WEBVTT

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So, robots.

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Robots can be programmed

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to do the same task millions of times
with minimal error,

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something very difficult for us, right?

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And it can be very impressive
to watch them at work.

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Look at them.

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I could watch them for hours.

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No?

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What is less impressive

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is that if you take this robot
out of the factories,

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where the environments are not
perfectly known and measured like here,

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to do even a simple task
which doesn't require much precision,

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this is what can happen.

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I mean, opening a door,
you don't require much precision.

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(Laughter)

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Or a small error in the measurements,

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he misses the valve, and that's it --

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(Laughter)

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with no way of recovering,
most of the time.

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So why is that?

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Well, for many years,

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robots have been designed
to emphasize speed and precision,

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and this translates
into a very specific architecture.

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If you take a robot arm,

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it's a very well-defined
set of rigid links

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and motors, what we call actuators,

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they move the links about the joints.

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In this robotic structure,

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you have to perfectly
measure your environment,

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so what is around,

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and you have to perfectly
program every movement

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of the robot joints,

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because a small error
can generate a very large fault,

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so you can damage something
or you can get your robot damaged

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if something is harder.

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So let's talk about them a moment.

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And don't think
about the brains of these robots

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or how carefully we program them,

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but rather look at their bodies.

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There is obviously
something wrong with it,

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because what makes a robot
precise and strong

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also makes them ridiculously dangerous
and ineffective in the real world,

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because their body cannot deform

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or better adjust to the interaction
with the real world.

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So think about the opposite approach,

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being softer than
anything else around you.

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Well, maybe you think that you're not
really able to do anything if you're soft,

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probably.

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Well, nature teaches us the opposite.

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For example, at the bottom of the ocean,

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under thousands of pounds
of hydrostatic pressure,

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a completely soft animal

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can move and interact
with a much stiffer object than him.

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He works by carrying around
this coconut shell

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thanks to the flexibility
of his tentacles,

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which serve as both his feet and hands.

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And apparently,
an octopus can also open a jar.

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It's pretty impressive, right?

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But clearly, this is not enabled
just by the brain of this animal,

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but also by his body,

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and it's a clear example,
maybe the clearest example,

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of embodied intelligence,

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which is a kind of intelligence
that all living organisms have.

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We all have that.

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Our body, its shape,
material and structure,

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plays a fundamental role
during a physical task,

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because we can conform to our environment

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so we can succeed in a large
variety of situations

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without much planning
or calculations ahead.

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So why don't we put
some of this embodied intelligence

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into our robotic machines,

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to release them from relying
on excessive work

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on computation and sensing?

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Well, to do that, we can follow
the strategy of nature,

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because with evolution,
she's done a pretty good job

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in designing machines
for environment interaction.

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And it's easy to notice that nature
uses soft material frequently

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and stiff material sparingly.

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And this is what is done
in this new field or robotics,

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which is called "soft robotics,"

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in which the main objective
is not to make super-precise machines,

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because we've already got them,

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but to make robots able to face
unexpected situations in the real world,

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so able to go out there.

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And what makes a robot soft
is first of all its compliant body,

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which is made of materials or structures
that can undergo very large deformations,

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so no more rigid links,

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and secondly, to move them,
we use what we call distributed actuation,

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so we have to control continuously
the shape of this very deformable body,

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which has the effect
of having a lot of links and joints,

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but we don't have
any stiff structure at all.

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So you can imagine that building
a soft robot is a very different process

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than stiff robotics,
where you have links, gears, screws

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that you must combine
in a very defined way.

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In soft robots, you just build
your actuator from scratch

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most of the time,

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but you shape your flexible material

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to the form that responds
to a certain input.

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For example, here,
you can just deform a structure

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doing a fairly complex shape

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if you think about doing the same
with rigid links and joints,

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and here, what you use is just one input,

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such as air pressure.

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OK, but let's see
some cool examples of soft robots.

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Here is a little cute guy
developed at Harvard University,

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and he works thanks to waves
of pressure applied along its body,

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and thanks to the flexibility,
he can also sneak under a low bridge,

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keep walking,

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and then keep walking
a little bit different afterwards.

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And it's a very preliminary prototype,

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but they also built a more robust version
with power on board

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that can actually be sent out in the world
and face real-world interactions

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like a car passing it over it ...

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and keep working.

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It's cute.

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(Laughter)

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Or a robotic fish, which swims
like a real fish does in water

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simply because it has a soft tail
with distributed actuation

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using still air pressure.

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That was from MIT,

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and of course, we have a robotic octopus.

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This was actually one
of the first projects

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developed in this new field
of soft robots.

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Here, you see the artificial tentacle,

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but they actually built an entire machine
with several tentacles

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they could just throw in the water,

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and you see that it can kind of go around
and do submarine exploration

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in a different way
than rigid robots would do.

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But this is very important for delicate
environments, such as coral reefs.

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Let's go back to the ground.

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Here, you see the view

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from a growing robot developed
by my colleagues in Stanford.

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You see the camera fixed on top.

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And this robot is particular,

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because using air pressure,
it grows from the tip,

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while the rest of the body stays
in firm contact with the environment.

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And this is inspired
by plants, not animals,

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which grows via the material
in a similar manner

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so it can face a pretty large
variety of situations.

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But I'm a biomedical engineer,

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and perhaps the application
I like the most

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is in the medical field,

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and it's very difficult to imagine
a closer interaction with the human body

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than actually going inside the body,

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for example, to perform
a minimally invasive procedure.

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And here, robots can be
very helpful with the surgeon,

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because they must enter the body

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using small holes
and straight instruments,

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and these instruments must interact
with very delicate structures

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in a very uncertain environment,

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and this must be done safely.

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Also bringing the camera inside the body,

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so bringing the eyes of the surgeon
inside the subject, I feel,

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can be very challenging
if you use a rigid stick,

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like a classic endoscope.

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With my previous research group in Europe,

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we developed this
self-camera robot for surgery,

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which is very different
from a classic endoscope,

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which can move thanks
to the flexibility of the module

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that can bend in every direction
and also elongate.

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And this was actually used by surgeons
to see what they were doing

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with other instruments
from different points of view,

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without caring that much
about what was touched around.

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And here you see the soft robot in action,

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and it just goes inside.

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This is a body simulator,
not a real human body.

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It goes around.

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You have a light, because usually,

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you don't have too many lights
inside your body.

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We hope.

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(Laughter)

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But sometimes, a surgical procedure
can even be done using a single needle,

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and in Stanford now, we are working
on a very flexible needle,

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kind of a very tiny soft robot

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which is mechanically designed
to use the interaction with the tissues

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and steer around inside a solid organ.

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This makes it possible to reach
many different targets, such as tumors,

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deep inside a solid organ

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by using one single insertion point.

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And you can even steer around
the structure that you want to avoid

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on the way to the target.

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So clearly, this is a pretty
exciting time for robotics.

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We have robots that have to deal
with soft structures,

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so this poses new
and very challenging questions

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for the robotics community,

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and indeed, we are just starting
to learn how to control,

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how to put sensors
on these very flexible structures.

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But of course, we are not even close
to what nature figured out

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in millions of years of evolution.

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But one thing I know for sure:

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robots will be softer and safer,

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and they will be out there helping people.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)