Just over four and half years ago, in what was my 8th video I looked at five of the most
advanced robots at the time namely Asimo, Atlas, spot, cheetah and Pepper but just as
a week is a long time in politics, four and a half years in the tech world feels like
an eternity so what has happened to some of these robots and are we any closer to seeing
this type of legged robot out and about in the world in general.
This video is sponsored by Brilliant The first of the famous five and the probably
the most famous of them all is ASIMO by being the first to look like, move like and interact
with its biological makers. ASIMO was created by the Honda company in
Japan and was quite a step-change for the company more commonly known as a car and motorcycle
maker but Honda has not been afraid to diversify into different sectors and the roots of ASIMO
go back to the 1980s with Hondas stated aim at the time to make a walking robot. The initial
result was the E series which from 1986 to 93 would create an increasing sophisticated
series of walking robots, though at the time they looked a pair of legs with a giant toaster
grafted on the top. But this was just a means to an end and by
1993 the E6 could autonomously balance, walk over obstacles, and even climb stairs.
The following P series looked more like a humanoid with a torso, arms and legs and by
using wireless control could perform completely independently. This eventually led in 2000
to ASIMO or Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. The name ASIMO is also is a nod to the writer
and professor Isaac Asimov and his Three Laws of Robotics.
ASIMO became a robotic icon travelling the world and showcasing japans advances in robotics
up until 2017 when Honda announced that they were pulling the plug on the original dancing
robot. So why when research into legged humanoid
robots is becoming more widespread did Honda pull out. Well, it seems that after 35 years
of research and leading the field for decades, Honda couldn’t see a payday for their humanoid
robot. Maybe they know something that the others
and the new start up’s which have sprouted in the past 4 years or so don’t but the
tech isn’t going to be stuffed in a cupboard and forgotten.
Honda has said that they will be using the underlying tech in new products and in their
car and motorcycles with things like a self-balancing motorcycle, sensors and AI for self-driving
cars even down to robotic lawnmowers. They won’t be pulling out of robotics altogether,
but It seems there will be more money in producing these sub-systems and other things on-mass
compared to humanoid robots like ASIMO, at least for the foreseeable future.
While ASIMO has been consigned to the parts bin of history, Atlas, Boston Dynamics take
on the Humanoid robot which has been seen doing parkour-style running and jumping but
more recently has taken the dancing robot theme to a new level with the “do you love
me” video released by Boston dynamics. Now it seems that as soon as this was released
half the comments referred it to as being the thin end of the wedge and that the next
dance moves would the one used by the robots to dance on our graves as Skynet take over.
Now, It might seem like Altas has gained some super robotic ability to dance much better
and more like a human compared to ASIMO’s previous dad dancing attempts. But this has
not been gained by Altas watching a human dancer and using some Skynet style AI to copy
their best moves. No this is nothing more a dancing toaster, albeit a very good dancing
toaster. Now what I mean is that this is not a result
of a learned routine thru AI but a lot of what is effectively keyframing, a process
similar to how animated characters in films and game are made to move. However, looking
at the smoothness of the moves I suspect that this was created from MOCAP data or Motion
Capture. Motion Capture is used in the film and games
industry and usually involves an actor or dancer wearing a black bodysuit with white
or coloured ping pong balls attached at specific points. A computer then tracks the movement
of the balls and maps them to a virtual skeleton. This can then be used to control a virtual
character or if the hardware is sophisticated enough, a robot like Atlas.
This makes it much easier to create very realistic looking movement without having to create
hand code each keyframe and if it was hand keyframed the guys who did it should get a
raise or work in Hollywood. Altas still has its core stability systems
which it uses to balance and move just like we stand, walk and move without thinking about
it, the dance moves would just work as an extra layer on top, a bit like if a human
dancer were to have a neural implant to download a new dance moves without having to learn
them. All of this just goes to show how well developed
Atlas’s hardware and software control have become and no doubt many will be thinking
when that DARPA funded research will find its way into robotic soldiers which would
be on the top of the militaries list complete with the ability to pull off a cool dance
on the enemies grave when they have finished. Something which has also changed in the last
4+ years is the ownership of Boston Dynamics which started as an offshoot of MIT or the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Back in 2016, it was owned by Goole X who then
sold it to the Japans Softbank in 2017 the same people that make the Pepper social robot.
Well, as of December 2020 Hyundai Motor group bought an 80% stake in the company, so as
one motor company bows out of legged robots, another buys its way in.
Our next robot, the Cheetah 2 was last seen in 2015 autonomously jumping over objects
as it ran and using a laser vision system to see the objects and then work out how to
jump over them. Its predecessor the Cheetah, was recorded running at 28.5 mph or 45.8 km/h
on a treadmill which still the speed record for a legged robot.
Since then MIT has produced the Cheetah 3 which can now leap and gallop across rough
terrain, it can climb stairs covered with loose debris and recover from an external
shove or push but this time it does it without a vision or sensor system using “blind locomotion”
similar to the way in which you feel way across a room in the pitch black.
The idea is to develop systems that can work where vision might not be possible so this
could be integrated into a visual robot that might use cameras to see doors or walls but
if it entered an unlit room or an area where high levels radiation made its camera systems
too noisy to use it could still proceed. Along with Cheetah 3, MIT has also shown the
mini cheetah, a small agile four-legged robot that can run, jump and do things like backflips.
But apart from the party tricks, it's designed to let researchers develop new controllers
and sensors without the fear of breaking the robot when things don’t go to plan. The
group of mini cheetahs here are being remotely controlled by the MIT researchers and are
not using any AI to play with the football or to do the synchronised movements and interactions.
It also shows off things like the reversible knee joints allow it to recover from any position.
Back to Boston dynamics and their small four-legged robot called Spot. This has also had a major
update and is also available to buy, if you have about $75,000 spare. Spot also appeared
in the Atlas dancing robots video doing its funky moves but again this is not AI, those
were created by the Boston Dynamics' Choreographer software but it comes with a warning this
is at the owner's risk and it will fall down a lot until you have perfected the routines.
But Spot has competition from both from China and the US. The Chinese company Unitree robotics
have 3 models, the A1, Aliengo and Laikago based very much on the Spot as the company
founder has stated he is a big fan of Boston dynamics but these start at $10,000 so they
are much affordable for companies and enthusiast a like.
Likewise, the US company Ghost robotics have quad legged robots similar to Spot using direct
drive gearless joints to go where wheeled and tracked robots are less able and using
more 3D printed parts the price is also competitive. This seems to be the major selling point and
something that two-legged robots still struggle with. These small 4 legged versions can go
places where men would struggle or would be too dangerous be that from nuclear, chemical
or biological threats. For two-legged robots the biggest competitor
is from humans, we can still outmanoeuvre and outlast even the best robots like Atlas,
it’s battery run time is about 75 minutes and people are much cheaper to hire.
This is where we can start to see why Honda pulled the plug on ASIMO, apart from very
specific jobs in dangerous or highly specialised locations where humans can’t go, in also
every other situation men can still do a better job than two-legged robots and will do so
for a long time to come. In the Mars exploration missions, the Mars
rover scientists have said that a man could do in a few minutes what a Mars rover would
take a day or more to do but getting a rover to Mars is far, far easier than getting men
there and then back again. And so we come the last of our robot five
with the Softbank Pepper robot and here we don’t see the emphasis on trying to move
around like human on legs but more about connecting on an emotional level to people like another
person might do, being a personal companion, a greeter, an educator.
As a commercial product is has been quite successful at about $2000 for an entry-level
unit. The non-threatening look, puppy dog eyes and
outgoing personality draw people and especially children in and in no time they are talking
to it just like they would to another person. If anything this is where I think will see
the most widespread use of future robotic AI. They are already used as companions for
old people when there are no real people around and although it might seem a cheap trick to
many of the people who use them, they would prefer this to nothing at all. With the increasing
capabilities of AI in the near future this type of personal robot would easily past the
Turing test, that is to be indistinguishable in communications from that of a real human
in a blind test.
Many of the legged robots so we’ve seen so far are controlled remotely by a human
but if they are to become more widespread and truly autonomous then having some form
of AI onboard or data linking to an AI system will be essential but we need people to program
these up and coming AI systems and our sponsors for this video Brilliant can help you understand
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This month there is a new course called Statistics 1 that shows you how to make the best decisions
with limited information and of course for the robotics fans there are others like machine
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