
it I'll be right back you'd probably
expect that lighter would always be
better with a jumper especially if the
added weight is simply dead weight
rather than anything useful like a
spring or a motor so we're adding
basically chunk of Steel to our jumper
and it's going to jump higher and the
key is that we're adding it to the top
you want your body the part that's
moving to weigh at least as much as the
foot when your body's lighter it's
basically this Collision this energy
transfer is very inefficient and you
don't jump very
high but the real secret to how this
jumper can achieve such Heights is
through something the researchers call
work multiplication unlike an animal
which can only jump using a single
stroke of its muscle an engineered
jumper can store up the energy from many
strokes or in this case many Revolutions
of its motor and that's how the motor
can be so small it doesn't have to
deliver the energy all at once it builds
it up gradually over a few minutes so
the trade-off is kind of like time for
energy exactly and this is possible
because there is a latch under tension
preventing the spring from unspooling
until the robot is fully compressed
interestingly biological organisms do
use latches for example the sand flea
which can jump incredibly high for its
body size it has a muscle that is
attached let's say right here is right
inside of the pivot point so as it
contracts that muscle the leg doesn't
extend right it's actually closing it
more but then it has a second muscle
that pulls it out it's going to shift
this muscle ever so slightly outside the
Pivot Point that's wild so there's these
two muscles that are working so here's
your big Power muscle here's your
trigger muscle it's a torque reversal
mechanism then all of a sudden it
shoots but even though the biological
world has latches no organism has
developed work multiplication for a jump
from standstill at least not
internally spider monkeys have been
observed pulling back a branch hand over
hand using multiple muscle Strokes
stored in the bend of the branch to
catapult themselves forward there's a
spider that shoots out a silky string
which they pull back multiple times in
order to slingshot themselves to another
location so it's like slingshotting
itself they called the slingshot
spider now I tried jumping in Moon boots
to see if they would help me go
higher
okay and it certainly felt like they did
but Elliot pointed out that from a
standing start they don't actually help
much build it build it build it and then
go okay only if you jump a few times
before can you store up some of the
previous jumps energy in the elastic
bands and then that energy helps launch
you higher on the following
[Music]
jump for years engineered jumping was
developed to mimic biological jumping
but with work multiplication it gained
an advantage if you can generate a large
burst of energy simply by running a
motor for a long time the power of the
motor is no longer the limiting factor
the spring is so you can focus on making
the most powerful spring possible this
jumper has nearly maximized the
achievable height with this spring
assuming an infinitely light motor with
infinite time to wind up the highest
possible jump with this compression
spring is only around 19% higher than
what they've achieved if you want to
incorporate air resistance and play with
aerodynamics another way to send the
jumper higher is to make it 10 times
isometrically larger leading to a 15 to
20% higher jump so we're in kind of an
intermediate scale where we SL are
getting hit by Air drag but it's not not
as bad as the flea if we went 10 times
bigger we could actually avoid uh air
dry completely this works since if the
jumper is scaled up 10 times on all
sides the cross-sectional area increases
by 100 which increases the drag Force
but the Jumper's mass increases by a
thousand so it has way more inertia
meaning the drag Force affects it
less the entire concept of work
multiplication could bring robots to the
next level currently Motors and robots
have to be relatively small so they
remain portable but the simple principle
of building up the energy from multiple
turns of a motor over time would allow
robots to store and then release huge
amounts of energy and set some world
records in the
process when we visited you we were
looking at 110 ft and it was the record
holder my question is that still the
record as far as you know it is um I
also challenge all the viewers to beat
it because it is beatable so so uh I
hope someone in the next few years will
beat it and if not we'll beat our own
record because uh it's beatable I I will
say that much are there more
developments happening with the with the
jumping robots we have a whole another
project on on jumping which we also
think we beat it uh and it doesn't even
use Springs so I I won't I won't give
away our our uh our secrets yet but um
keep an eye out for that one too CU
that's going to be fun so you have
another jumping robot which has a
totally novel design yep and you think
it's going to be better than the one
that you had before correct wow that's
extreme and in terms of making these
things applicable yeah so I mean we do
have a a project with NASA I will say
NASA you know our stuff in NASA moves
pretty slow just in terms of what they
really care about is getting something
really really reliable you know that's
if if they're going to send it to the
Moon it can't mess up um and so that
that that's a slow-going process but I
think that's still a still a goal is is
to get it to get it to the Moon it would
be like the next Mars helicopter or
something I think that's a really good
analogy so the Mars helicopter has just
you know been doing awesome um basically
being this little Scout that can just go
out and and and get some nice views of
of where the Rover might need to go or
maybe even getting some samples you
can't have a helicopter on the moon but
you can jump and and we think we can get
pretty similar um uh performance in
terms of height and stuff like that with
jumping on the moon compared to the
helicopter so yeah no that's a great
analogy are there any interesting emails
that came about from the jumping robot
video so a lot of people want to make
one uh and I will say it's really hard I
keep writing that it's really hard every
piece in that robot was you know you
know they talk about safety factors in
engineering you know where you supposed
to have a good safety factor and we had
no safety factors in anything and so so
pretty much everything was near its
failure limit and and so that just made
it incredibly hard but we are what we're
we're trying to do actually right now is
put together like a tutorial to make
like a you know it's not going to jump
100 feet but it'll jump maybe 20 or 30
feet stay tuned for that uh because I
think that would be a fun way to get
people to to you know build one
themselves and try it out I will say
though that like if you really push the
limits what what we're trying to do wear
your safety glasses and your gloves and
all of that because the number of like
shards of carbon fiber I've gotten into
my
fingers
no brle what is the biggest thing you
learned building the jumping robot uh
how many things can go wrong when you're
trying to build something really cool
this was years and years of of failing
over and over and over and over again so
I think something that that scks out to
me is that um it takes a lot of failure
to get a success like that does would
anyone ever say to you well why did it
take that many years could you not have
modeled out the you know the Springs
like done some simulations of it before
you actually build the thing well no and
I I should mention too that it's not
like we didn't do any modeling or
simulation like that's all part of our
cycle too but the problem is I mean we
didn't even know what sh we went through
so many different configurations of
robots right like some somewhere kind of
do ball shape but we got other robots
that were more stick-like you know
rubber band based it's like this crazy
search over a huge space and comparing
all kinds of different tradeoffs and I
think that's a reasonable amount of time
to make make a world record but that's
just
me the jumper robot can jump so high
precisely because it's built of rubber
and carbon fiber with a tiny body and
massive legs its whole body is designed
for one physical purpose the
specialization of robots is also natural
in academic research since it's easier
for scientists to isolate and understand
one ability these May later be included
into a single more complex robot people
expect sort of the Boston Dynamics
humanoid type robots why have you
investigated these sort of other very
Strang looking um type robots the thing
that maybe unifies all of them is uh
they're mostly about mechanical design
by robots and less so about controls and
vision and Ai and that that's side and
so often we think of what we do are kind
of adjacent to core robots but our lab
isn't as focused on traditional robotics
just because I find more more joy s in
in mechanical design so that's what I
like to do do you have a personal
favorite
robot I can't play favorites with my
robots I know it's like picking against
your children like it's just impossible
I love all my robots I love all my
robots um I will say I'll I will say
though that the the jumper there was a
certain like it took a lot of learning
from our failures and and and revising
it and so that that when we finally got
that one working I think that was really
satisfying
from your perspective how did our
collaboration come to be in the first
place oh wow okay that's a fun story so
you sent me an email I don't know how
many years ago uh maybe 5 years ago
something like this and I ignored it and
I went into lab one day I just mentioned
to my student I was like oh some guy
emailed about making a video and he's
like yeah who was it you know like maybe
you maybe I could help out or something
so I forwarded it to him he's like do
you know who this is
so then we responded you know and we
appreciated the the effort you put into
like the details in the getting the
story right I forget how long we had
this call I had this call with Emily you
know it was maybe 4 hours or something
we went through the details of jumping
Theory you know she wanted to get
everything just right for that jumping
video you know as an academic we care
about that stuff and we want it we want
it to be
right but the most specialized perfected
match between a robot's build and its
abilities comes from one competition
that's been refining this for nearly 50
years micromouse is the oldest robotics
competition in the world it's like the
Formula 1 of Robotics but you have to
see their speed to believe it this tiny
robot Mouse can finish this maze in just
seconds every year around the world
people compete in the oldest robotics
race the goal is simple get to the end
of the maze as fast as possible person
who came
second lost by 20 milliseconds but
competition has grown
fierce when somebody saw my design they
said you're
crazy why is there so much tension
what's riding on H
[Applause]
Anna in 1952 mathematician Shannon
constructed an electronic mouse named
Theus that could solve a maze the trick
to making the mouse intelligent was
hidden in a computer built into the maze
itself made of telephone relay switches
the mouse was just a magnet on Wheels
essentially following an electromagnet
controlled by the position of the relay
switches he is now exploring the maze
using a rather involved strategy of
trial and error as he finds the correct
path he registers the information in his
memory
later I can put him down in any part of
the maze that he's already explored and
he'll be able to go directly to the goal
without making a single false Cur
thesias is often referred to as one of
the first examples of machine learning a
director at Google recently said that it
inspired the whole field of
AI 25 years later editors at The
Institute of electrical and electronics
Engineers or i e caught wind of a
contest for electronic mice or L Mouse
electronique as they had heard they were
ecstatic were these the successors to
thesis but something had been Lost in
Translation these mice were just
batteries and cases not robots capable
of intelligent Behavior but the
misunderstanding stuck with them and
they wondered why couldn't we hold that
competition
ourselves in 1977 the announcement for I
E's amazing microm Mouse maze contest
attracted over 6,000 entrance but the
number of successful competitors
dwindled rapidly eventually just 15
entrants reached the finals in
1979 but by this point the contest had
garnered enough public interest to be
broadcast Nationwide on the evening news
and just like the rumor that inspired
the competition micromouse began to
spread across the world
m
m is here and now take a
chance creating
the micro Mouse
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
even people in the top two or three you
can see them trying to set their mice up
and they they can barely find the
buttons to press because it's absolutely
[Music]
nerve-wracking it doesn't matter what it
was it could be horse racing it could be
Motor Racing it could be Mouse
racing got it if you have a shred of
competitiveness in you you want to win
right just like a real Mouse a micro
Mouse has to be fully autonomous no
internet connection no GPS or remote
control and no nudging it to help it get
unstuck it has to fit all its Computing
Motors sensors and power supply in a
frame no longer or wider than 25
CM there isn't a limit on the height of
the mouse but the rules don't allow
climbing flight or any forms of
combustion so rocket propulsion for
example is out of the
[Applause]
[Music]
equation the maze itself is a square
about 3 m on each side subdivided by
walls into corridors only 18 cm across
and in 20 9 the half-size micr mouse
category was introduced with mice
smaller than 12 1 12 cm per side and
paths just 9 C across the final layout
of the maze is only revealed at the
start of each competition after which
competitors are not allowed to change
the code in their mice
the big three competitions all Japan
Taiwan and USA's Apec usually limit the
time mice get in the Maze to seven or 10
minutes and mice are only allowed five
runs from the start to the goal so if
you spend a lot of time searching that's
a
penalty makes sense so the strategy for
most micro mice is to spend their first
run carefully learning the Maze and
looking for the best path to the goal
while not wasting too much time then
they use their remaining tries to Sprint
down that path for the fastest runtime
possible solving a maze may sound simple
enough though it's important to remember
that with only a few infrared sensors
for eyes the view from inside the maze
is a lot less clear than what we see
from above still you can solve a maze
with your eyes closed if you just put
one hand along one wall you will
eventually reach the end of most common
mazes and that's exactly what some
initial microm Mouse competitors
realized too and after a simple wall
following Mouse took home gold in the
first Finals the goal of the maze was
moved away from the edges and
freestanding walls were added which
would leave a simple wall following
Mouse searching
forever your next Instinct might be to
run through the maze taking note of
every fork in the road whenever you
reach a dead end or a loop you can go
back to the last intersection and try a
different path if your last left turn
got you nowhere you'd come back to that
intersection and go right instead you
can think of this strategy as the one a
headstrong Mouse might use running as
deep into the maze as it can and turning
back only when it can't go any further
this search strategy known as depth
first search will eventually get the
mouse to the goal the problem is it
might not be the shortest route because
the mouse only turns back when it needs
to so it may have missed a shortcut that
it never
tried this sibling to this search
algorithm breath first search would find
the shortest path with this strategy the
Mouse runs down one branch of an
intersection until it reaches the next
one then it goes back to check the path
it skipped before moving on to the next
layer of intersections so the mouse
checks every option it reaches but all
that backtracking means that it's
rerunning paths dozens of times at this
point even searching the whole maze
often takes less time so why not just do
that a meticulous Mouse could search all
256 cells of the maze testing every turn
and corner to ensure it has definitely
found the shortest path but searching so
thoroughly isn't necessary
either instead the most popular
micromouse strategy is different from
all of these techniques it's a search
algorithm known as
floodfill this Mouse's plan is to make
optimistic Journeys through the maze so
optimistic in fact that on their first
journey their map of the maze doesn't
have any wall walls at all they simply
draw the shortest path to the goal and
go when their optimistic plan inevitably
hits a wall that wasn't on their map
they simply mark it down and update
their new shortest path to the goal
running updating running updating always
beining for the goal under the hood of
the algorithm what the micromouse is
marking on their map is the distance
from every Square in the Maze to the
goal to travel optimistically the mouse
follows the trail of De increasing
numbers down to zero whenever they hit a
wall they update the numbers on their
map to reflect the new shortest distance
to the goal this strategy of following
the numerical path of leas resistance
gives the floodfill algorithm its name
the process resembles flooding the maze
with water and updating values based on
the
flow once the mouse reaches the goal it
can smooth out the path it took and get
a solution to the maze however it may
look back and imagine an even shorter
Uncharted path it could have taken the
mouse might not be satisfied that it's
found the shortest path just yet while
this algorithm isn't guaranteed to find
the best path on first pass it takes
advantage of the fact that microm my
need to return to the start to begin
their next run so if the mouse treats
its return as a New Journey it can use
the return trip to search the maze as
well between these two attempts both
optimized to find the shortest path from
start to finish it's extremely likely
that the mouse will Discover it and the
mouse will have done it efficiently
often leaving irrelevant areas of the
maze entirely untouched floodfill offers
both an intelligent and practical way
for microm mise to find the shortest
path through the maze once there was a
clear strategy to find the shortest path
and once the microcontrollers and
sensors required to implement it became
common some people believed micromouse
had run its course as a paper published
in i e put it at the end of the 1980s
the micromouse contest had outlived
itself the problem was solved and did
not provide any new
[Music]
challenges in the 2017 all Japan microm
Mouse competition both the bronze and
silver placing Mice found the shortest
path to the goal and once they did they
were able to zip along it as quick as
7.4
seconds but mazak Kazu utami is winning
Mouse red comet did something entirely
different this is the shortest path to
the goal the one that everyone took this
is the path that red comet took it's a
full 5 and 1/2 M longer that's because
micr my aren't actually searching for
the shortest path they're searching for
the fastest path and red comet's search
algorithm figured out that this path had
fewer turns to slow it down so even
though the path was longer it could end
up being faster so it took that risk
it won by 131
milliseconds differing routes at
competition are now more common than not
and even just getting to the goal
remains difficult whether due to a
mysterious algorithm or a quirk of the
physical maze a corner it's a little bit
like a
whoa micro mice don't always behave as
you'd
[Music]
expect micromouse is far from solved
because it's not just a software problem
or a hardware problem it's both it's a
robotics problem red comet didn't win
because it had a better search algorithm
or because it had faster motors it's
cleverness came from how the brains and
body of the mouse interacted together it
turns out solving the maze is not the
problem right it never was the problem
right but it's actually about navigation
and it's about going fast every year the
the robots get smaller faster lighter
there is still pry plenty of innovation
left and there's a small group of uh
devotees in Japan busy building
quarterized micromouse which would sit
on a quarter
[Music]
nearly 50 years on micromouse is bigger
than
ever competitions have appeared solved
at first glance before the high jump was
an Olympic sport since 1896 with
competitors refining their jumps using
variations like the scissor the western
roll and the straddle over the decades
with diminishing returns but once foam
padding became standard in competition
dick Fosbury rewrote the sport in 1968
by becoming the first Olympian to jump
over the pole backwards now almost every
high jumper does what's known as The
Fosbury
Flop if micromouse had indeed stopped in
the 1980s the competition would have
missed its own Fosbury flops two
innovations that completely changed how
micr mice ran after all a lot can change
in a sport where competitors can solder
drawn any upgrade they can
imagine the first Fosbury Flop was one
of the earliest Innovations in
micromouse and had nothing to do with
technology it was simply a way of
thinking outside the box or rather
cutting through the box every Mouse used
to turn Corners like
this but everything changed with the
mouse Mighty 3 The Mighty Mouse 3
implemented diagonals for the first time
oh you sneak you Che and that turned out
to be a much better idea than we really
thought and because it's cool you know
maze designers often put diagonals into
the maze now so uh you know you could
end up with a maze where it never comes
up but most of the time it's actually a
benefit in order to pull off diagonals
the chassis of the mouse had to be
reduced to less than 11 cm wide or just
5 cm for half siiz microm mouse the
sensors and software of the mouse had to
change too when you're running between
parallel walls all you have to do is
maintain an equal distance between your
left and right infrared readings but a
diagonal requires an entirely new
algorithm one that essentially guides
the mouse as if it had blinders on
normally if you're going along the side
of a wall or something like that you
know most of the time you can see the
wall all the time and so that helps you
to to guide yourself and and you know
when you're getting off but in the
diagonal situation you just see these
walls coming at you and if you V or even
a tiny bit off course snagging a corner
is a lot less forgiving than sliding
against a wall diagonals are still one
of the biggest sources of crashes in
competition
today but in exchange a jagged path of
turns transforms into one narrow
[Applause]
straightaway these days nearly every
competitive micromouse is designed to
take this risk
cutting diagonals opened up room for
even more ideas around the same time
mice were applying similar strategies to
Turning instead of stopping and pivoting
through two right turns a mouse could
sweep around in a single U-turn motion
and once the possibility of diagonals
were added the total number of possible
turns opened up
exponentially the maze was no longer
just a grid of square hallways with so
many more options to weigh figuring out
the best path became more complex than
ever but the payoff was dramatic what
was once a series of stops and starts
could now be a single fluid snaking
motion how microm mice imagined and
moved through the maze had changed
completely available technology was
getting upgrades over the years as well
tall and unwieldy arms that were used to
find walls were replaced by a smaller
array of infrared sensors on board the
mouse precise stepper Motors were traded
in for Contin ous DC motors and encoders
the DC motors give you more power for
less size and weight and so we were
interested in doing that so then you
have to have a a Servo you have to
actually have feedback on the motor to
make it do the right thing gyroscopes
added an extra sense of
orientation it's like a compass
absolutely you had this thing with you
they came about because of mobile phones
really so the technology provides people
with things which weren't there before
all of the Turning is done based off the
gyro ra other than counting pulses off
the wheels cuz it's much more reliable
but even with all the mechanical
upgrades the biggest physical issue for
microm mise went unaddressed for decades
one thing you'll see almost every
competitor holding is a roll of tape
once you know to look for it you'll see
it everywhere this tape isn't for
repairs or reattaching Fallen Parts it's
to gather specks of dust off the wheels
in between rounds at the speed and
precision these robots are operating
that tiny change in friction is it's
enough to ruin a
run if you want to turn while driving
fast you need centripetal force to
accelerate you into the turn and the
faster you're moving the more Force you
need to keep you on the track the only
cental Force for a car turning on flat
ground is friction which is determined
by two things the road pushing up the
weight of the car or the normal force
multiplied by the static coefficient of
friction which is the friction of the
interface between the tire and road
surface surface this is why RAC trcks
have banked turns the Steep angles help
cars turn with less friction because
part of the normal force itself now
points in to contribute to the
centripetal force required if the bank
turn is steep enough cars can actually
make the turn without any friction at
all the inward component of the normal
force alone is enough to provide the
cental force required to stay on
track microm my are no different and
they don't have Bank turns to help as
they got faster and faster by the early
2000s their limiting factor was no
longer speed but control of that speed
they had to set their center of gravity
low and slow down during turns to avoid
slipping into a wall or flipping over
but unlike race cars there wasn't
anything in the rules to stop micromouse
competitors from solving this problem by
engineering an entirely new
mechanism microm Mouse's second Fosbury
Flop was almost considered a gimmick
when the mouse 08 first used it in
competition you might be staring at the
video to try to see it but you won't
instead it's something you'll
[Music]
hear that isn't the mouse revving its
engines it's spinning up a propeller and
while flying over the walls is against
the rules there's nothing in the rules
against a mouse vacuuming itself to the
ground to prevent slipping daveon was
the first person I saw put a fan on a
mouse but he used a ducted fan and and I
think he was really looking at kind of
reaction force you know blowing the
thing down he had a skirt around but it
was not terribly effective forgive me
for saying so the idea is to let as
little air in as possible and like your
vacuum cleaner when you block your
vacuum cleaner right the motor unloads
and speeds up and so the current drops
but if you let too much air in the
current's very high and these are just
quadcopter Motors and they draw a lot of
current at the scale of micromouse a
vacuum fan often just built from
handheld drone Parts is enough to
generate a downward Force five times the
mouse's
weight wow okay that's impressive so how
much does the car actually weigh about
130 G uh and if you listen I don't know
if you'll get it on your microphone
but oh yeah you'll hear the the motors
slow down loads up with that much
friction micro mice today can turn
Corners with the centripetal
acceleration approaching 6 GS that's the
same as F1
cars once nearly everyone equipped fans
the added control allowed Builders to
push the speed limit on micromite when
it's allowed to it will out accelerate a
Tesla Roadster but not for very
far and they can zip along at up to 7 m
per second faster than most people can
run
[Applause]
every one of the features now standard
on the modern micromouse was once an
experiment and the next Fosbury Flop
might not be far off the first
four-wheeled micromouse to win the all
Japan competition did so in 198 88 but
it would take another 22 years of the
winning Mouse growing and losing
appendages before four-wheeled mice
became the norm with micr mise still
experimenting in six and eight wheel
designs omnidirectional movement and
even computer vision who knows what the
next paradigm shift will be your time on
the maze actually begins only when you
leave the start Square so he's not
penalized for any of this
time
wow but if you want to get started with
micr Mouse you don't need to worry about
wheel count or vacuum fans or even
diagonals it is to my mind the perfect
combination of all the major disciplines
that you need for Robotics and
engineering and programming embedded
systems all wrapped up in one accessible
bundle that you can do in your living
room and you don't need a laboratory to
run
it you come along because you're curious
and then you you think I could do that
that doesn't look so hard and then
you're doomed really if it sucks you in
it uh it turns into quite the
journey at its core micromouse is just
about a mouse trying to solve a maze
though nearly 50 years later it's a
simple problem that's a good reminder
there is no such thing as a simple
[Music]
problem a humanoid robot built for all
the same tasks a human does sacrifices
specialization in anyone's skill in
order to be a generalist but if it does
all tasks semi- well and these tasks are
what humans are already doing well then
those robots are just overlapping with
us copying our capacities rather than
expanding them so robots are perhaps
likely to enter our lives not as
multi-purpose humanoids but rather as
precise tools we can pick and choose
instead of one Swiss army knife robot
you'd end up with something like a
personalized toolbox of specialized
robots big futuristic questions like how
to bring robots into our daily lives
requires all sorts of practical and
creative skills but perhaps the most
important one is actually something that
anyone can build problem solving if you
want to hone your own ability to problem
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of the video and now dive into a
surprising trait we're starting to build
into robots Elliot's Vine robot and
jumping robot are just two cases where
the robots that might save our lives or
explore new planets don't look much like
traditional robots at all but soft
robots in particular are an entire field
of study so why are so many researchers
trying to build the robots of the future
with soft materials for one trading out
fragmented Metal Frames for single
flexible bodies might be how we make
robots more reliable and precise these
bendy gear boards are so predictable
that they were commissioned by the US
government to secure nuclear weapons
ensuring that no random motions could
accidentally set them off but
predictability is just one of eight
reasons that machines that Bend are
better what do this satellite Thruster
plastic tool and micromechanical switch
have in common well they all contain
components that bend so-called compliant
mechanisms so it's always been
considered to be bad to have flexibility
in your in your machines well we've
tried to take that that thing that
everybody hates it it's try to avoid and
say how how can we use flexibility uh to
our advantage how can we use that to do
cool stuff now Professor how literally
wrote the book on compliant mechanisms
that's the most cited book in but he's
pretty nonchalant about his work just
watch how he introduces this mechanism
he developed to prevent nuclear weapons
from going off accidentally actually
safing an army of nuclear weapons and so
if yeah if you want to do hang on hang
on hang on hang on what in nuclear
weapons safing and arming safing and
arming yeah so if there's anything in
the world that you you want to be safe
that is not going to accidentally go off
I feel like this is it doesn't even need
say but yes nuclear weapons obviously
you don't want them to go off what I
don't understand how this is going to
keep nuclear weapons safe now I want to
come back to this device and explain how
it works once we understand why
compliant mechanisms are best suited to
this task so let's start with something
basic probably the first compliant
mechanism I ever designed was this thing
what it is is a Cent mechanism that is a
gripper so you can put something in
there and it'll get actually a really
high Force I can put that in there and
and it breaks the chalk what if you put
your finger in there and squeeze it like
you would scream in pain would you like
to try I would like I I would actually
like to feel the force okay you you you
need to squeeze it yourself though or
really well all right I'll I'll squeeze
till you scream in pain
don't that very quickly got incredibly
painful it felt like having my finger
like in a in a vice that looks
suspiciously like vice grips but now
with these flexible components where the
hinges are what I learned in my visit
with Professor how is that compliant
mechanisms have a number of advantages
over traditional mechanisms but I
thought he needed kind of a clever py
way to remember all of these advantages
so I came up with the eight keys of
compliant mechanisms and the first of
those is part count compliant mechanisms
have reduced part count because they
have these bendy Parts instead of having
things like hinges and bearings and
separate Springs this gripper is just a
single piece of plastic but achieves a
similar result to the much more
complicated vice grips like how much
does it amplify the force this will get
about 30 to one so I can get for one
pound force in get 30 lbs out so that's
pretty good seems like that would be
super cheap uh and really inexpensive so
this we just uh made here in our shop
but you can imagine also injection
molding that that would cost like scents
Yep this would cost sents the other
thing is because of its shape you could
extrude it and then just chop them off
that would be cool so the simple design
allows different production processes to
be used which lowers the price these
switches for example achieve in one
piece of plastic what is normally done
with Springs hinges and many rigid
plastic pieces also a good fidget device
how long can these last we've had these
in our fatigue testing machine we've
been able to go uh over a million Cycles
without failure what do we got there all
right Derek I've got a quiz uhoh quiz
for you okay I'm gonna elepant I'm gonna
very good okay I'm gonna push on the
elephant's rump this direction okay I'm
going to hold this and that little dot
right there is that dot when I push on
it is is it going to go left right up or
down
um I just you know what I I wanted to
guess without even thinking about it
please do I'm going to say like up and
in okay up and I kind of feel like that
because like that would be a logical way
for an elephant to trunk but also
because like if this is all going over I
feel like this is going to kind of
extend there and that's going to get
pushed up in there ah good thinking well
I don't know is that is that good
thinking that's well it's thinking at
least so this is designed so that when
you push on that it actually just
rotates in space it doesn't move at all
I knew you were going to pull some sort
of question now since I was fooled by it
I had to try it out on my friend the
physics girl that's so
trippy that is so cool I don't
understand what it's modeled after the
mechanisms to use in Wind tunnels where
you want to have say a model that's
that's attached here but in a you move
it and all you want to do is is control
its its angle and not move it around in
the Wind Tunnel don't displace it but
but be able to change the angle devices
like this demonstrate that compliant
mechanisms are capable of producing very
precise motion which I personally found
pretty counterintuitive because these
objects are made up of flexible Parts
but maybe that shouldn't be surprising
because compliant mechanisms don't
suffer from backlash for one thing so
backlash occurs when you have have a
hinge which is basically just a pin in a
hole and it's moving in One Direction
and now if at some point the motion
reverses it doesn't happen
instantaneously because there's some
give in the hinge this also causes wear
and requires lubricant and that is why
compliant mechanisms have better
performance than their traditional
counterparts this one though is my
favorite that is is one of my favorites
too it's just so pleasing
right oh that sound is so satisfying
this actually believe it or not was
inspired when we're doing things at the
microscopic level where we're building
compliant mechanisms on chips we had to
be able to make these compliant
mechanisms out of silicon which is as
brittle as glass and if you're trying to
make something like this out of glass
right it's it's crazy hard but that also
means once we figured out the design we
can make it in
material even like pla which is also you
know not the ideal compliant mechanism
material so you can get on our website
and get the Mater and get the files to
make this yourself I'll put a link in
the description yeah that also has a
nice feel and a nice snap to it it has a
really nice snap I like when it comes
out it's like Gunk you know like there's
something about that that's really it's
very pleasing so these things actually
move oh yeah yeah yeah I need to see
this all right we'll do it were those
etched on there what those are etched
and and so just using the same processes
used to make computer chips so another
advantage of compliant mechanisms is
that they can be made with significantly
smaller proportions because they take
advantage of production processes like
Photo lithography and we have motion
that we want at the microscopic level
that's brilliant plus since they
simplify design compliant mechanisms are
much more portable meaning lightweight
which makes them perfect for space
applications this here is something we
did with NASA making a hinge that could
replace bearings for say deploying solar
panels This is titanium 3D printed
titanium but what's freaky about it is
you get that motion which we people
expect but there's a piece of titanium
that can bend plus orus 90° 180°
deflection that is solid titanium that
is one piece of tit titanium that is 3D
printed there's no alloy nothing to make
it flexible Yep this is uh yep and even
freakier than this
is this uh guy right there so that looks
like a crazy beast but every part in
there has a purpose all these flexible
beams here are the two
inputs and again we did this with NASA
for Thruster application where we can
can put a Thruster right there and now
with our two motor inputs we can direct
that Thruster in any direction that
titanium device moves that you notice
it's just all bending and then there's
no pinch points for the fuel lines or
electrical lines coming
in here this single piece of titanium
allows you to use one Thruster in place
of
two okay that is a clutch so the idea is
if you spin it up really fast M because
it's flexible this outer part will
actually start coming
outwards and then if there's a drum
around it it'll it'll contact with that
drum and spin that thing oh so this like
kind of oh that kind of comes out like
so and it spinning really fast and then
you're you essentially engage this this
uh outer drum so this is like the way
that a chainsaw would work or something
like that because you get it spinning
fast enough and then it engages the
chain and then it turns it over
course yeah wow that's cool so here this
is made in plastic so that it you know
you can see it but in reality it's got
to be a lot stiffer so here it is made
in steel so hang on you're saying that
that thing which is made of steel yep
you spin it up to a certain speed and
then it expands and engages a drum
that's around it yep so it will idle
with no motion but then at a certain
speed that are what we designed it for
it'll speed up to that RPM you speed it
up and it engages yep I had no idea like
I have learned something today so let's
come back to the safing and arming
device for nuclear weapons its purpose
is to ensure that no random vibrations
say from an earthquake inadvertently
disable safeties and arm the nuclear
weapon now one of the requirements was
that this device be made as small as
possible they had made those as small as
they possibly could using traditional
methods even using things like what the
Swiss watch manufacturers were using
with compliant mechanisms they produced
a device out of hardened stainless steel
where some components were the size of a
human hair this is high-speed video here
the device is operating at 72 Herz
meaning this little hole makes two
complete revolutions each second the way
it's meant to work is an arming laser
Shines on the rotor wheel and when the
proper input is given to the system the
wheel rotates a notch if all the proper
inputs are given then the hole lines up
with the laser beam and crazy things
happen from there so it is essential
that this device's performance is
perfectly predictable even if it sits
unused in a silo for decades so um are
these now being used on nuclear weapons
you know it turns out they don't tell us
what they do with their nuclear weapons
and so we designed them we made
prototypes we tested them and then it
goes what they call behind the fence and
where it's all classified and you know
we we don't know what happens
so but these soft components by
themselves aren't truly robots it's only
once you combine them with computers
that you get robots which can
autonomously form crazy shapes or new
styles of movement all because they
Bend but how do they work and why would
you want a soft robot in the first
place so I came up to Stanford to meet
Hammond and his soft robot how's it
going all right you want to tip
it so is the idea that the robot Could
Walk This Way totally yeah so you can
kind of chain these rolls together to
kind of roll around in any environment
they call this punctuated rolling
Locomotion wherein it's kind of stuck on
a face until it tips over now it's on a
new face and it can then continue to
move its uh center of gravity once that
center of gravity exits the support
polygon or the the base then it it tips
over one of the edges of the of the
face this is a different soft robot made
out of flexible tubing it was designed
to mimic the way a turtle walks where
diagonally opposite legs move together
it's powered entirely by compressed air
and perhaps most impressive it requires
no electronics all of the circuitry is
pneumatic and this means the robot can
be used in places like mines where
Electronics could spark explosions or in
the strong magnetic fields around MRI
machines but why would you want a soft
robot in the first place one of the
things that I like to do is just to take
the robot and kind of like beat it up a
little bit show how it's compliant and
compressive well because they're safer
if you'd like to take a whack at it you
know feel free but I like this is your
work I don't want to break it obviously
no feel free go for it for operation
around humans there's not much damage a
soft robot can do to
you I can stand on these
Yep this is a pretty crazy compliant
robot because the the fundamental
structure of this robot is compliant
there's only uh some Maximum force that
it could ever exert on me so it's it's
inherently safe to be operating around
people could we make it fall and have me
be inside it yeah yeah we could do that
for sure just watch your head yep if I
go over here if you're there yeah we can
do that all right let's try
it here
comes well that's not bad at all is it I
can try another shape that's supposed to
open up one of the faces so you can jump
out of it quickly okay I haven't tested
it in a little while so I don't know how
it's going to go but let's try this
there you go that's your face right
there to your right and you can exit the
truss from that face
boom perfect just that easy did you
build this by yourself me and one other
grad student built this entire thing
ourselves basically and how long did it
take we did it in about a month I want
to say like actually constructing
everything and was it tricky I mean were
you sewing that stuff yep we sewed this
all ourselves the main structural
members of this robot are fabric tubes
inflated with air yeah so these red
tubes are a nylon Fabric and then
internally there is a polyethylene tube
that provides the air tightness the
tubes are inflated to about 6 PSI above
atmospheric so it's almost 1 and a half
atmospheres each tube passes through
pairs of rollers connected to a motor
the rollers pinch the tube so it bends
kind of like a pinched straw and the RS
and then we have this like high friction
material wrapped around the rods and
then that coupled with the fact that we
have this pressurized tube that's kind
of pushing the membrane of the tube into
the rollers prevents us from slipping by
driving the motor it changes the lengths
of the tubes kind of like when a clown
creates a Twist in a balloon and then
folds that balloon into a balloon animal
the difference between what the clown
does and what we do is that there's a
some passage of air between adjacent
segments of the tube so that as the
robot drives around we're not
pressurizing the segments of the tube
this robot is made of four inflated
tubes each one connected to a pair of
Motors forming triangular sides we also
think that they kind of look like
sausage links when put together which is
why we've named these robots after
different sausages so this one's called
polish that one over there is chisso
there's a linguisa and a keilbasa over
there somewhere so what shape is the
overall thing it's an octahedron yeah we
call it an octahedron because if you
drew lines between these kind of
kinematic uh joints here it would create
an octahedral shape driving the motors
together allows the robot to
dramatically change shape it can get
very tall or short and squat but since
the tubes themselves don't change in
length the overall perimeter of the
robot the length of all the edges
combined doesn't change so the robot is
considered isoparametric
how do you feel when you watch those
Boston Dynamics videos oh I love those
videos they're so cool the Boston
Dynamics robots are kind of terrifying
like isn't the idea with soft robots to
like convince people that robot are good
and soft and kind and friendly and
that's definitely true yeah there are
some things that you can do to rigid
systems to make them feel like compliant
systems based on how you're controlling
the motors but yeah they're definitely
you know heavy expensive and and can uh
be dangerous if they're not used
correctly the hard robots we're used to
are strong and precise their actions are
accurate and repeatable but they are
also heavy and they can't really change
their volume as dramatically
but this robot is still capable of
carrying a heavy load uh so I have a a
goey in mat lab that enables me to just
put in the positions that I want the
robots to move in inches and then send
them out there's some other
functionality I have some like stored
configurations to send to the robots
soft robots also have the advantage of
shape changing they can become tall to
go over obstacles or short to fit under
obstructions so if there's some rock
that it didn't see or that it wanted to
roll over it could simply do that and
the compliance of the tubes would simply
just bend around that disturbance do you
imagine robots like this doing work in
space oh yeah definitely so one of the
nice things about these types of
structures is that they can shrink down
their volume very drastically and
because volume on Rockets is such an
expensive premium um being able to have
a robot that can pack down small for
transport is very valuable so NASA was
at one point looking into trust robots
for exactly that reason and they've
contacted us since we've made this robot
to explore different ideas for space
exploration projects so one of the
things that they're thinking about doing
is deploying robots underneath a sheet
of ice so they're going to drill through
this sheet of ice and then deposit a
robot um through what is kind of a small
diameter hole and so if you can have a
robot that can change its volume very
drastically or be disassembled and then
reassembled to form like a much larger
structure then you can have uh large
robots that are able to fit through
these tight spaces and be deployed in
kind of difficult to access areas is
this a little bit like an octopus is
that is that how you can think of it
there there is some connection there
because they they use their shape
changing ability and their compliance to
squeeze through tight passageways and
then also to wrap their body around
objects so for example they can open
jars with their tentacles and one of the
things that we want to use this robot
for is grasping and manipulating objects
this robot is even capable of picking
objects up off the
ground we'll try that and see if we can
grab
it because of the compliance of the the
tubes it has a natural ability to grasp
and manipulate objects because a as it
does so the tubes Bend ever so slightly
which increases the contact area and
distributes evenly the forces that are
exerted on that object so I mean is the
biggest risk if it if it pops yeah
that's a that's a big risk I mean you
obviously need the the compressed air
for your structure and so if you have a
leak
oh then you don't have a robot
right it's a pretty big drawback of soft
robots you know some things that you
could do to mitigate that would be to
have on board a small compressor which
uh isn't there to provide power to the
robot but would help you maintain uh
pressure if there were any small leaks
when you tell someone you're working on
a robot and they see this does it defy
expectations like totally they have no
idea what it is I'm talking about until
I show them like a video or a picture I
think most people's conception of uh
soft robots was really expanded by the
movie Big Hero 6 and I think they did a
great job in uh kind of showcasing what
a soft robot can do and why they're
useful and kind of just popularizing the
notion it's really great to have
compliance built into any mechanical
system especially as we want robots to
work closer and closer with humans so I
think we'll definitely see more soft
robots in the
future so maybe robots will enter our
daily lives sooner than we think just
not in multi-purpose humanoid form in
fact one specialty robot is already
becoming widespread the Glorious Roomba
Built For maximum vacuuming do you think
the way that robots integrate themselves
into our lives will be like you know a
humanoid robot in your house or will it
be you know specialized kind of little
things that we don't even think of as
robots but they sort of slowly
infiltrate yeah I think probably
probably the ladder is going to happen
first would be my guess right I mean um
you know little things like yeah like
things just start getting smarter you
know whatever is your shoes or your
watch or your car right your thermostat
and all those things and then before
like your maid you know shows up as a
robot by dropping the human model of a
robot instead we can choose the best
possible shapes and materials that
Maxime my specific abilities and with
this method we've already built robots
that can save your life leap tall
buildings in a single bound move with
super speed protect your valuables and
shape shift you know come to think of it
they'd make a pretty good superhero team