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S: We stopped at a bar to do some more work
S: Normally I would get a beer, Hannah would get a soda
S: Tonight, she found a menu item that she wanted to try
H: That is called the Afterglow at the Arb, it's Valentine white blossom vodka
H: Blueberry, lemon and lavender and it is so good
S: And you don't like alcohol H: I hate alcohol normally
H: This is the first time I've ever liked it
H: I really like it, maybe I just didn't try the right things
H: This is really good
[intro music] Hello, hello, welcome to the show, welcome to the show
Welcome to the show, it's time to talk about our lives [Chloe bark]
S: Today we are speaking to the engineering/robotics department
S: At the university of Michigan, it's different and fun
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S: This is our stage H: [laughs]
S: The robots are here, they're taking over
M: This is legit H: [laughs]
H: I kind of want to pet him
H: Pet it? S: Yeah
H: What part of him?
H: Awww
H: Oh my god [People cheering and clapping]
[music]
H: I'm gonna try the very fancy one
H: Oh, this, hold on S: [laughs]
[unintelligible]
M: Pull up to release and then start walking
H: I'll power walk, I'll start turning around
H: Oh, I feel it now, yeah
H: Oh my god [laughs]
H: Wait I have to go fast, it stops when you go really slow
H: It's pushing me
M: You just ride that kick and you go a little further
H: Yeah
S: Did you feel it's easier to walk? H: Yeah, it's pushing me
S: Yeah H: It feels, yeah, wow
S: Can you jump higher? H: We have separate legs for that
All: [laugh]
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W: That little dumbwaiter looking thing on the end?
S: Uh huh
W: Just in case they need to look out and chuck a drone out there
W: So we have an access through this room to help with them
W: So this is where students can stack all the blocks using only a camera
W: And some fancy math for the robot arm
G: Yeah, I had the privilege of teaching this class during Covid
G: And so what we actually did was for every single student
G: We would send a kit home with all the parts for it, send it home to them
G: And so they could all assemble it on their own at home
G: And so they could still work on team projects
S: Yeah G: Because they all had the same base
G: Now, was it a headache? Yes All: [laugh]
G: Because they're all using Apple, Windows, Linux
G: My wifi works, my wifi doesn't
G: But it was really amazing that every kid had this LIDAR enabled
G: Had the wheels, the motors, all of the brains and guts all the same
G: So we could teach that class
G: The students could actually remote call in, now they have access to that camera
G: And they could remote into the computer, they get the camera from up above too
G: And then they can interact and interface with the robots
S: Wow
G: So it was really amazing, the development team on the back-end
G: Letting the students have pretty close to a normal class experience despite Covid
S: Yeah
G: Now what they did need me for, why they were paying me the big bucks
All: [laugh]
G: Was when someone knocked a pile of blocks over...
G: They needed me to stack those blocks back up again
S: That was your job G: Yeah
[laughter]
S: Thank you to Pegasus Dream Tour for sponsoring this video, this is really exciting
S: It probably won't surprise you that wheelchairs and disability
S: Are not very well represented in video games
S: You guys know I like to play video games and I've never really been able to see myself
S: In any of the games that I've ever played
S: Well now, there is a game where disability is represented
S: In all of its beautiful glory, it is called Pegasus Dream Tour
S: It is the official game of the Paralympics, and it is so fun
S: This is an open world mobile game where you create an avatar
S: And you can make your avatar use a wheelchair
S: And then you take your avatar to the Paralympic village
S: Where you can interact with other avatars, train your character
S: And do real Paralympic events, like Bocce which is my favorite
S: Track and field, and a lot more
S: Besides the game just being really fun, I think it's so important
S: That we finally have a big game that acknowledges and celebrates disability
S: So important, so cool, we'll put the link below where you can get it
S: I invite you to play, maybe I'll see you in the world
S: And we can chat and compete against each other, and I will beat you
S: Anyway, check it out, it's free to download and it is a lot of fun
O: So I can reach out and grab one of these arms and turn in place
S: This is like our Oculus H: I know
O: Yeah, it's very similar to the Oculus
O: So I can do things like this which in one sense seem incredibly simple
O: Like, this is a children's toy H: [laughs]
O: But I can't program how to do this, it's incredibly hard
S: And then in terms of grabbing and releasing? Is there a button that you need?
O: Yeah, I use this button to grab and release
O: So I have my hand, when I hold my hand with this arm, lights up
O: Now I can grab it, and now we're linked
O: Now I can move this around, the arm follows, then I have my trigger finger
O: Which, when I press that, it opens and closes the arm
S: Yeah
O: And some of the challenges, there's some lag so I need to go kind of slowly
O: What the robot sees is actually four holes
S: Yeah
S: Is that just a camera from an Xbox? O: Exactly, yep, yep
All: [laugh]
G: The Xbox Kinect was a boon for robotics vision researchers
S: That's so funny O: Yeah
O: I swear someone at Xbox just loved... G: We have another one just sitting here
L: Nowadays you can make them this size or even like half this size
S: Uh huh G: But I think for a good six years
G: That was the gold standard, yeah
O: And I'm wondering, okay, talking to my mother law
O: She says one of her biggest challenges is when she's at home
O: And if she drops her phone, she has to wait for my father in law, her husband, to come home
S: Yeah O: To pick it up
O: Or she says she'll spend ten minutes with her grabber trying to get it
S: Yeah O: So what are the quintessential tasks?
O: What are the most important tasks?
S: When I am pulled up to a desk and I have my laptop half on the desk
S: And half on my lap, which is how I'm most effective
S: Being able to move the laptop back onto the desk
S: So that I can then put my hand up on my joystick like this
S: Because this can't be down if my laptop is in the way
G: Sure O: Yeah
S: And then move myself, come back, bring the laptop back onto my lap
S: And it's a whole process that I've not solved yet, that's a big one, yeah
S: Picking things up, what else
H: I think something that the Jaco arm doesn't do is if you pick up smaller things
H: Like you can pick up a can but you can't open it
S: Yeah
L: So you need to add a fingernail All: [laugh]
A: Actually opening it with one hand is really tough
H: Yeah L: That's true, it's one arm
G: So I'm wondering, is the solution not to do it with the hand
G: For bottles there are things that you can put on your counter
G: Where you can get them and just get a bottle and go like that
[sounds of agreement] H: Yeah
G: The Jaco arm I would imagine it would go too slowly
[laughter]
G: It would get it off and then still have to go far to get it down
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T: So Mark, who's wherever he is right now, has been working with a spatula
T: To start to develop that scraping motion in a contact-rich manner
T: If this arm were rotated a little bit and were making contact with only this corner
T: If you're flipping an egg or a pancake that doesn't really work
T: You just put a line through your pancake or whatever
T: You want the line of contact to be all along this edge
T: So if you know that the point of contact is here and not here
T: We also know how can we adjust our spatula to get that desired grip
S: Yeah T: So that's what Mark has been working on
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D: So a lot of the work that we do in here is centred around flight systems
D: So we actually have a lot of flight vehicles, I'll go grab one of them real quick
D: So we have a bunch of these multi rotors, this is a quad rotor cause it's got 4
D: We have some that are called hexi rotors or octicopters
D: That have six and eight propellers and things like that
D: And the nice thing about these sorts of systems is that they hover really easily
D: And then they can transit around as opposed to fixed wing planes
D: Where they need to keep going forward S: Yeah
D: In order to keep moving around, and they also need fairly long runways
D: In order to take off, we can just take off from right here to bring this up like we're doing
G: Yeah, they're doing neat stuff, they do stuff with coordinating teams of drones
D: That's right G: For doing different tasks
G: For instance for doing mapping and understanding a little bit more
G: About using information in an area to help the drone navigate, especially indoors
S: Yeah D: So I'm using magnetic fields of spaces
D: To improve mapping capabilities S: Huh
D: So I'll fly my drone around the room like this
D: And use a bunch of observations from my magnetometer on here
D: To make like a 3d magnetic field map of this room
S: Oh wow D: And then once I have that map
D: I can use it to help me figure out my position and my orientation better
D: And then I can use the motion capture cameras that we have
D: To compare my estimates to the actual thing that's going on
S: Very cool H: Wow
D: Yeah, we can go in here and see some of the other work that's going on
T: Oh, cool
D: So one of the projects that another Phd student is working on
D: Is using a group of five of these vehicles, we have a bunch of them in the lab
D: And attaching them to a common object like this
D: So all five of these strings are attachment points
D: That we'll have for these drones, and then they'll take off in a synchronized way
D: In order to lift this thing off, and then be able to transport it around
D: The goal is to be able to carry heavier things than one drone would be able to
D: By itself, and right now it's a pretty light payload but the concept is in progress
D: And one of our labmates is working on treecutting applications and tree maintenance
S: Oh wow D: And one form of maintenance is cutting
D: And one plan that he has is to come at the branch that they want to cut
D: With a sense of impact and be able to bounce off it and do that a few times to cut off the branch
[laughter]
D: So he's kind of testing this with a pogo stick idea
D: And just kind of bouncing off the ground and seeing how well it works
D: Before you start doing it in the trees and there's branches and leaves
D: And things get crazy [laughter]
D: And then this other project that's here, it's a quadplane
D: Half of the plane part is off right now but there's another wing that's normally here
S: Yeah D: So there's these 4 rotors here
D: That make it act like a quad rotor, and then there's this fixed wing part
D: That let it act like a fixed wing plane
D: And the nice thing about that is that we can have the vertical takeoff aspect
D: Of the multi rotors that I was talking about earlier
D: But usually we get pretty low flight times with these multi rotors
D: Just because the cogs are just spinning so hard all the time
D: Just to keep it off the ground
D: But what we can do instead is add this front rotor here
D: To add another propeller, and then have it transition into fixed wing flight
S: Yeah
D: And with that you can get much longer durations, much longer distances
D: Than you might be able to with just a multi rotor
D: So Sid and another PhD student, his name's Akshay, are working on this project
D: And a lot of the difficulties comes in that transition period
D: Where it's not quite a fixed wing, it's not quite a multi rotor
D: It's kind of both and there's a lot of aerodynamic forces that are acting on it
D: That we don't normally think about in multi rotor land
D: That start coming into play, yep S: Good old mind blowing
H: So cool [laughter]
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