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 m