Translator: Riaki Poništ Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
Hello everyone!
Have you ever come up with an idea for something new that doesn't exist yet?
Why is it that we don't have that already?
For example, you are suddenly struck with an idea,
and then a thought crosses your mind
that you can get a patent and become a billionaire.
There are only three possible cases why that "something" doesn't exist.
Case one: no one else has thought of it before.
Here, you can become the true inventor.
Case two: someone had thought about it but wasn't able to make it happen.
That's why it doesn't exist.
Such ideas tend to become viable with technological advances
and you see examples of this in cartoons and films.
Case three: there is no need for it.
No one wants it so it doesn’t exist.
This often happens to corporations and researchers.
You think you've invented something promising
but it tends to lack a practical value, which is why it doesn't exist.
You simply have misjudged its value.
But it's hard to face the music and you can't easily give up
seeing yourself as the inventor you want to become.
Even if the reality starts to dawn on you,
you would still be fixated on getting patents
and wouldn't stop attempting to create something new.
Some crazy people would be driven by nonsensical mantras
like "the whole point is to create something funny,"
or "the show must go on."
I'm a quintessential example.
(Laughter)
Very good! That was the only part you are supposed to laugh.
(Laughter)
There is one thing I'm particular about.
I’ve invented many things
which you might find it hard to see any use in.
But what would you do first
when you have been asked to build a pyramid, for example:
Would you start with deciding how high you want to make it?
Or which direction it should face, or materials, or designs?
What I focus on first and foremost is what should be the icing on the top.
I don’t think about the pyramid itself until later.
I work on the icing on the top first.
And once I've come up with an amazing idea,
then I put all my effort into building the pyramid.
You might call this approach
nothing more than "playfulness" in a professional context,
but I consider this of utmost importance for anything one engages in.
As a child, I always dreamed of living in a house full of electric tools.
The three must-have consumer electronics are a TV, refrigerator, and a washer.
But in my house, we have a different selection:
number one - a lathe, yes, in a family home.
(Laughter)
Number two - a milling machine, which weighs 2.4 tonnes,
and number three - a welder.
The most fundamental rule of inventing is to cut and glue.
I'm a weirdo who can’t live without those tools around me.
(Laughter)
Now, let me go through just nine examples out of myriad of my creations.
You're now seeing a fully-automatic window cleaning robot
I created in 1998.
We all know about robot vacuum cleaners that move around the house,
but my idea came from my aversion to wiping windows to clean.
It can also be used as an advertising tool
sticking on a wall in a show room, which I added as a playful feature.
This is my creation from 2000, a suitcase you can take with hands off.
I was sick of having to carry my suitcase on my trips abroad,
which motivated me to work really hard to build this robot.
It follows you everywhere keeping on your side using a sensor.
Here is its playful feature:
when it hits a bump on the road, it does a wheelie
while keeping balance to go over obstacles.
To demonstrate what it can do,
you get to specifically go down a bad road.
(Laughter)
That's the perk of this invention.
This vehicle is from 2001, two months before the Segway was released.
I got the inspiration when pushing my child in a stroller.
I thought, "What if a stroller stood up and moved after you collapse it?"
That lead to this vehicle that can balance itself
to move around and parallel park smoothly.
That is the vehicle I developed that year and we managed to do a demo run.
Then in 2002, I made this all-direction electric vehicle
in the shape of "omusubi," a typical Japanese snack made of rice.
I named it "Omusubi".
As you can see, I had more meat on my bones.
I was 20kg heavier than I am now.
It was probably because of work-related stress.
(Laughter)
We have a family inside joke of calling this state
"futo-ress" [fat and stress].
(Laughter)
I was literally fat-reseed at the time.
The playful part of this invention
is that you step forward in any direction, and the vehicle will know which way to go
by sensors embedded on the surface which look like sesame seeds,
typical condiments we use on omusibis.
It looks cute doesn't it?
In 2004, I created "Kuru-kuru-rin" [spinning around],
another all-direction vehicle using a double layer of wheels
that counter rotate to move in any direction you like.
It wasn't about designing it to move in all directions,
but achieving the functionality of idling in one spot without stopping
while all the wheels are spinning around.
That was the biggest technical challenge I faced in developing it.
My research is all about the tail wagging the dog.
(Laughter)
Then I did "Rokkaku-kun" [Mr. Hexagon],
a robot with hexagonal legs unlike a human's,
with only one arm, which it uses to hang on to something with,
to get down to the floor like monkeys do.
It has unusual looks, and when it does bipedal walking
it uses the arm to help maintain its balance
by calculating the inertia in relation to its body posture.
I often get asked why I didn't give it two arms
because everyone looks at it and thinks it's out of balance.
But that's not true.
My grandfather lost one arm during the war time.
Despite the limitations from amputation, he was quite capable of a lot of things.
So I looked up to him and realised that having both arms
doesn't necessarily mean you have good balance.
That motivated me to create this robot which can walk with one arm.
Then fast-forward to 2006, what you are seeing now is called "Moon".
Some of you might have seen this vehicle at Tokyo Motor Show or CEATEC.
To give you an idea how it was designed, I started with the outer parts,
then designed the rest later.
The crucial element was the diameter of outer wheels.
I decided it had to be one third of the diameter of a Sumo ring.
Then I consecutively designed the rest of the vehicle accordingly.
The playful part of this invention
is the wings on the back that work as indicators.
In the following year, I came up with the idea
of a single caterpillar-wheel-vehicle
that allows you to access all sorts of landscapes.
What came out was one which you don't only ride on,
but also can be controlled remotely keeping itself in balance.
The caterpillar was actually built with conveyer rails used in canteens.
I thought, "What is it like to sit and travel around on that conveyer?"
(Laughter)
The caterpillar was made of such belts to make that quirky fantasy come true.
The year after, I started talking nonsense like "I believe I can fly!",
and that resulted in this one-person, counter-rotating helicopter.
It's a folding helicopter which needs only eight screws to assemble,
and it neatly fits into a wooden heli-box after dissembling.
The maximum propellers tip speed is 510km per hour.
This test pilot was 53 years old.
I recruited a middle-aged man to be my pilot because I thought
it was too dangerous a job for younger people with a bright future.
(Laughter)
So I decided on this middle-aged gentleman
and literally asked him, "Will you die for me, old man?"
(Laughter)
Just kidding.
I kept on tinkering and creating various robots
until the 2011 disaster hit Japan.
I quit participating in robot competitions I used to love so much,
quit motorcycle racing, and left my tennis club
because I decided to start a PhD.
I had just hit 40 at the time.
This is Professor Inaba, my supervisor at the lab.
Raise your hand if you've never heard about him before.
None.
Thank you.
He is regarded as one of "the world's foremost roboticists."
I asked him to join me in creating robots that help change the world for the better
and joined his robotics lab as a PhD student.
I've failed already, unapologetically, and am still going forward.
I'm still a student.
I've recently developed this robot as part of my studies,
a multi-domain flying robot that travels by air, land and sea.
Basically, I wanted one that can travel on the land and move through narrow spaces
even if it has to go on the water in the aftermath of the tsunami.
A robot that can fly wasn't enough.
I ultimately wanted my robot to reach places through narrow spaces,
where regular drones wouldn't be able to reach.
That resulted in 2012's "MUWA" which includes a meaning "dream ring",
and is an acronym for what you can call it in English:
"Multi-field Universal Wheel for Air-land vehicle."
It can hover off the ground with whichever face up,
and record a video from up to 250 meters high.
It can also go to a given GPS position and drop a life preserver.
It's essentially a quadcopter, with a built-in technology
to change the propeller angle itself enabling its intended functions.
I went through a long process of trial and error.
The prototype would fall off 100 times a day, but eventually,
we managed to make it capable of standing still on a tiny surface,
and falling, and rotating, then standing up again.
The latest model can do these odd - sorry, elegant moves.
With these functions, I wanted to realise my original goal.
Rolling like a normal Tyre consumes
only one tenth of the electricity required for flying,
allowing it to travel closer to its destination.
However, my ultimate goal for this drone - to go through the angled cracks -
couldn't be achieved without a further function:
to be able to roll along while keeping any given angle.
We paid great attention to including a program
so that it could stand up at that angle from any position.
Let me quickly show you the culmination of this research,
a combination of all the moves I've just shown you.
When you switch it on, it stands up by itself
and rolls around like a self-balancing unicycle.
It includes a camera attached to the core of the body
so that it can process images and detect an uneven surface.
Normally, if it rolls on like this,
- as the space between the legs of the ladder is angled -
ouch, it can't go further than the ladder.
it adjusts its posture by tilting itself to match the angle of the space,
keeps that posture and moves forward.
I believe that is a novel technology
that distinguishes this from other flying robots.
Now watch how it carries out sensing of the location and comes back.
At the last stage of its development,
we designed a technology to remember the angle of the space it has experienced
and go through it smoothly without bumping into it on the way back.
In 2013, we ventured to improve it further so you can operate it on the water.
Its shell is made of polystyrene,
so it floats on the water, and can freely circle around.
That's not all it can do.
It can go between the legs of this ladder even it there isn't much space there,
and can go around it as well.
The idea was to enhance
its capabilities to access diverse disaster-affected locations.
However, all that still wasn't good enough for me.
I wanted to further add a survey function.
So what it does is once it’s in the target structure,
it records an areal view of the room first.
Then surveys the situation from the floor while rolling around standing upright.
By fine-tuning the position to hover between available spaces like this
it can take 3D measurements of inside a structure.
This allows you to gather
comprehensive 3D measurement data of the entire room.
With the drone, you can have a good look of important checkpoints
like shafts behind a large factory machine and its valves for example,
which can't be examined unless you go inside.
These are the technologies I've worked to develop.
The things I've been doing, researching and developing robot technologies,
if you look at them,
they can potentially be applied to military robots
since these technologies are very purpose-specific.
But I'm determined
that this robot must serve as a technology to make peace.
So, fellow roboticists in the audience today,
I hope we all agree we are going to do our best
in creating robots that help promote peace with these new technologies.
That's my wish.
I can see a lot of younger faces in the audience today
- and some more mature ones - of course I'm not excluding you.
I would like to leave you all with this:
in any field of research and in any domain of work,
no effort is entirely useless.
I believe that playfulness is central to making innovation happen.
If you are serious about succeeding in your creative work,
you can't do without playfulness.
Another important point I want to make is that you only live once.
Dedicate your only life you are given in pursuing what you really love.
Do your best to prepare the environment for that.
Whatever it may take, be it more studying,
or honing your engineering skills, or making connections,
it is essential to spare no effort to make your environment
more supportive in pursuing creativity.
"Believe in your potential and never give up."
I've always lived by this motto to get where I am now.
If it resonates with you at all,
I invite you to let your playfulness lead your life-long passions.
Thank you.
(Applause)
You know what?
[That ending was too ordinary!] (Laughter)
A self-proclaimed weirdo like me won't leave you without a showtime.
Audience: Whoa!
(Applause)
Koji Kawasaki: It will make a buzzing noise -
but please bear with me.
(Propellers buzzing)
As you see, it's capable of a very stable hover.
You'll see the TEDx branding projected on its body.
You can easily fly it around as you like.
That was no different to common drones,
but let me activate its another feature.
Now it's calculating the angle it will stand at.
Look how it can spin around.
If you kick it, it still maintains its poise.
It can stand at any given angle and stay in the posture.
And it can roll around keeping the same angle.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)