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This is Pleurobot.

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Pleurobot is a robot that we designed
to closely mimic a salamander species

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called ??

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Pleurobot can walk, as you can see here,

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and as you'll see later, it can also swim.

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So you might ask,
why did we design this robot?

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And in fact, this robot has been designed
as a scientific tool for neuroscience.

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Indeed, we designed it
together with neurobiologists

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to understand how animals move,

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and especially how the spinal cord
controls locomotion.

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But the more I work in biorobotics,

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the more I'm really impressed
by animal locomotion.

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If you think of a dolphin swimming
or a cat running or jumping around,

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or even us as humans,

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when you go jogging or play tennis,

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we do amazing things.

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And in fact, our nervous system solves
a very, very complex control problem.

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It has to coordinate more
or less 200 muscles perfectly,

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because if the coordination is bad,
we fall over or we do bad locomotion.

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And my goal is to understand
how this works.

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There are four main components
behind animal locomotion.

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The first component is just the body,

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and in fact we should never underestimate
what extent the biomechanics

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already simplify locomotion in animals.

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Then you have the spinal cord,

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and in the spinal cord you find reflexes,

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like multiple reflexes that create
a sensory motor coordination loop

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between neural activity in the spinal cord
and mechanical activity.

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A third component
are central pattern generators.

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These are very interesting circuits
in the spinal cord of vertebrate animals

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that can generate, by themselves, very
coordinated rhythmic patterns of activity

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while receiving only
very simple input signals.

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And these input signals come from
descending modulation

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from higher parts of the brain,
from the motor cortex, the cerebellum,

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the basal ganglia, will all modulate
activity of the spinal cord

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while we do locomotion.

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But what's interesting is to what extent
just a low level component,

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the spinal cord, together with the body,
already solves a big part

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of the locomotion problem,

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and you probably know it by the fact
that you can cut the head of the chicken,

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it can still run for a while,

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showing that just the lower part,
spinal cord and body,

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already solves a big part of locomotion.

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Now, understanding how this works
is very complex,

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because first of all,

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recording activity in the spinal cord
is very difficult.

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It's much easier to implant electrodes
in the motor cortex

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than in the spinal cord, because
it's protected by the vertebrae.

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Especially in humans,
it's very hard to do.

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A second difficulty is that locomotion
is really due to a very complex

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and very dynamic interaction
between these four components.

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So it's very hard to find out
what's the role of each over time.

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This is where biorobots like Pleurobot
and mathematical models

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can really help.

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So what's biorobotics?

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Biorobotics is a very active field
of research in robotics

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where people want to take inspiration
from animals to make robots

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to go outdoors,

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like service robots
or search-and-rescue robots

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or field robots,

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and the big goal here is
to take inspiration from animals

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to make robotics that can handle
complex terrain --

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stairs, mountains, forests,

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places where robots
still have difficulties

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and where animals can do
a much better job.

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The robot can be
a wonderful scientific tool as well.

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There are some very nice projects
where robots are used

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like a scientific tool for neuroscience,
for biomechanics, or for ?? dynamics.

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And this is exactly
the purpose of Pleurobot.

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So what we do in my lab
is to collaborate with neurobiologists

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like Jean-Marie Cabelguen,
a neurobiologist in Bordeaux in France,

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and we want to make spinal cord models
and validate them on robots.

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And here we want to start simple.

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So it's good to start with simple animals

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like lampreys, which are
very primitive fish,

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and then gradually go toward
more complex locomotion,

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like in salamanders,

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but also in cats and in humans,

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in mammals.

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And here, a robot becomes
an interesting tool

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to validate our models,

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and in fact, for me, Pleurobot
is a kind of dream becoming true.

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Like, more or less 20 years ago
I was already working on a computer

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making simulations of lamprey
and salamander locomotion

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during my Ph.D.

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But I always knew that my simulations
were just approximations.

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Like, simulating the physics in water
or with mud or with complex ground,

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it's very hard to simulate that
properly on a computer.

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Why not have a real robot
and real physics?

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So among all these animals,
one of my favorites is the salamander.

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You might as why, and it's because
as an amphibian,

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it's a really key animal
from an evolutionary point of view.

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It makes a wonderful link

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between swimming, as you find it
in eels or fish,

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and quadruped motion, as you see
in mammals, in cats and humans.

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And in fact, the modern salamander

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is very close to the first
terrestrial vertebrate,

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so it's almost a living fossil,

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which gives us access to our ancestor,

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the ancestor to all terrestrial tetrapods.

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So the salamander swims by doing
what's using what's called

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a ??? swimming gait,

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so they propagate a nice traveling wave
of muscle activity from head to tail.

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And if you place the salamander
on the ground,

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it switches to what's called
a walking trot gait.

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In this case, you have nice
activation of the limbs

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which are very nicely coordinated
with this standing wave undulation

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of the body,

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and that's exactly the gait
that you are seeing here on Pleurobot.

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Now, one thing which is very surprising
and fascinating in fact

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is the fact that all this can be generated
just by the spinal cord and the body.

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So if you take ?? salamander --

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it's not so nice
but you remove the head --

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and if you electrically stimulate
the spinal cord,

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at low level of stimulation
this will use a walking-like gait.

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If you stimulate a bit more,
the gait accelerates,

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and at some point, there's a transfer,
and automatically,

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the animal switches to swimming.

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This is amazing,

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just changing the global drive
as if you are pressing the gas pedal

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of descending modulation
to your spinal cord,

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makes a complete switch
between two very different gaits.

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And in fact, the same
has been observed in cats.

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If you stimulate the spinal cord of a cat,

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you can switch between
walk, trot, and gallop.

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Or in birds, you can make a bird
switch between walking,

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at low levels of stimulation,

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and flapping its wings
at high level stimulation.

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And this really shows that the spinal cord
is a very sophisticated

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locomotion controller.

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So we studied salamander locomotion
in more detail,

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and we had in fact access
to a very nice x-ray video machine

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from Professor Martin Fischer
in Jena University in Germany.

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And thanks to that, you really have
an amazing machine

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to record all the bone motion
in great detail.

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That's what we did.

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So we basically figured out
which bones are important for us

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and collected their motion in 3D.

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And what we did is collect
a whole database of motions,

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both on ground and in water,

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to really collect the whole database
of motor behaviors

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that a real animal can do,

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and then our job as roboticists
was to replicate that in our robot.

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So we did a whole optimization process
to find out the right structure,

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where to place the motors,
how to connect them together,

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to be able to replay
these motions as well as possible.

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And this is how Pleurobot came to life.

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So let's look how closely it is
to the real animal.

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So what you see here is almost
a direct comparison

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between the walking
of the real animal and the Pleurobot.

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You can see that we have almost
A one-to-one exact replay

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of the walking gait.

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If you go backwards and slowly,
you see it even better.

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But even better, we can do swimming.

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So for that we have a dry suit
that we put all over the robot --

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(Laughter) --

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and then we can go in water
and start replaying the swimming gaits.

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And here, we were very happy,
because this is difficult to do.

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The physics of interaction are complex.

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Our robot is much bigger
than a small animal,

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so we had to do what's called
dynamical scaling of the frequencies

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to make sure we had the same
interaction physics.

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But you see at the end
we have a very close match,

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and we were very, very happy with this.

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So let's go do the spinal cord.

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So here what we did
with Jean-Marie Cabelguen

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is model the spinal cord circuits.

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And what's interesting is that
the salamander has kept

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a very primitive circuit

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which is very similar to the one
we find in the lamprey,

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pretty much this eel-like fish,

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and it looks like during evolution,

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new neuronal oscillators have been added
to control the limbs,

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to do the leg locomotion.

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And we know where
these neuronal oscillators are

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but what we did was to make
a mathematical model

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to see how they should be coupled

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to allow this transition between
the two very different gaits.

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And we tested that on board of a robot.

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And this is how it looks.

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So what you see here

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is a previous version of Pleurobot

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that's completely controlled
by our spinal cord model

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programmed on board of the robot.

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And the only thing we do
is send to the robot

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through a remote control

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the two descending signals
it normally should receive

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from the upper part of the brain.

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And what's interesting is,
by playing with these signals,

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we can completely control
speed, heading, and type of gait.

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For instance,

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when we stimulate at a low level,
we have the walking gait,

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and at some point, if we stimulate a lot,
very rapidly it switches

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to the swimming gait.

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And finally, we can also do turning

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very nicely by just stimulating more one
side of the spinal cord than the other.

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And I think it's really beautiful

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how nature has distributed control

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to really give a lot of responsibility
to the spinal cord

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so that the upper part of the brain
doesn't need to worry about every muscle.

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It just has to worry about
this high-level modulation,

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and it's really the job of the spinal cord
to coordinate all the muscles.

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So now let's go to cat locomotion,
and the importance of biomechanics.

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So this is another project

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where we studied cat biomechanics,

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and we wanted to see how much
the morphology helps locomotion.

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And we found three important
criteria in the properties,

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basically, of the limbs.

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The first one is that a cat limb

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more or less looks
like a pantograph-like structure.

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So a pantograph is a mechanical structure

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which keeps the upper segment
and the lower segments always parallel.

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So a simple geometrical system
that kind of coordinates a bit

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the internal movement of the segments.

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A second property of cat limbs
is that they are very lightweight.

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Most of the muscles are in the trunk,

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which is a good idea, because then
the limbs have low inertia

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and can be moved very rapidly.

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The last final important property is this
very elastic behavior of the cat limb,

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so to handle impacts and forces.

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And this is how we designed Cheetah-Cub.

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So let's invite Cheetah-Cub onstage.

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So this is Peter Eckert, who does
his Ph.D on this robot,

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and as you see, it's a cute little robot.

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It looks a bit like a toy,

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But it was really used
as a scientific tool

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to investigate these properties
of the legs of the cat.

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So you see, it's very compliant,
very lightweight,

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and also very elastic,

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so you can easily press it down
and it will not break.

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It will just jump, in fact.

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And this very elastic property
is also very important.

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And you also see a bit this properties
of these three segments

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of the leg as pantograph.

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Now, what's interesting is that
this quite dynamic gait

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is obtained purely in open loop,

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meaning no sensors,
no complex feedback loops.

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And that's interesting, because it means

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that just the mechanics already stabilized
this quite rapid gait,

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and that really good mechanics
already basically simplify locomotion.

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To the extent that we can even
disturb a bit locomotion,

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as you will see in the next video,

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where we can for instance do some exercise
where we have the robot go down a step,

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and the robot will not fall over,

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which was a surprise for us.

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This is a small perturbation.

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I was expecting the robot
to immediately fall over,

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because there is no sensors,
no fast feedback loop.

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But no, just the mechanics
stabilized the gait,

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and the robot doesn't fall over.

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Obviously, if you make the step bigger,
and if you have obstacles,

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you need the full control loops
and reflexes and everything,

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but what's important here
is that just for small perturbation,

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the mechanics are right.

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And I think this is
a very important message

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from biomechanics and robotics
to neuroscience,

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saying don't underestimate to what extent

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the body already helps locomotion.

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Now, how does this relate
to human locomotion?

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Clearly, human locomotion is more complex
than cat and salamander locomotion,

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but at the same time, the nervous system
of humans is very similar

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to that of other vertebrates.

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and especially the spinal cord is also the
key controller for locomotion in humans.

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That's why, if there's a lesion
of the spinal cord,

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this has dramatic effects.

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The person can become 
paraplegic or tetraplegic.

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This is become the brain
loses its communication

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with the spinal cord.

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Especially, it loses
the descending modulation

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to initiate and modulate locomotion.

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So a big goal of neuroprosthetics

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is to be able to reactivate
that communication

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using electrical or chemical stimulations.

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And there are several teams
in the world that do exactly that,

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especially at EPFL.

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My colleagues ?? and ??,

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with whom I collaborate.

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But to do this properly,
it's very important to understand

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how the spinal cord works,

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how it interacts with the body,

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and how the brain communicates
with the spinal cord.

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This is where the robots
and models that I've presented today

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will hopefully play a key role

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towards these very important goals.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Bruno Giussani: Okay, I've seen
in your lab other robots

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that do things like swim in pollution
and measure the pollution

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while they swim,

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but for this one, you mentioned
in your talk, like a side project,

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search and rescue,

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and it does have a camera on its nose.

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Auke Ijspeert: Absolutely. So the robot,
we have some spinoff projects

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where we would like to use the robots
to do search and rescue inspection,

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so this robot is now seeing you.

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And the big dream is to,
if you have a difficult situation

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like a collapsed building
or a building that is flooded,

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and this is very dangerous
for a rescue team or even rescue dogs,

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why not send in a robot
that can crawl around, swim, walk,

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with a camera onboard
to do inspection and identify survivors

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and possibly create a communication link
with the survivor.

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BG: Of course, assuming the survivors
don't get scared by the shape of this.

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AI: Yeah, we should probably change
the appearance quite a bit,

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because here I guess a survivor
might die of a heart attack

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just by being worried that this
would feed on you.

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But by changing the appearance
and it making it more robust,

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I'm sure we can make
a good tool out of it.

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BG: All right, thank you very much.
Thank you and your team.

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(Applause)