ColdFusion - Next Generation Robots - Boston Dynamics, Asimo, Da Vinci, SoFi

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are watching Cold Fusion TV. Hi, welcome to another Cold Fusion video. In the last Robotics episode, we took a look at the most realistic robots in terms of strictly interaction or movement. Now we're going to take a look at the juicy stuff. In this video, we'll check out the cutting edge of three categories. Robotic dexterity, versatility and overall innovation. Let's begin with dexterity. When it comes to robotic dexterity and athleticism, there's no one doing it better than

Starting point is 00:00:38 Boston Dynamics. The company, now owned by the Japanese firm SoftBank, was founded in 1992 and has since risen to become the leader in robotics. Atlas is a six-foot humanoid robot that's been designed for search and rescue. Its abilities include navigating outdoor rough terrain and manipulating its environment. In order to see, Atlas is equipped with stereo cameras and a laser range finder. The robot is so advanced that it can now do some tasks that I'd say most humans couldn't. This includes successful backflips. When released in 2013, Atlas was an absolute breakthrough in humanoid robotics, as it could easily walk on uneven surfaces and even snow-covered terrain, and it can get up when knocked over. This is something that the previous generation

Starting point is 00:01:20 of humanoid robots couldn't manage. Maybe to put some minds at ease, the Department of Defense has stated that it has no interest in using this robot for offensive or defensive warfare. Spot Mini. The canine-inspired Spot Mini weighs about 25 kilograms or 55 pounds. and is much lighter than other Boston Dynamics robots. It runs off electricity and can operate for about one and a half hours. Spot Mini is also the quietest robot from Boston Dynamics. In February 2018, a video of Spot Mini opening a door with a claw made it to number one on YouTube trending, and a lot of people did find it a bit creepy, especially if they were a fan of Black Mirror.

Starting point is 00:01:54 But I really just see good mechatronics engineering. So most of the footage that you've seen of Spot Mini is when the robot isn't autonomous mode. But what some people might not know is that Spot Mini can actually be controlled by a human. Here's a pretty cool example of a TED Talk where that happens. So this is Seth Davis, who's my robot wrangler today, and he's giving spot some general direction by steering it around, but all the coordination of the legs and the sensors is done by the robot's computers on board. It's got a solid-state gyro and IMU on board. It loves to use its dynamic gates, like running. And it's got one more.

Starting point is 00:02:40 Some of you may see that as a head and the neck, but believe me, it's an arm. And Seth is driving it around. Now, he's actually driving the hand, and the body is following. So the two are coordinated in the way I was talking about before, the way people can do that. And in fact, one of the cool things that Spock can do, we call chicken head mode, and it keeps its head in one place in space, and it moves its body all around. There's a variation of this that's called twerking. So Spot, I'm feeling a little thirsty.

Starting point is 00:03:12 Could you get me a soda? Now for this demo, Seth is not doing any driving. We have a lidar on the back of the robot, and it's using these props we put on the stage to localize itself. It's gone over to that location. Now it's using a camera that's in its hand to find the cup, picks it up, and again, Seth's not driving. So we planned out a path for it to go.

Starting point is 00:03:38 It looked like it was going off the path. And now Seth's going to take over control again because I'm a little bit chicken about having to do this by itself. Thank you, Spot. Feel about having just finished your TED performance. Me too. Thank you all and thanks to the team at Boston Dynamics who did all the hard work behind this. Another robot that Boston Dynamics has is Handel.

Starting point is 00:04:14 Handel combines the dexterity of other Boston Dynamics robots but with wheels. It stands 6.5 feet high and can travel about 15 kilometres an hour or 9 miles an hour. It also runs on battery and can travel a pretty impressive 24 kilometres or 15 miles on one charge. And to add to this, it can jump 4 feet high. Versatility. Honda's Asimo robot takes the cake for the most versatile robot in terms of ease of integration into various target markets. Asimaux, which stands for advanced step in innovative mobility, has the ability to make sense

Starting point is 00:04:58 of its environment via facial and sound recognition, but this goes a step further. Asimo can also understand postures and gestures such as handshakes, pointing or waving. This enables the robot to interact with humans quite well. It's also capable of detecting the movement of multiple objects, including distance and direction. This is achieved by two cameras in Asimus' head, acting as its eyes. Asimo can follow a face or turn its head to a person when being approached or spoken to. The robot also has the ability to recognise general sounds such as an object falling or other loud noises.

Starting point is 00:05:30 Overall, the robot is very multifunctional and can perform a number of general tasks, such as turning on light switches, opening doors, carrying objects and pushing carts. Now let's take a look at innovation. This one comes from the field of medicine. It's the Da Vinci robot and I think it's a pretty good idea. The Da Vinci system is robotic technology that allows a surgeon's hand movements to be translated into smaller, more precise movements using tiny instruments inside of the patient's body. The Da Vinci has two parts, a tower where the robotic arm operates and a separate console

Starting point is 00:06:04 where it's being controlled by the surgeon. A tower is positioned directly over the patient during surgery and is equipped with four controlled computer arms. Three of them have a wealth of surgical instruments and the fourth is equipped with 3D cameras. At the console booth, the surgeon can operate the controls while looking through a stereoscopic monitor. This monitor provides an HD 3D view of the area being operated on. The end result is now hyper-precise movement without human artefacts such as shaking. Here's an example of the system performing a mock surgery on a grape. In the medical field, the Da Vinci is currently used for cardiac

Starting point is 00:06:51 surgery, general surgery, head and neck surgery, urologic surgery, and various other surgeries. So finer and more controlled movements surely have their advantages, but some critics note that the Da Vinci system ultimately limits the creative freedom because the software can't be altered by physicians. So let's move from the operating table to somewhere completely different. Deep Sea Exploration. And we'll start off by Stanford's Ocean One robot. This robot is pretty interesting.

Starting point is 00:07:19 It's a humanoid android that stands in between a human diver and an autonomous underwater vehicle. Stanford's Ocean One robot is supposed to dive into areas that are too dangerous for humans and likely to be damaged by traditional autonomous vehicles. areas such as coral reefs. Ocean 1 is controlled by a human who receives haptic feedback on the controls when the robot touches something. So the next robot takes this idea a little bit further. It's a fish robot called SOFi. In general, we as humans know next to nothing about the vast oceans on this planet and the life

Starting point is 00:07:54 that lives within it. For example, the very first footage of the elusive Greenland shark, which can live for more than 400 years, was only captured in 2011. One solution is to have a robot that actually looks like a convincing part of wildlife, so it can swim close to and study ocean ecosystems without being detected. MIT researchers have recently just successfully tested so-fi in deep diving, and it can swim up to 40 minutes at once. It easily handled currents and took high-resolution photos and videos using a fish eye lens, somewhat ironically.

Starting point is 00:08:27 Robert Katzmann is head of this research at MIT's Computer and Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and he says, quote, to our knowledge, this is the first robotic fish that can swim underneath in three dimensions for extended periods of time. We are excited about the possibility of being able to use a system like this to get closer to marine life than humans could ever get on their own. End quote. The scientists hope that so far can shed some light on the ocean's deep mysteries. Staying on the topic of animals, our next robot is a cat. Open cat is an interesting approach to robotics. It's a low budget yet capable, simple kit project for the

Starting point is 00:09:04 those wanting to learn about robotics. Inventor Rong-Zong Lee explains, quote, We are developing programmable and highly maneuverable quadruped robots for STEM education and AI-enhanced services. Its compact and bionic design makes it the only affordable consumer robot that mimics various mammal behaviors and reacts to its surroundings. Its innovative soft joints reduce wear or shock and extends the lifetime of hardware. End quote. There are two versions, one that uses an adreno motion module for real-time adapt. and a full version which uses a Raspberry Pi to enable AI-enhanced perception. The Pi brings Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and touch-distance sensors, voice and night vision capabilities.

Starting point is 00:09:45 The project is geared at the less tech inclined who still want to have some fun and something to play with. Lee states that the N-Gold would be like a little robotic cat Alexa or Android phone with an app store that you can download third-party applications and functions for. He hopes the end price will be about the same as the average smartphone. Okay, so this last one may not be a perfect fit, but I thought I'll chuck it in. These are robots whose sole purpose are to create as much damage as possible, and no, I'm not going to be revealing secret rise of Terminator. What I'm talking about is those backyard-built robots from battlebots in America and Robot Wars in the UK. When I was about seven or eight years old, I used to adore Robot Wars.

Starting point is 00:10:23 In fact, I've told you guys before that the name of this channel was based on my old high school band's name, but even before that, Cold Fusion was the name of a robot I built in primary school. Anyhow, I had a look at the new American version of Battlebots and it's come so far. It's almost like a sport in ways with different strategies and excited commentators. As you can see, there's some insane effort put into some of these machines. But as far as pure destruction goes, the title for this category has to go to Tombstone in the American series. So with that, we've come to the end of the video. So which robot was your favourite and why?

Starting point is 00:11:22 So to recap, we have the efforts from Boston Dynamics with almost human-like balance and agility, The friendly robot from Honda, Asimone, the surgical da Vinci robot that increases the technical abilities of surgeons. Ocean One, an Android diver. SoFi, a swimming fish robot. Open cat, aiming to bring robotics to everyone. And lastly, backyard-built fighting robots. Let me know in the comments section below. So, I want to thank you guys for watching the whole way through this video.

Starting point is 00:11:47 If you're new here, feel free to subscribe. This has been to Go-Go, you've been watching Cold Fusion, and I'll catch you again soon for the next video. Cheers, guys. Have a good one.

ColdFusion - Next Generation Robots - Boston Dynamics, Asimo, Da Vinci, SoFi

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