WEBVTT

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So the first robot
to talk about is called STriDER.

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It stands for Self-excited
Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot.

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It's a robot that has three legs,
which is inspired by nature.

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But have you seen anything in nature,
an animal that has three legs?

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Probably not. So why do I call this
a biologically inspired robot?

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How would it work?

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But before that,
let's look at pop culture.

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So, you know H.G. Wells's
"War of the Worlds," novel and movie.

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And what you see over here
is a very popular video game,

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and in this fiction, they describe
these alien creatures and robots

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that have three legs that terrorize Earth.

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But my robot, STriDER,
does not move like this.

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This is an actual dynamic
simulation animation.

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I'm going to show you how the robot works.

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It flips its body 180 degrees

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and it swings its leg between the two legs

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and catches the fall.

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So that's how it walks.

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But when you look at us
human beings, bipedal walking,

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what you're doing is,

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you're not really using muscle
to lift your leg and walk like a robot.

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What you're doing is,
you swing your leg and catch the fall,

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stand up again, swing your leg
and catch the fall.

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You're using your built-in dynamics,
the physics of your body,

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just like a pendulum.

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We call that the concept
of passive dynamic locomotion.

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What you're doing is, when you stand up,

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potential energy to kinetic energy,

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potential energy to kinetic energy.

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It's a constantly falling process.

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So even though there is nothing
in nature that looks like this,

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really, we're inspired by biology
and applying the principles of walking

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to this robot.

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Thus, it's a biologically inspired robot.

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What you see here,
this is what we want to do next.

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We want to fold up the legs
and shoot it up for long-range motion.

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And it deploys legs --
it looks almost like "Star Wars" --

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so when it lands, it absorbs
the shock and starts walking.

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What you see over here, this yellow thing,
this is not a death ray.

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(Laughter)

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This is just to show you

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that if you have cameras
or different types of sensors,

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because it's 1.8 meters tall,

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you can see over obstacles like bushes
and those kinds of things.

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So we have two prototypes.

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The first version,
in the back, that's STriDER I.

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The one in front,
the smaller, is STriDER II.

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The problem we had with STriDER I is,
it was just too heavy in the body.

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We had so many motors aligning the joints

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and those kinds of things.

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So we decided to synthesize
a mechanical mechanism

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so we could get rid of all the motors,
and with a single motor,

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we can coordinate all the motions.

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It's a mechanical solution to a problem,
instead of using mechatronics.

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So with this, now the top body
is lighted up; it's walking in our lab.

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This was the very first successful step.

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It's still not perfected,
its coffee falls down,

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so we still have a lot of work to do.

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The second robot I want
to talk about is called IMPASS.

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It stands for Intelligent Mobility
Platform with Actuated Spoke System.

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It's a wheel-leg hybrid robot.

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So think of a rimless wheel
or a spoke wheel,

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but the spokes individually
move in and out of the hub;

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so, it's a wheel-leg hybrid.

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We're literally reinventing
the wheel here.

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Let me demonstrate how it works.

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So in this video we're using an approach
called the reactive approach.

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Just simply using
the tactile sensors on the feet,

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it's trying to walk
over a changing terrain,

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a soft terrain where it pushes
down and changes.

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And just by the tactile information,

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it successfully crosses
over these types of terrains.

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But, when it encounters
a very extreme terrain --

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in this case, this obstacle
is more than three times the height

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of the robot --

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then it switches to a deliberate mode,

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where it uses a laser range finder
and camera systems

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to identify the obstacle and the size.

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And it carefully plans
the motion of the spokes

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and coordinates it so it can show
this very impressive mobility.

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You probably haven't seen
anything like this out there.

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This is a very high-mobility robot
that we developed called IMPASS.

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Ah, isn't that cool?

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When you drive your car,

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when you steer your car, you use
a method called Ackermann steering.

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The front wheels rotate like this.

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For most small-wheeled robots,

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they use a method
called differential steering

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where the left and right wheel
turn the opposite direction.

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For IMPASS, we can do many,
many different types of motion.

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For example, in this case,

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even though the left and right
wheels are connected

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with a single axle rotating
at the same angle of velocity,

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we simply change the length
of the spoke, it affects the diameter,

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then can turn to the left
and to the right.

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These are just some examples
of the neat things we can do with IMPASS.

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This robot is called CLIMBeR:

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Cable-suspended Limbed Intelligent
Matching Behavior Robot.

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I've been talking
to a lot of NASA JPL scientists --

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at JPL, they are famous
for the Mars rovers --

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and the scientists,
geologists always tell me

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that the real interesting science,
the science-rich sites,

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are always at the cliffs.

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But the current rovers cannot get there.

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So, inspired by that,
we wanted to build a robot

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that can climb
a structured cliff environment.

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So this is CLIMBeR.

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It has three legs.

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It's probably difficult to see, but it has
a winch and a cable at the top.

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It tries to figure out
the best place to put its foot.

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And then once it figures that out,

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in real time, it calculates
the force distribution:

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how much force it needs
to exert to the surface

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so it doesn't tip and doesn't slip.

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Once it stabilizes that, it lifts a foot,

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and then with the winch,
it can climb up these kinds of cliffs.

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Also for search and rescue
applications as well.

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Five years ago,
I actually worked at NASA JPL

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during the summer as a faculty fellow.

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And they already had
a six-legged robot called LEMUR.

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So this is actually based on that.

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This robot is called MARS:

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Multi-Appendage Robotic System.

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It's a hexapod robot.

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We developed our adaptive gait planner.

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We actually have a very interesting
payload on there.

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The students like to have fun.

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And here you can see that it's walking
over unstructured terrain.

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(Motor sound)

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It's trying to walk
on the coastal terrain, a sandy area,

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but depending on the moisture content
or the grain size of the sand,

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the foot's soil sinkage model changes,
so it tries to adapt its gait

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to successfully cross
over these kind of things.

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It also does some fun stuff.

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As you can imagine,
we get so many visitors visiting our lab.

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So when the visitors come,
MARS walks up to the computer,

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starts typing, "Hello, my name is MARS.

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Welcome to RoMeLa,

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the Robotics Mechanisms
Laboratory at Virginia Tech."

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(Laughter)

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This robot is an amoeba robot.

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Now, we don't have enough time
to go into technical details,

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I'll just show you
some of the experiments.

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These are some of the early
feasibility experiments.

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We store potential energy
to the elastic skin to make it move,

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or use active tension cords
to make it move forward and backward.

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It's called ChIMERA.

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We also have been working
with some scientists and engineers

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from UPenn

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to come up with a chemically actuated
version of this amoeba robot.

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We do something to something,

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and just like magic, it moves.

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"The Blob."

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This robot is a very recent project.

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It's called RAPHaEL:

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Robotic Air-Powered Hand
with Elastic Ligaments.

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There are a lot of really neat,
very good robotic hands

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out there on the market.

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The problem is,
they're just too expensive --

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tens of thousands of dollars.

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So for prosthesis applications
it's probably not too practical,

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because it's not affordable.

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We wanted to tackle this problem
in a very different direction.

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Instead of using electrical motors,
electromechanical actuators,

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we're using compressed air.

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We developed these novel actuators
for the joints, so it's compliant.

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You can actually change the force,

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simply just changing the air pressure.

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And it can actually crush
an empty soda can.

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It can pick up very delicate
objects like a raw egg,

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or in this case, a lightbulb.

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The best part: it took only 200 dollars
to make the first prototype.

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This robot is actually
a family of snake robots

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that we call HyDRAS,

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Hyper Degrees-of-freedom Robotic
Articulated Serpentine.

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This is a robot that can climb structures.

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This is a HyDRAS's arm.

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It's a 12-degrees-of-freedom robotic arm.

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But the cool part is the user interface.

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The cable over there,
that's an optical fiber.

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This student, it's probably
her first time using it,

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but she can articulate it
in many different ways.

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So, for example, in Iraq, the war zone,
there are roadside bombs.

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Currently, you send these remotely
controlled vehicles that are armed.

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It takes really a lot of time
and it's expensive to train the operator

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to operate this complex arm.

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In this case, it's very intuitive;

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this student, probably
his first time using it,

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is doing very complex manipulation tasks,

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picking up objects and doing
manipulation, just like that.

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Very intuitive.

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Now, this robot
is currently our star robot.

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We actually have a fan club
for the robot, DARwIn:

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Dynamic Anthropomorphic
Robot with Intelligence.

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As you know, we're very interested
in human walking,

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so we decided to build
a small humanoid robot.

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This was in 2004; at that time,

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this was something really,
really revolutionary.

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This was more of a feasibility study:

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What kind of motors should we use?
Is it even possible?

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What kinds of controls should we do?

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This does not have any sensors,
so it's an open-loop control.

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For those who probably know,
if you don't have any sensors

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and there's any disturbances,
you know what happens.

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(Laughter)

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Based on that success, the following year
we did the proper mechanical design,

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starting from kinematics.

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And thus, DARwIn I was born in 2005.

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It stands up, it walks -- very impressive.

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However, still, as you can see,
it has a cord, an umbilical cord.

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So we're still using
an external power source

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and external computation.

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So in 2006, now it's really
time to have fun.

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Let's give it intelligence.

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We give it all the computing
power it needs:

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a 1.5 gigahertz Pentium M chip,
two FireWire cameras,

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rate gyros, accelerometers,
four forced sensors on the foot,

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lithium polymer batteries --

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and now DARwIn II
is completely autonomous.

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It is not remote controlled.
There's no tethers.

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It looks around, searches for the ball ...
looks around, searches for the ball,

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and it tries to play a game of soccer
autonomously -- artificial intelligence.

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Let's see how it does.

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This was our very first trial, and ...

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(Video) Spectators: Goal!

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Dennis Hong: There is actually
a competition called RoboCup.

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I don't know how many of you
have heard about RoboCup.

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It's an international autonomous
robot soccer competition.

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And the actual goal of RoboCup is,

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by the year 2050,

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we want to have full-size,
autonomous humanoid robots

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play soccer against the human
World Cup champions

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and win.

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(Laughter)

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It's a true, actual goal.

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It's a very ambitious goal,
but we truly believe we can do it.

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This is last year in China.

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We were the very first team
in the United States that qualified

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in the humanoid RoboCup competition.

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This is this year in Austria.

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You're going to see the action
is three against three,

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completely autonomous.

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(Video) (Crowd groans)

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DH: There you go. Yes!

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The robots track and they team-play
amongst themselves.

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It's very impressive.

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It's really a research event,

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packaged in a more exciting
competition event.

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What you see here is the beautiful
Louis Vuitton Cup trophy.

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This is for the best humanoid.

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We'd like to bring this, for the first
time, to the United States next year,

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so wish us luck.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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DARwIn also has a lot of other talents.

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Last year, it actually conducted
the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra

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for the holiday concert.

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This is the next generation
robot, DARwIn IV,

00:11:10.425 --> 00:11:13.401
much smarter, faster, stronger.

00:11:13.425 --> 00:11:15.402
And it's trying to show off its ability:

00:11:15.426 --> 00:11:17.223
"I'm macho, I'm strong."

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:17.247 --> 00:11:18.691
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:18.715 --> 00:11:22.940
"I can also do some Jackie Chan-motion,
martial art movements."

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:22.964 --> 00:11:24.976
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:26.425 --> 00:11:28.360
And it walks away. So this is DARwIn IV.

00:11:28.384 --> 00:11:30.519
Again, you'll be able
to see it in the lobby.

00:11:30.543 --> 00:11:33.735
We truly believe this will be
the very first running humanoid robot

00:11:33.759 --> 00:11:34.910
in the United States.

00:11:34.934 --> 00:11:36.088
So stay tuned.

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:36.112 --> 00:11:39.113
All right. So I showed you
some of our exciting robots at work.

00:11:39.137 --> 00:11:41.325
So, what is the secret of our success?

00:11:41.349 --> 00:11:43.166
Where do we come up with these ideas?

00:11:43.190 --> 00:11:45.083
How do we develop these kinds of ideas?

00:11:45.107 --> 00:11:46.897
We have a fully autonomous vehicle

00:11:46.921 --> 00:11:48.797
that can drive into urban environments.

00:11:48.821 --> 00:11:51.720
We won a half a million dollars
in the DARPA Urban Challenge.

00:11:51.744 --> 00:11:55.401
We also have the world's very first
vehicle that can be driven by the blind.

00:11:55.425 --> 00:11:57.949
We call it the Blind Driver
Challenge, very exciting.

00:11:57.973 --> 00:12:01.145
And many, many other robotics
projects I want to talk about.

00:12:01.169 --> 00:12:03.806
These are just the awards
that we won in 2007 fall

00:12:03.830 --> 00:12:06.401
from robotics competitions
and those kinds of things.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:06.425 --> 00:12:08.318
So really, we have five secrets.

00:12:08.342 --> 00:12:10.778
First is: Where do we get inspiration?

00:12:10.802 --> 00:12:12.881
Where do we get this spark of imagination?

00:12:12.905 --> 00:12:14.926
This is a true story, my personal story.

00:12:14.950 --> 00:12:17.727
At night, when I go to bed,
at three, four in the morning,

00:12:17.751 --> 00:12:20.640
I lie down, close my eyes,
and I see these lines and circles

00:12:20.664 --> 00:12:22.458
and different shapes floating around.

00:12:22.482 --> 00:12:25.245
And they assemble, and they form
these kinds of mechanisms.

00:12:25.269 --> 00:12:26.877
And I think, "Ah, this is cool."

00:12:26.901 --> 00:12:29.778
So right next to my bed
I keep a notebook, a journal,

00:12:29.802 --> 00:12:32.158
with a special pen
that has an LED light on it,

00:12:32.182 --> 00:12:35.219
because I don't want to turn on the light
and wake up my wife.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:35.243 --> 00:12:38.512
So I see this, scribble everything down,
draw things, and go to bed.

00:12:38.536 --> 00:12:40.926
Every day in the morning,
the first thing I do,

00:12:40.950 --> 00:12:43.557
before my first cup of coffee,
before I brush my teeth,

00:12:43.581 --> 00:12:44.743
I open my notebook.

00:12:44.767 --> 00:12:47.430
Many times it's empty;
sometimes I have something there.

00:12:47.454 --> 00:12:49.520
If something's there, sometimes it's junk.

00:12:49.544 --> 00:12:51.901
But most of the time,
I can't read my handwriting.

00:12:51.925 --> 00:12:54.249
Four in the morning --
what do you expect, right?

00:12:54.273 --> 00:12:56.177
So I need to decipher what I wrote.

00:12:56.201 --> 00:12:59.401
But sometimes I see
this ingenious idea in there,

00:12:59.425 --> 00:13:00.910
and I have this eureka moment.

00:13:00.934 --> 00:13:03.450
I directly run to my home office,
sit at my computer,

00:13:03.474 --> 00:13:05.451
I type in the ideas, I sketch things out

00:13:05.475 --> 00:13:07.366
and I keep a database of ideas.

00:13:08.028 --> 00:13:10.389
So when we have these calls for proposals,

00:13:10.413 --> 00:13:13.983
I try to find a match
between my potential ideas

00:13:14.007 --> 00:13:15.167
and the problem.

00:13:15.191 --> 00:13:17.508
If there's a match,
we write a research proposal,

00:13:17.532 --> 00:13:18.879
get the research funding in,

00:13:18.903 --> 00:13:21.063
and that's how we start
our research programs.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:21.087 --> 00:13:23.580
But just a spark of imagination
is not good enough.

00:13:23.604 --> 00:13:25.484
How do we develop these kinds of ideas?

00:13:25.508 --> 00:13:28.288
At our lab RoMeLa, the Robotics
and Mechanisms Laboratory,

00:13:28.312 --> 00:13:30.924
we have these fantastic
brainstorming sessions.

00:13:30.948 --> 00:13:35.283
So we gather around, we discuss problems
and solutions and talk about it.

00:13:35.307 --> 00:13:38.284
But before we start,
we set this golden rule.

00:13:38.308 --> 00:13:39.957
The rule is:

00:13:39.981 --> 00:13:42.958
nobody criticizes anybody's ideas.

00:13:42.982 --> 00:13:44.987
Nobody criticizes any opinion.

00:13:45.425 --> 00:13:48.972
This is important, because many times,
students fear or feel uncomfortable

00:13:48.996 --> 00:13:52.265
about how others might think
about their opinions and thoughts.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:52.289 --> 00:13:56.079
So once you do this, it is amazing
how the students open up.

00:13:56.103 --> 00:13:59.401
They have these wacky, cool,
crazy, brilliant ideas,

00:13:59.425 --> 00:14:02.854
and the whole room is just electrified
with creative energy.

00:14:02.878 --> 00:14:05.151
And this is how we develop our ideas.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:05.738 --> 00:14:07.295
Well, we're running out of time.

00:14:07.319 --> 00:14:09.221
One more thing I want to talk about is,

00:14:09.245 --> 00:14:12.401
you know, just a spark of idea
and development is not good enough.

00:14:12.425 --> 00:14:17.136
There was a great TED moment --
I think it was Sir Ken Robinson, was it?

00:14:17.160 --> 00:14:21.598
He gave a talk about how education
and school kill creativity.

00:14:21.622 --> 00:14:24.401
Well, actually,
there's two sides to the story.

00:14:24.425 --> 00:14:29.638
So there is only so much one can do
with just ingenious ideas

00:14:29.662 --> 00:14:32.678
and creativity
and good engineering intuition.

00:14:32.702 --> 00:14:34.496
If you want to go beyond a tinkering,

00:14:34.520 --> 00:14:36.670
if you want to go
beyond a hobby of robotics

00:14:36.694 --> 00:14:40.135
and really tackle
the grand challenges of robotics

00:14:40.159 --> 00:14:41.401
through rigorous research,

00:14:41.425 --> 00:14:42.580
we need more than that.

00:14:42.604 --> 00:14:44.618
This is where school comes in.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:44.642 --> 00:14:47.136
Batman, fighting against the bad guys,

00:14:47.160 --> 00:14:49.553
he has his utility belt,
he has his grappling hook,

00:14:49.577 --> 00:14:51.401
he has all different kinds of gadgets.

00:14:51.425 --> 00:14:53.838
For us roboticists,
engineers and scientists,

00:14:53.862 --> 00:14:58.019
these tools are the courses
and classes you take in class.

00:14:58.043 --> 00:15:00.045
Math, differential equations.

00:15:00.069 --> 00:15:02.809
I have linear algebra, science, physics --

00:15:02.833 --> 00:15:05.801
even, nowadays, chemistry
and biology, as you've seen.

00:15:05.825 --> 00:15:07.583
These are all the tools we need.

00:15:07.607 --> 00:15:09.483
So the more tools you have, for Batman,

00:15:09.507 --> 00:15:11.484
more effective at fighting the bad guys,

00:15:11.508 --> 00:15:14.414
for us, more tools to attack
these kinds of big problems.

00:15:15.582 --> 00:15:17.447
So education is very important.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:18.568 --> 00:15:21.165
Also -- it's not only about that.

00:15:21.189 --> 00:15:23.257
You also have to work really, really hard.

00:15:23.281 --> 00:15:24.734
So I always tell my students,

00:15:24.758 --> 00:15:26.809
"Work smart, then work hard."

00:15:26.833 --> 00:15:29.557
This picture in the back --
this is three in the morning.

00:15:29.581 --> 00:15:31.910
I guarantee if you come
to our lab at 3, 4am,

00:15:31.934 --> 00:15:33.490
we have students working there,

00:15:33.514 --> 00:15:36.723
not because I tell them to,
but because we are having too much fun.

00:15:36.747 --> 00:15:38.401
Which leads to the last topic:

00:15:38.425 --> 00:15:40.294
do not forget to have fun.

00:15:40.318 --> 00:15:43.531
That's really the secret of our success,
we're having too much fun.

00:15:43.555 --> 00:15:47.021
I truly believe that highest productivity
comes when you're having fun,

00:15:47.045 --> 00:15:48.401
and that's what we're doing.

00:15:48.425 --> 00:15:49.579
And there you go.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:49.603 --> 00:15:50.770
Thank you so much.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:50.794 --> 00:15:54.896
(Applause)