Robots! (4/5): 7 new species of robot that jump, dance — and walk on water | Dennis Hong

0:01Working robots, rescue robots, teaching robots, dancing robots. These days, there's seemingly nothing robots can't do. They probably could have written this episode. They're also super expensive, clunky, complex, dangerous if they fall on you, and unlike what you might have seen on movies and TV, they have a hard time walking on two legs. But our fascination with robots and their seemingly unlimited potential means some of our best and brightest scientists and engineers are working on those drawbacks every single day. And they're making some impressive progress. I'm Sherelle Dorsey, and this is TED Tech.

0:45One of the most innovative minds on the job is roboticist and UCLA professor Dennis Hong. For over a decade, he has been working with a team of engineers to refine the next evolution of robots, including an 85-pound, 4-foot-8-inch humanoid robot named Artemis that can move heavy objects and even play soccer. And yes, that means on two legs. Let's dive into Hong's demo, where he'll introduce us to the next generation of robots that will lead us into the future.

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3:12Dennis Hong: Exactly 12 years ago in a TEDx talk, I've introduced my seven species of robot. A unique three-leg robot called Strider, a wheel-leg hybrid robot called Impasse, an Amoeba robot, and many more. Now, 12 years is a pretty long time, especially in a cutting-edge field like robotics. How have our robots evolved during the past 12 years? What new species of robot have we built since then? Hello, my name is Dennis Song, and today I would like to show you our next seven species of robot. Since my last TEDx talk, we've been focusing on the development of humanoid robots, robots that look like us, two legs, torso, two arms, and a head.

3:51Dennis Hong: Let me show you some of the humanoid robots that we developed at our lab, Romella. Darwin is a miniature humanoid robot for research and education that we made it fully open source. Charlie is considered the United States' very first full-size humanoid robot. Thor RDS for disaster relief applications. And shipboard autonomous firefighting robot Sapphire and Thor, which uses a unique biologically inspired actuator. And many more. I think we build more than a dozen different types of humanoid robots. However, after more than a decade of humanoid robotics research, I'm starting to have different thoughts.

4:26Dennis Hong: Now, humanoid robots are important and they're great. However, they always fall down. They're too unstable and they're painfully slow. Yes, these days we're trying to develop technology that resolves these two problems, but still they are too expensive and they're too complicated. And most importantly, they're too dangerous. You do not want to be next to these big, heavy moving robots. It might fall on top of you. So what do we do? Now, why is it so difficult to make robots walk with two feet? I mean, we do it all the time. So once I wanted to throw away everything I know about robotics for a moment and try to think fundamentally, why is it so difficult to make robots walk with two feet?

5:05Dennis Hong: And I found something fascinating. So check this out. Now, when your robot tries to move forward, one of the reasons why it constantly falls down is because the distance between your left and right leg. Because your legs move forward and backward, up and down, it creates this unwanted twisting forces. We call this moments, right? Now, this is a video called a Robo One competition. It's a robot fighting competition. And people who participate in this competition are robot hobbyists. And if you look at the robots they develop, it's brilliant. It's fast, it's nimble, and it doesn't fall down. And if you look carefully, they always walk sideways.

5:41Dennis Hong: Because if you walk sideways, your left and right leg line up, so your twisting moments disappear. I actually got this inspiration by watching sports. fencing, a ballet. They always walk sideways. And I think this is the reason why. Now, one of the problems of trying to make robots move sideways is you cannot really use your knees. So what do we do? We rotate our legs. Now, the problem of this kind of configuration is that you really cannot use your feet and ankle. So what do we do? We get rid of them. Now, let's make more changes. Let's change the shin. And while doing that, let's change the head.

6:18Dennis Hong: And something strange starts to emerge. This is Nabi, non-anthropoietic biped. In other words, it's a robot with two legs, but it does not look like a human. How does it walk? It walks like this. Simple, fast, easy, low cost. This is great. Now, I briefly mentioned about a robot called Sapphire, Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot that we built. This is a robot for Navy ships. And I don't know if you've been on a Navy ship, but if you open this door, it has a really high door seal. We call that knee knockers. Before we had these robots, it was very difficult for the robot to climb over it.

6:51Dennis Hong: But if your robot does not have to be like human, we can do something like this. Make the knee rotate at 360 degrees. Brilliant. Isn't this cool? Yeah. Our robots can climb stairs, but it's rather difficult. But in two weeks from the idea, analysis, design, and fabrication, in two weeks, we build our first robot. And we use many different types of tricks. For example, utilize the springiness of the feet, we can store the energy and make it hop and jump.

7:25Dennis Hong: When we first introduced Navi to the community, it had a pretty good impact in the community. However, this robot is great for walking forward and backward. But how does it change directions? It can't. So we decided to work on the next version called ALFRED. Alfred stands for Autonomous Leg Personal Helper Robot with Enhanced Dynamics. So think of this robot as two navvies stacked onto each other. So it looks like this. So this robot is axisymmetric, which means that there's no forward, backwards, or sideways. Now, when it walks, it has a very wide stance, right? So it can walk like this. And this is great for unstructured outdoor environments.

8:02Dennis Hong: However, it's pretty slow. If you want to make it go really fast, you can change your body configuration. And if you go like this, you can have your forward legs and backward legs, and then you can gallop like a horse. And when you lift two of the arms, you can walk like Navi. Then the two of the other legs can be used as arms to pick up boxes or press buttons. And we're pretty excited about this new type of configuration. We call this multimodal locomotion, and this is Alfred. Now, while developing these robots, we've been also working on this new type of actuator. Now, when we say actuators, we're talking about these devices that make the robot smooth.

8:37Dennis Hong: just like muscles in humans. Now, most of the robots that exist today, electric robots, use electric motors with gears, right? And these are really strong and they're precise. They're good for manufacturing. But for legs, we need something different. We need something like biological muscles that's compliant, springing, and not only the position, but also change the force. And we developed a new type of actuator called the Bayer actuator. Now, using this Bayer actuator with the Nabi, we developed a second version called Nabi 2. Now, if you remember, Nabi was our experiment for studying new type of bipedal locomotion.

9:14Dennis Hong: But it turns out that this Nabi with these new actuators, it doesn't work very well in terms of walking. However, unexpectedly, we didn't know this, but this robot is great for jumping and hopping. You can jump forward, backward, and turn directions. It's brilliant. But the really cool thing is once it jumps and when it lands, the mortars become generators and the impact is changed to electricity and it can charge its battery so it's very energy efficient. And Navi 2 is ready to go. So bear actuator with Navi was Navi 2 then bear actuator with Alfred is Alfred 2 and this is the next generation of Alfred.

9:53Dennis Hong: So this is the very first time you turn on the switch. Look carefully the reaction of our students.

10:04Oh my god!

10:06Dennis Hong: The f***! Excuse me. Oh my god! Yo! That was amazing! This is remarkable. Walking is also very fast and stable.

10:21Dennis Hong: So we wanted to do something more interesting. We wanted to make it do Taekwondo.

10:28Whoa!

10:33Dennis Hong: We're just having too much fun. And Alfred 2 is ready to go.

10:42Dennis Hong: Now, Alfred 2 is actually a very practical robot. For example, this is an example of picking up a box, delivering it, and putting it nicely on the ground or on the table. I sped off the video because it was pretty slow, but you can get an idea how we can use these new types of robots for different applications. And this is Alfred 2. Now, we looked at two legs. we looked at four legs. What about six legs? Of course, we have a hexapod robot. Now, this robot hex is about the size of a small car. Now, the cool thing about six-leg robots is this. Now, to have static stability, the minimum number of contacts with the ground is three.

11:18Dennis Hong: Think of a camera tripod. If you have a hexapod robot, you can always have three-point contact with the ground, three, three, three, and this makes it really great for outdoor environment, rough environment. This particular robot we're developing for demining applications, getting rid of landmines underground autonomously. If you see it in person, it's kind of scary. It's big and goes like this. So this is Hex. We also have a smaller version. This is called Sylvia, six-leg vehicle with intelligent articulation. And as I mentioned, these type of robots are really great for unstructured terrain, such as this.

11:54Dennis Hong: It can also climb up and down stairs And this robot might be the strongest Six leg robots out there 20 kilograms

12:09Dennis Hong: Now the reason why you wanted to make it really strong Is because you want this robot to do some Very interesting new type of stuff If you put suction cups on the feet It can stick to the wall and climb and if you give it an arm, it can do some fun stuff on the Blackboard too. And this is Sylvia. So we talked about vertical mobility. 12 years ago in my last TEDx talk, I've introduced a robot called Climber. It's a robot for climbing cliffs using cables like a human. But this year, we want to get rid of the cable. We want to make it do free climbing. And I'm very excited to introduce a brand new robot called Scalar, Spine Enhanced Climbing Autonomous Leg Exploration Robot.

12:50Dennis Hong: Now, when you first look at it, it looks like a generic portal pet robot, four-leg robot. It's actually very strong, but strength is not all. We had to develop this new type of gripper. We call these spine grippers that can really grab onto the surfaces. And this video, we just took it a few days ago. So literally, it's taking its very first few steps. Now, why are we interested in cliff-climbing robots? Rescue missions? Of course. But we're really interested in planetary applications. Now, as you know, in Mars, we have these rovers discovering the new planet. However, the really science-rich sites are always at the cliffs, and these rovers cannot get there.

13:27Dennis Hong: So something like this will enable those kind of exploration in the science-rich sites on planetary surfaces. This is scalar. Now, we talked about legs, but what about wheels? Of course we have robots with wheels. This is called OMBRO, Omnidirectional Balancing Unicycle Robot. and as the name implies, it has one wheel. It's omnidirectional. It can go forward, backwards, sideways, and diagonal. But if you look at it, it doesn't even need to change its orientation. When you see it, it's almost like magic. It feels like it's gliding over the surface. Isn't that cool? It can also balance and climb very steep surfaces.

14:04Dennis Hong: Now, it follows paths. Now, yes, it has one wheel, but actually has these smaller rollers in the rim to generate this kind of motion as well. So why do we want to build a robot like this? We like to have robots living with us in this environment. And in this environment, sometimes there's crowded, a lot of people or obstacles. To go through people or to avoid obstacles, it's very important to have a very small cross-section. And probably a single wheel is the best way to have a very small cross-section. And this is Ombron. Now, I've shown you many different shapes, sizes, mechanisms of robots.

14:37Dennis Hong: And if you remember this, the whole thing started because we had problems with this bipedal locomotion. Is there a way to make these humanoid robots not fall at all? There is. And this robot is called Baloo.

14:57Dennis Hong: This is my son, Ethan, by the way.

15:04Dennis Hong: What if robots never fail? What if we could change the direction of gravity? I'm very excited to show you our new robot, Baloo BNC-assisted lightweight leg unit This robot is a bipedal robot, size of a human being But the body is a helium balloon It's a balloon with two legs How does it walk? It walks like this Very elegant, isn't it? This robot might be the safest robot out there It can walk forward, backward, sideways It can turn directions We want this robot to be living with us. So it can climb upstairs, downstairs, go over obstacles. It's fun to play with it.

15:51Dennis Hong: It can hop. Now it can hop up to the height of a table. Oh, this robot is a good dancer. If you turn on the music, it listens to the beat and it dances to the beat. Now, we do crazy things when we do experiments. Once we opened the window and threw the robot out the window. Isn't it great? It solves all the problem of bipedal locomotion. It's cheap. It doesn't fall down. However, it also creates new problems. This robot is horrible outdoors because if the wind blows, it floats away.

16:28Dennis Hong: Now, these are some of the images of our secret projects. I'm not going to explain it, but we're using projection mapping, vortex cameras, and many different things. This robot literally can walk on water. You put ping pong balls on the foot, it can walk on water. You can also walk on a tightrope. Is this cool? This is Baloo. Thank you.

16:55Dennis Hong: Now, all of this new inventions and creativity came from the problem of humanoid robots. However, secretly, we've still been working on humanoid robots. And this robot is called Artemis, our latest one, advanced robotics technology for enhanced movement and improved stability. And this is the very first time I'm showing to the general public. This is a sneak peek of what is about to come. Now, this robot Artemis uses new type of technology. It's based on that bear actuator. And because it's so new, you cannot buy any of these components. So we have to design and fabricate every single part of this robot.

17:31Dennis Hong: We have just finished assembly of the lower body. And Artemis is coming too. I cannot wait to show it to you, probably on stage in my next talk. I've shown you a lot of our newest creation robots from our lab, Romella. And I would like to give credit to our brilliant, hardworking students at Romella. But what is the source of this creativity? What's the source of this energy? What is the secret to this crazy productivity? I think the next video will be able to answer that question. What did that guy say? Look at that. You remember Baloo? We're doing the experiment of dancing. By the way, this is Saturday, 2 a.m.

18:10Dennis Hong: in the morning.

18:17Dennis Hong: By the way, that's me on the left dancing. You probably haven't seen a professor dance and party with the students while conducting serious experiments, right? Openness, freedom, trust, having fun, and truly believing what you do can change the world. These are some of the secrets behind our next seven species of robot. Thank you very much.

18:46All right, that's our show. Thanks for listening. TED Tech is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter, who also wrote it with me, Sherelle Dorsey. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar, and the show is Fact Checked by Julia Dickerson. Special thanks to Farrah DeGrange for her support as a project manager. I'm Sherelle Dorsey. Let's keep digging into the future. Join me next week for more.

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