Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I love all things tech and it is time for a classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published way back on October fifteenth, two thousand fourteen. It is titled do we need humanoid Robots? An interesting question because we often, at least I don't know, I can't say we. I often think of robots as sort of anthropomorphic robots, like I think of droids in the Star Wars, like C three b O that kind of droid. Not are two. He's clearly not humanoid. But you know, I think of humanoid robots more frequently than other types, despite the fact that the vast majority of robots I have have encountered have not been humanoid robots. So that does raise a question does a humanoid robot even makes sense? We try and answer that in this particular episode, Enjoy. I asked Josh what he would like to cover, because with the fact that I've got all these guests coming in to sit down with me, um, you know, some people like to come up with their own suggestions. Some people preferred if I pick a topic and then they research it. I asked Josh what he would like to talk about, and you were really interested in the idea of humanoid robots. Well, you have this awesome spreadsheet of um of listeners suggestions, and it might as well been a neon when it was going down the sheet. I'm like humanoid robots, of course, and this is a great topic. In order to really get into it, I was going to define a few terms, even though a lot of these are ones that I think most of us just kind of understand just from the fact that this is in our culture now. It's not just not just a reality as far as technology goes, but it plays a large part in fiction. In fact, that's where the term robot comes from, is from fiction. Uh. It was from Carrel Chopeck, a Czechoslovakian playwright. I did, in fact listen to it a couple of times. Carrel Chopec, Yeah, because it's his last name is spelled c A p e K. And it includes uh symbols that are not in the English alphabet, like squiggly lines and little UFOs and things he wrote. Are you are also known as Rossum's Universal robots, and the word robot comes from the check word robot to which means forced labor. Yeah, so a robot is a an entity, a synthetic construct that is forced to do work. Then we have humanoid, which just means resembling a human being. That's a term that is relatively young. It started showing up around the turn of the twentieth century. And uh, it started I think the first few times it was ever mentioned was around nineteen twelve, and it was mostly used then to describe fossils, saying these are humanoid fossils, like yeah. And then we have android, which is we're probably not gonna be using that word very often, but android is a robot that's in the form of a human. So all androids or robots, but not all robots are androids. And you know, I ran into I looked up android as well. Yeah, and apparently that's from like the early eighth century. It's a little odd that it actually predates robots. Yeah, but uh, when we look at myths and legends, there's so many stories that involve a human like entity that's not actually a person that you can see where it gets translated in there. This gets a little confusing too, because Star Wars they called all their robots droids, but there they aren't androids are two? T two is not an android because he's not um or it's not human shaped. You could even argue that C three Po is not a true android because some people say to be an android you have to appear, at least on casual glance to be human. He's way too shiny, way too shiny. Data from Star Trek Next Generation might be uh android, but he's an android who's had, you know, a long time in the man cave. He hasn't seen much sun, right, Yeah, because he's definitely got a weird complexion. Thing goes the kid in a I would be an android David, yes, which turns out to be a popular name for droids, because there was well there's David in AI, and there was also David and Prometheus. Oh you know, I never saw Prometheus. I don't know if your listeners are going to agree with me or not, because I could see um getting shouted down. But I thought Prometheus was a great movie. Even upon second viewing, I thought it was good. You know, I know that the from the artistic level, A lot of people really loved it, And then there were some people who said, how can you get lost if you have a three dimensional map with you at all time? But you know, plot versus artist, I don't know. Then you've got replicants from Blade Runner. These are more like cyborgs because they have some sort of organic material attached to them. They're not completely you know, synthetic material. So Terminator is another example. They have a fleshy over skin on top of their metallic bodies. But was that real skin that he had there was a synthetic skin, because that would make a difference. That's a good question. And I uh, you know, I know that they refer to them as cyborgs at least a few times in the movies, which would suggest that it's actual skin. Maybe it's lab grown human skin. So you know, there's some fuzzy lines around these definitions. I would think that cyborgs would be the hardest of all of the the um humanoid robots to make, because the flesh would just wrought like you have your normal looking humanoid robot your cyborg, and it's ear would just fall off. Yeah, and it's not as easy as you might think to wire together the wet wear that's in our heads, hardware that runs on circuits. We will often think of computers working in a way that's similar to our brains, but in fact the two work in very different ways. Well it seems like running into this though, Strickland um, the the more we got into humanoid robotics, the more we started to understand just how complex we are. Yeah, that's one of the things that I think is a benefit of study of humanoid robotics. The idea of pursuing the goal of creating a humanoid robot is not just that we learn more about all the different areas and robotics and they're a lot, and we'll talk about some of them, but we also learn more about ourselves. We're trying to figure out, Okay, if we're going to make something that is able to perform tasks the way human does, then we really got to take a close look at humans. That's that's the first place to start. So what makes a humanoid robot? And generally speaking, we're talking about a robot that has basic features usually minimum a torso, arms and legs, and is walking up right. Uh, it may have a head or it might not. Early humanoid robots didn't, or at least their sensory uh. Instruments were all located within the top part of the torso there wasn't like a separate head. Did you see a picture of Minerva at the Smithsonian? No? I did not. It's a robot to her guide, but um, she came up in the humanoid robot research and I think she's stretching it a little bit. Yeah, she looks a bit like a washing machine with a couple of UM cameras on top. So just those alone, I guess makes her eligible for the humanoid robot realm. But that that seems like that's a bit of a you know, if it has an appendage, that doesn't necessarily make a humanoid. I mean, you could look at the Mars Curiosity rover, which has several appendages, but I don't think anyone would ever describe it as humanoid. Right, So, uh, ideally a humanoid robe lot would be able to interact with humans within a human environment. Because here's the thing about we, we people. We have defined our environments to a large extent, especially in developed nations, where the stuff that's around us we have shaped so that it works within our capabilities, right with our with our human environment thus far. If you look at technology though, on the whole, we've pretty much been forced to adapt to it. So, for example, like a keyboard, we don't normally naturally, you know, um express ideas through our fingers on a little a little board, right, we don't normally do that, So we had to adapt to the technology and learn to type and get good at it. With humanoid robots, it's basically going the exact opposite. It's saying we already have an environment, we already are um, you know, good at all this other stuff. If we're gonna make humanoid robots, one of the great benefits is they can adapt to us. Right. Yeah, we don't have to uh create a unitask or robe, but that's really good at one thing, um that may or may not be something that humans can do easily. We can make a robot that's good lots of things. Uh. I also think usually when I think of humanoid robots, when I think of robots in general, I normally think that they are at least semi autonomous. That's that's one of the things I usually think of. It doesn't necessarily have to be. You could have a tel operated robot, but I almost think of that closer to the realm of like a remote controlled car or a puppet even. Um So, I often one of the definitions I use is that it's an autonomous or semi autonomous machine in human form. It's mechanical and electronic, and it can thus do the sort of things humans do, but do it in a totally synthetic way. And you have to be careful when you say autonomous or semi autonomous, because the state of the art right now appears to be that robots display autonomy because they just kind of wander off in places they're not supposed But it's not because they want to. It's because their their program just ran a foul of program. Right. There's no determination there on the part of the robot. It's not exploring its environment on its own accord. It's someone made a mistake in the code somewhere and where the robot was supposed to take a left hand turn at this one you know, predetermined spot, and instead continued forward or something exactly. Um So, I wanted to talk a little bit about the history of humanoid robots, and if you wanna look way way way back, I mean we're talking about the first people to really kind of attempt to build a humanoid machine that could mimic or the movements at least of a person. You gotta go all the way back to Greece between the years ten and seventy Common era. That's when Hero of Alexandria started to create various machines. He's also the person who made the first working steam engine style tool, which is pretty impressive. Yeah. He he had come up with a lot of very clever designs. Whether they were built or not depends upon uh certain accounts and and if they're true. But the stuff he designed is completely build a bowl. So he didn't come up with any ideas where it was so you know, outlandish, that was impossible. He wasn't just like drawing in the margins of his diary or something. No, Yeah, he came up with specific plans that people today have recreated. They built their own versions. Yeah. So he created a lot of designs for automata. Although these are things that were controlled by pulleys and ropes and cogged wheels, and uh needed some form of outside influence to make them work, so they're not all fully self contained like the show biz pizza Rocke fire explosion day and yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, it was some one of those audio animatronic figures that that looks very robotic, but you realize it's really just one tiny piece of a giant system. Uh. In four, we get up to Leonardo da Vinci. He designed an automaton in the form of a mechanical night which uh again supposedly he built. There's no actual record of an existing one from history, but they have created ones based on the design since then, and it could do things like move its arms and raise its visor. Who's doing this? Who's doing this? Crazy engineers who are also uh, very excited about history and very wealthy too, I would imagine. Yeah, so in this case, you're talking about Mark Rossheim, who recreated this particular machine, and it it's a night, it's a night in German medieval armor. And it can sit down, it can stand up, it can move its arms, it can raise a visor, it can work its jaw ling, I imagine. So I tried to find video of ross Heims version working and I couldn't find it. He did, however, make another of Da Vinci's inventions, which was a self driving cart that used Yeah you you wound a spring, and it had cam stops that would allow it to steer a predetermined path. You would actually program the cart by putting cam stops in particular locations along the cam and that would tell it when to turn left or when to turn right, so it couldn't it couldn't navigate through uh an obstacle course unless you had already previously seen the obstacle course and you could figure out when it needed to turn ahead of time, so you're essentially programming the device. Um. There are lots of examples in the renaissance of automata and semi automata, things that are really more like puppets. You've heard about the Mechanical Turk have the chess playing robot uh So it looked like it was a robot that could play chess and was really really good at playing chess, and it turned out eventually to be a hoax. It was actually it was actually a puppet, and there was an actual chess master hidden in a cabinet beneath the Mechanical Turk who sat kind of Indian style with a chessboard in front of him and could move the pieces to where it needed to be. But it was all being guided by an actual chess master who was hidden under When was that that was late Renaissance early Enlightenment. That in and of itself is pretty impressive. Yeah, it was. It was neat that people were thinking about these sort of things. Uh. By ninety six we get the first humanoid robot to appear on film, uh, Metropolis, the character of Maria, and at ninety nine at the World's Fair, Westinghouse Electric Corporation showed off a robot called Electro. Now have you ever seen this? So he kind of looks like the ten man from the Wizard of Oz film. Yes, he smokes. I have seen one of the things he can do get a little bellows in his head that allowed him to puff smoke. He could also kind of speak. He had a seventy eight revolution per minute UH record player essentially inside of him. I suppose if the if the needles skipp it would at least sound like it. Um. He repeat himself over. He called the audience twots. That was the name. Yeah, he's apparently the main reason he was retired from being shown off at exhibitions was because it was very dated kind of lingo. But he was used at the nineteen thirty nine World's Fair, which was It's funny because I'll be talking about that again in another episode very shortly. The World's Fair would have been an amazing thing to visit. Um, I'm more I can understand that. But if you're if you're going to get to the point where you're looking at full scale anthropomorphic robots, you gotta get up to about ninety three. That's when the Waybot one from the Waseda University came out. That was the first full scale anthropomorphic robot developed in the world which had limb control, a vision system, so I had an optical system that could recognize its environment and objects and measure distance, and it also had a conversation system. Uh. It was actually a collection of a bunch of very complex machinery. Like its hands had been previously developed independently of the robots, so had its legs. So it's like all these people coming up with these various pieces saying, all right, let's connect all this together and see what happens. So that was a huge, huge leap forward. Yeah, you know, if you'll notice, we went basically from um HOAXI chess playing turks to you know, a robot that could converse and interact with its environment. And then um, it seems like we we kind of went off course for a little bit and now we're coming full circle back to that where like you said, a lot of different disciplines are contributing these different pieces to what will eventually be all of the best practices from each little sub discipline put together in you know, the true humanoid robot. Well yeah, I mean, if we're talking about a humanoid robot that's capable of interacting with people as if they were, you know, their own person, even though maybe an odd person, not like the kind of person you would typically run into. There's it's a multi disciplinary approach. I mean, artificial intelligence by itself is multi disciplinary because you have sensing, you have so all the perception, there's all these different just that's multi disciplinary. Then you've got the processing, the cognition, things like planning, navigation. There are so many things that come together to make a humanoid robot a a possibility. And that's just the the mental side, right. Then you have all the physical side, the how do you make it walk, how do you make it keep its balanced? So lots of stuff to consider there. We're gonna take a quick break but when we come back, we will look more at the issue of humanoid robots. Wybot two came out in that was a specialist robot. It could play a keyboard, trying a keyboard. He could read sheet music and play music. Uh. It was because it was a specialist. It was not able to do the general functions that it's predecessor could do. And that's why the issues in robotics today is that it's very challenging to build a general purpose robot. It's much easier to take a specific task that you need to have done and designed a robot to do that. Yeah, because I mean we already have those rooms and rovers. I mean you know, there's there's also all the robots and manufacturing, all the welding robots things like that. Uh. Nine Pacific Northwest National Laboratory built a robot called Manny that was the first full scale android body and it had forty two degrees of freedom but no AI or autonomy. It was completely teleoperated. And um it took me a couple of times to figure out what degrees of freedom meant. Yeah, Um, I thought it meant like the it could move its arm forty two degrees basically, but a degree of freedom is say, like it can move its wrist, that's a degree of freedom. It can turn its head left and right, that's a degree of freedom right right. And if you look at the human hand, the human hand has about thirty degrees of freedom, meaning that you look at the way each finger and your thumb can move. You look at the way you can clench a fist, you can twist your hand with your wrist um, those are all different degrees of freedom. And uh. In fact, one of the cool things about robots is that as we get better and better at designing them, we can create robots that have far more degrees of freedom than the human body does. So I like the idea of a humanoid robot in the future that has sixty degree motion with its wrist and then just having it changed light bulbs. Is it just spin and not have to do the little twisty turning motion. How many robots does it take to change the light bulbs? Just just the one, just that one, just one billion dollar rob Yeah. Yeah, I'm not saying it's a fishing system. I'm just saying I'm in supremely lazy human being with tall ceilings. Uh. In nine Honda introduced the P two robot, which was a self contained robotic humanoid. It could walk and climb stairs. The P three followed in n and in two thousand two, Honda introduced My good buddy as Emo. As the first article I wrote for How Stuff Works. As Works have an episode on it. I have not done a full episode on Asimo. I even was offered the opportunity to meet as Amo when I first wrote the article, but it would have meant having to travel to Disneyland to do it, and at the time, How Stuff Works was not prepared to do such a I went to Disneyland by myself, uh well with my wife, and we went and saw the Asimo production. And at the end of it, I talked to of the Disney cast members and I said, yeah, I wrote the article about how Asthma works for How Stuff Works, and she said, hang on a minute. And I got to meet Asthmo. And it was a man in a suit, right. It was actually it was actually a collection of cats that the duct taped together and then plastic. No, it was a working robot. That's pretty near how blown away? I was very much blown away. It was cool seeing it up close. I mean, it looks like a little tiny astronaut right because he's got like the face plate especially. I love the people call it he people give And I do this all the time too. With robots, I'll sign a gender even though technically many of them are specifically genderless. As amo is is supposed to be genderless, but I often refer to Asmo as a he as well. Well, you know why. It's the shoulders, I would guess. Yeah, they go straight across and and and far out. That's very masculine no matter what. Yeah, and you need that, I would guess you need shoulders in a humanoid robot with flexible arms. Well, and also, I'm sure every single element of Asimo is built with the balance in mind, because is the first robot that can run. Yes, I've seen him run. It's gawky. Yeah, it kind of look like someone who really needs to get to the bathroom as a little bit of a hoppy kind of run. But the the definition of run here is that there are moments where both feet are off the ground. So walking you always have one ft in contact with the ground, and running both feet at some point are out of contact. And that's a huge deal for robotics, right. I mean, you have a machine that completely separates itself from contact on the ground. It has no propulsion to keep it upright, you know, it doesn't have like propellers or jets or anything like that. So you have to design it so it can it can propel itself off the ground and then catch itself when it comes back down without falling over. And that is a non trivial challenge. No, it's an enormous challenge that robots UM really kind of started to tackle lately. UM. One of the ways that they've overcome it is with rounded feet, which are very helpful in keeping balanced and allowing it to run UM. But there's drawbacks to it as well, Like the robot can't start itself, it also can't stop, so it can't stop moving, which is not something you want. Like, there's still some challenges there. Ahead of the robotists who are learning to teach a robot to walk, and even the ones that have taught robots to walk UM, they typically can just walk over flat surfaces with no obstacles. When they encounter stairs, there in trouble. But then you have robots that know how to go upstairs, but they can't walk on a flat surface. Eventually, all this information, all this knowledge will be brought together and you'll have a robot that can walk no problem. Right. In fact, this kind of transitions nicely into those challenges that face designers of humanoid robots and and locomotion is the probably one of the top ones, at least from the physical engineering side. For example, you know, as Amo can can go up and downstairs, but that is a little deceptive because as Amo has to be programmed to go up or down the staircase and know exactly how many stairs are involved. It's not so much it's not a case of Asimo detecting a staircase and then uh, and then navigating through oh up or down it. It's the fact that all right now we're initiating your stair climbing program. Yeah exactly. It's kind of like smoke and mirrors robotics. Basically, it's at But that's you know, those are the little no no pun intended, Those are the little steps you have to take in order to get to the destination. What do you mean, no pun intended. I don't buy that at all. I started saying it without thinking about it, and then I mean, but then I did follow through with it, so I guess there was some intention there at the end. But uh yeah. They're also not very good at going across any kind of uneven terrain, right, So, humanoid robots in particular find it very difficult to maintain balance over anything that's not either a flat surface or in the case some robots that can go up or downstairs and stairs. So if you're talking about like a sidewalk that is not completely even, that would be enough to give a robot trouble because it's going to try and put its foot down to where it would believe the ground to be, and if the ground is not exactly level, then that's yeah, because they can't really catch their balance very well. There are robots that can, but they are four legged. Yeah, you've you've seen the Big Dog video, No, I saw the Army, though it's very similar. Big Dog is essentially a robo mule type development. It is a four legged robot that is able to maintain its balance even when pushed. And the famous video shows the robot dog the Big Dog kind of jogging and then a guy just casually lifts his leg up and kicks the robot dog like he puts essentially puts the bomb of his foot against the side of it and pushes really hard, tipping and you see the big dog stumble. It actually stumbles and then catches itself and then rights itself and continues on. And almost everyone has an emotional reaction to this, like how dare that evil man kick that poor defenseless robot. The robot can't feel anything, but that robot is um gasoline powered. So oh yeah, that's right. That's one of the big dis keeping it inside you. Yeah, you wouldn't want to have one of these indoors. No, you don't bring your lam indoors. No, and uh. And the the pistons that allow it to do this are quite loud, you know. It's not not a subtle system at all. So a lot of work has to go into creating better systems for robots to maintain their balance in order for the locomotion problem to really be solved. And again, I mean, like anybody who's seen short Circuit knows that you can build a robot like Johnny five with arms in the head and a torso and then like traction um wed shreds uh and it can go anywhere over terrain, it can go up steps. Probably. The thing is is again you have to remember when it comes to humanoid robots, you're trying to make the robot that can adapt to the human world. So if you had somebody like Johnny five as your house butler or something, you you couldn't You couldn't have an island in your kitchen, and who doesn't love an island in their kitchen. Johnny five couldn't maneuver around it because he's too wide. Yeah, you wouldn't have You wouldn't be able to have any any space that would be narrower than the robot's body exactly. That's not what you want. Yeah, with humanoid robots, it wouldn't work well. In my house. I've got a I've got a a flat style house where there's three floors. Yeah, it's like flat, like European flat. Uh, not flat as in there's only one level. They're actually three of them, four if you count the rooftop denck, so that counts. It makes it. You know, any robot that would not be able to navigate stairs easily would definitely have an issue, which is the main reason why I don't have a rumba, because I don't want to hear the sound of a roomba going falling down a flight up stairs. Um, but at any rate, Uh, that's a great point. Moving on from locomotion, there's also dexterous manipulation. Yeah, I think we should. I think that point bears repeating. What we just talked about is locomotion. Yeah, and this is you and I a couple of non robot experts talking about the problem with locomotion. That's just one of myriad challenges facing humanoid robotics designers. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's It's one that's easy to point to because it's something that we all, you know, end up at least observing or participating in all the time. Can we take it for granted? But then when you think, okay, well, how do I make a machine that does that? You start to realize this is you know, even if I have a leg that has lots of different degrees of freedom and points of articulation, I still have to design the upper part of the robots so that it does not unbalance the lower part, and if it does on balance, it's able to catch itself. You know, some people just describe walking as falling and catching yourself over and over again. Yeah, yeah, they're walking right now. No, I I described walking as something that other people do. I like to keep my walking to a minimum. I thought you walked alot, Actually I do. I just joke about being lazy. I think moving forward, falling down and catching your balance every time it's lurching. Yeah, that's well. As an Adams Family fan, I'm okay with that. Yeah, but uh, Dexter's manipulation would be the ability to pick up and manipulate objects. Now, we're really good at that, we humans, You know, we can we can feel an object and decide at that point how to handle it, even if we've never encountered that kind of object before. So if I encounter something I've never seen before and i've I've ascertained it's safe for me to touch it, I can touch it. I can feel like, I can get a feel for how heavy it is, I can get a feel for how eloquant it might be, and then I can adjust on the fly so that I can handle it appropriately. Well, I'm not gonna hurt myself. I'm not gonna hurt the object. Robots are not so good at that. Yeah, exactly, even if they don't mean to right, Yeah, if the robots. If the robots grip is too strong, it can break the object. If it's too weak, the object slips from its grip and it falls. Uh. And it may not be able to distinguish between different types. So getting those tactile sensors where a robot can tell how tightly it's gripping something and how much pressure a particular object can take before you've reached the failure point is a big deal. Now, this is also a big deal for just making robots safe for humans to be around. It is a big deal. You know that the first fatality by robot occurred um at the business end of a robotic arm in a flat rock, Michigan in nine a man named Robert Williams who's working on a forward line. Yeah, his robot arm was moving a little slow for his taste in getting supplies down, so he climbed up to where the supplies were. The robot arms suddenly sped up and hit him in the head and killed him instantly. Wow. Yeah, I've I've had a chance to see some of these industrial robots. Uh. And I would say up close, but you can't because because of instances like that. Industrial robots usually have lots of of safety barriers around them because it's not safe to be near those robots when they're in operation. They they can't react exactly, So you leave it up to the humans to stay away from the robots because the road. We haven't gotten to the point where the robots no, did not crush you or hit you in the head. Right, Yeah, I got the robots fall. I'm looking forward to that day when they figure out not to crush me. Yes, it's been pretty lousy days so far. Uh. Yeah, when I when I toured the Georgia Tech Robotics Lab, they talked specifically about this. This is a real challenge having robots recognize and react in a way that's going to be safe around humans. And uh, but dexterous manipulation is only that's only a part of dexterous manipulation. Obviously. The rest of it is again that object recognition and handling so that you're not destroying whatever it is you're trying to pick up. Um. Another big challenge in designing robots in general, not just humanoid robots, is just the the perception, the sensory perception of the robot. Yeah, so you know, whether it's optical systems like actual cameras in the place of eyes, or infrared so that you can see even in low light situations, radar, light ar, I mean, there's tons of different ways of sensing. Yep, there's uh, there's you know sensing obviously, it's not just site. Then you have to have the sound. That's a really tricky one actually because for us humans, we we can kind of zero in on what's important. Right, So if we're if you and I were at a party, which you know, someone made a mistake and invited me, Uh, we could have a conversation and be able to carry that conversation on even within the context of a big, bustling party because we can focus on what the other person is saying. It's called latent inhibition. Yeah. So when you don't have that, that schizophrenia, Yeah, you you can't separate the the signal from the noise, and everything either becomes noise or everything becomes signal. Um. So for a robot that might for example, require verbal commands, that's really tricky. What if you have the television on and someone's saying something on TV and uh, you are trying to get your robot to do something and it's not quite sure what to do because it's hearing these different commands and isn't sure who to obey. Yeah, you are the person pitching the bacon bowl right right exactly. Let's say that you are, you know, trying to get some help in the kitchen, but it just keeps hearing U, C S I Miami and say kill Billy. And then next thing you know, you're like, you're just desperately trying to kill the robot. Please don't kill Billy. Um. Yeah, well that's a silly example. It's a real problem. Uh. And then there's the tactile the responses, the tactile sensors, like the making sure you don't crush something that's delicate, that that falls into perception. Smell can also fall into perception. You might want to have humanoid robots that work in areas where the humanoid robot can alert humans to the presence of things that might be toxic. You know, this isn't necessarily just the robot butler we're talking about. This could be robots that work in areas that might be dangerous for humans, and that would be an important element too. It's not a robot. But NASA already has a sensor that senses things like ammonia or smoke. It can actually sense smoke artificially smell smoke before the fires actually started ignited. Interesting, yeah, because you know it's such a dangerous proposition, right, yes, clearly for for anything NASA related. But they can also sense ammonia because you know a lot of the refrigeration systems run on ammonia and you can't have aneumonia leak on the space right right, And I mean the same thing is true for I mean I've heard of of robots that are used in in mining operations, which you know, if you come upon a pocket of natural gas that can be a real danger that sort of stuff. Then you've got the the back end of the sensory perception. That's where you have the actual interpretation of the data. Where that's a big one. It's huge because not only do you need to have a robot that can have that has binocular vision so it has a depth of field, right, um, it also has to know what it's doing, what what the information means, and how to apply it to adapted changes, right right. So So if I were to show you josh a series of pictures of various types of dogs. You would very quickly pick up on the the things that mean mean dog like, you would understand the concept of dog pretty quickly. Robots and various other computers machines, they have a lot harder problem with this. If whatever they're looking at doesn't exactly match the parameters of the example. It's very difficult for a machine to extrapolate and say, oh, this other thing I'm looking at relates to this thing I know, even though the two examples don't aren't identical. So the same thing could be true for any object. Let's let's just use a coffee mug, and let's say that you use a plain white coffee mug of average size as the example for the robot, and then the robot encounters a larger blue coffee mug and the handle has turned the other way. The robot might be completely befuddled by this. So this is a real problem in artificial intelligence. Is object identification, so that a robot knows what it's looking at and also understands the context that that object fills within the environment. So it's not just that, oh, that's a mug, it's oh, that's a mug. A mug is a container. I can put things into that mug. You are the things that can go in the mug. Here are the things that absolutely should not go in the mug, like Billy. Those are the kind of things that yeah, Billy, well you know we're gonna need another Billy. Um, we'll make a robot Billy. Yeah, which in which case you can just turn those suckers out right, mass production of Billy. But yeah, artificial intelligence an enormous problem. And that, of course is not just with robotics. That's that's a field unto itself, and robotics is just one branch that relies upon artificial intelligence. And it's from what I came across, it looked like just out of the gate, I guess that was said a university, they tried to build a robot that was just like high functioning, Yeah, and they realized, like, we have no idea what we're doing. Yeah, that that waybot one was able to converse at the level or was able to have a a a cognitive function equivalent to a one and a half year old person, which I have to say, when you're talking right out of the gate, Yeah, impressive, very impressive, because we're not that much further along now. But what they found from making waybot one was, Okay, this is way more difficult than we thought. You can't just program every kind of coffee cup in the world, and even if you could, then you also have to program every kind of table and every kind of light. And we need to come at this in a different way. And so they realized number one, humans are extraordinarily more complex than we thought before. And then number two, humans make a pretty good model for a humanoid robot in the realm of things like perception and UM information systems and uh learning. So they went to these different these different disciplines like neurobiology, neurology, um psychology, and they said, what can we learn from you guys about how humans do this that we can apply to robots. And since they started taking those steps, it seems like, uh, humanoid robotics has gotten it's it's footing a little more. Yeah, and we're seeing so many developments in other areas of AI that are really promising. I always bring up IBM S Watson because it's natural language recognition was phenomenal. The ability for it to parse clues in jeopardy and come up with the appropriate answer, knowing that Jeopardy those clues are not always straightforward. Uh. And it again illustrates the complexity that we humans navigate without much trouble because this is the world we've created. But then we realize if we make a machine that's mostly when you get down to it based on yes or no, a one or a zero, true or false, and you're trying to build complex behaviors off of something that is incredibly simple. When you boil it down to its basic element, that's where you're like, oh, this is this is gonna require a lot of work. I mean, IBMS Watson was an enormous machine with with thoul of microprocessors just so it could be able to play Jeopardy. That's a very specific function too. We'll be right back after this next break. So, creating a robot that is able to navigate and interact with a human environment and be able to interact with humans in a way that makes sense is a big challenge. Also, just the way that a robot would socialize with humans is a huge challenge. How do how do you make a robot that is able to respond to commands and cues in an appropriate way? Uh? An appropriate way is the key there, because there are humans are pretty complex and we can be very subtle in many ways. Yeah, we speak unplainly, we use sarcasm, um, we we uh yeah, we use a lot of gestures rather than just words. Yep. There's a lot that goes into human communication that, if you are a human, is pretty much natural, especially I mean if you're a human within that particular culture and you're familiar with that culture, Because anyone who has traveled extensively knows there are cultures where things that would be commonplace at home are very different in the place where you happen to be, right then, and it may be that something that is completely innocent at home is an uh, offensive gesture in the place where you are. Now, we'll imagine a robot that is not programmed to handle these kind of subtle uh communication methods, and yeah, he doesn't know, he's just he's just doing as he was programmed. But even even beyond that, something that you brought up in our research when we were planning this was the Uncanny Valley. Yeah, that's it's a big one. Yeah, I've never read that paper before, and I'm glad I did. It's really interesting, right, Yeah. So the uncanny Valley, for those who are not familiar with the term, uh it's it describes when we start to appre coach artificial humans that look almost, but not quite like real humans. And and by look, I don't necessarily just mean the physical appearance. I also mean their behaviors, their movements. So if you are if you were to look out and see a figure that from the from a distance looked like it was a human figure, and you start walking towards it just thinking this is another person, and then they start moving in a very herky jerky motion, very mechanical motion, then you're likely going to have a negative emotional response. Um often revulsion is one of the words used us. Yeah, I mean I remember the C G I movies that would that were almost to the point of photo realism, where they look like people for the most part, but there's not something's just not quite right with the eyes. There's a good example, and Polar express polar expresses the way everyone very well because the uncanny Valley, that's what they blame it on. Yeah, and the same thing applies to robots. So in fact, I saw a robot that was really disturbing to me, it was really an art exhibit, an installation, and um it was a robot of Confucius in a cell filled with monkeys, and uh they're live monkeys, real monkeys, and the robot would just thrash around wildly. It was it was the stuff of nightmares that I'll show it to you after the show. Yeah. So these are all big challenges, and some of them are going to be harder for us than others. It may be that the engineering challenges of locomotion are solved well before we ever get a real grip on all the artificial intelligence problems. Or it could be the other way around. Uh we but it is multidisciplinary. It's a big, big issue. So there are some people who argue for humanoid robots, there are people who argue against humanoid robots. Where do you, um, I think. I think research and development with humanoid robots is important because by having the goal of creating a humanoid robot, you drive the research and development process. You have a specific goal in mind, and in order to achieve that goal, you know what sort of problems you have to solve. And even if we never enter a future where humanoid robots are a common thing, even if they are mostly used as something in an exhibition or uh for pr or whatever. Even if that's the only use for them, We're going to benefit from the research and development of making that possible in ways we can't anticipate. Well. Yeah, and then the more we get into humanoid robotics, the more we understand humans, which is pretty much the only argument I've seen that stands up in favor of doing humanoid robots. Yeah, because it's it's expensive, and it's hard. I mean, it's it's really a different cult problem, and it's and and to build a humanoid robot something that is capable of being a general purpose robot, it's you know, it's hard to anticipate all the things you're going to need to be able to do. If you're talking general purpose and adaptable, that's really tough. I mean, we didn't even talk about the adaptability problem very much. We talked a little bit about a robot capable of learning from other people, which I find fascinating. Um, you know, that's one way, just watching humans and then mimicking humans, that's one way of robot learning. There's also, um the way where it's controlled through virtual reality by a human and it just kind of logs the motions the humans making it do. Like there's a NASA has a robot not that learns like that. So I think I think there's a lot of benefit to investigating artificial intelligence. Like you want your nest at home to learn so you don't have to keep adjusting the thermostat that counts. That's the that's sheen learning to me. The big argument against having humanoid robots, and the quagmire that seems to begin, is sociability. That seems to be the whole reason anybody wants a humanoid robot, because you can make you know, you have a ruma vacuums. You can make a driverless car um as Olivia Solan wrote and wired a couple of years back. Um, you know, why why do you have to make a robot butler to park the car? Just make a car that parks itself. And it seems like that's where we're going right now. Um. So when you add this extra layer of humanoid, you add all of this additional problems and troubles and redundancies, like like, for example, if you're gonna make a humanoid robot that throws a ball, this this humanoid robot to appear real needs to have a little bit of follow through. But as far as the robot the machine is concerned, it can throw the ball and just stop where the releases. It doesn't need to go anymore. But it's gonna look weird and robotic if you want to get past that uncanny valley, which is another problem. Um, the thing has to have followed through. That's totally unnecessary. You can make a robot that can throw a ball and the goal is to throw the ball. You don't have to add the follow through, but you do when you're making it a sociable humanoid robots. So it seems like that's the path that will lead everyone is straight that I don't get. Yeah, I I like the idea of designing robots for specific tasks because you can really focus on getting the task done. So there I see this as two separate branches. I see the branch of developing the humanoid robot as pushing forward a lot of different areas of thought that could be applied in multiple disciplines, so that will benefit from that. I see the development of robots as unitaskers as being important to actually handle the jobs that are the three D S. That's dirty, different called dangerous, all right, So those are the jobs that maybe they revolve a lot of repetition, which can cause injury over time, or it can lead to mistakes because you've done the same task so many times that you start to kind of zone out. Robots will never zone out. Um, if it's a dirty job where it's something that's undesirable by people, robots don't care, they'll do that. Or if it's dangerous, if it's bomb disposal, or if it's something like the Mars Curiosity rover. These are dangerous jobs that you wouldn't necessarily want to put a human into if you had the alternative. So all of these things, those that's where robots really makes sense to me um to to go to the places that are difficult for us to go to. Maybe that's you know, deep sea exploration, space exploration, that kind of thing, or to do jobs that might be dangerous having a first respond to robot to survey a scene to make sure that a structure is remaining solid while maybe there was a fire and it has to make sure that the it's not going to collapse in on rescue mission that kind of stuff. Um, But do you need those things to be to come out and be able to tell a joke or something. And most of them don't need to be any sort of humanoid form factor either, which greatly simplifies the actual development of the robot and thus cuts down on the cost, so you can you can achieve the task you're trying to achieve for less money than if you are trying to build this this general purpose machine. So then we come to this ultimate question, why what's the purpose of humanoid robot? Well, I think the I think the purposes too fold. One is again to have that specific goal in mind that allows you to define where your indpoint is. I believe that when you have that defined in goal, it makes it easier for you to build on the things you need to achieve it, as opposed to having an open goal where it's just I want to approve improve a I that's so open that it's hard to get direction from it. But if you think I need to have an artificial intelligence that will allow a robot to uh, here's a great example. Let's say that the challenge is to have a robot leave a room, go down a flight of stairs, leave a building, get into a vehicle, drive the vehicle to a different location, get out of the vehicle, go into another building, break through a wall and put out a fire. That's a real, actual robotics challenge challenge. Yeah. Dr Henrik Kristensen told me about this. Is I mean, it really is a challenge. It's not just a real challenge. It's a real challenge. It's like a DARPA challenge. So it's a uh he was telling me about this, and you start to think about all the things that have to fall in line for you to be able to achieve the skull That is a valuable thing. But I think the other thing is the social aspect. I think that there are people who would benefit from a robot that is able to give some form of social comfort. Let's say for the elderly who need to have some form of interaction. Um. You know, that could actually be a really valuable tool. And in fact, there's a lot of work that's going into robotics to help people like the elderly who may have real emotional and psychological problems, um, due to loneliness. Do you think that robots are the answer to that. I think that robots can help. I don't know, I would never go so far as to say answer, but couldn't you also make the argument that if you created robots that displaced human jobs and also simultaneously said, hey, this, this nursing home sector is about to explode because we've got a bunch of baby boomers, and ways the society of now decided that our elderly need human interaction more than we've more than we've carried it out before. So let's create this whole other industry. Or let's expand this industry of elderly caretakers and fill those jobs with people who have been displaced by worker robots. Wouldn't that be better? That might be, or you could again, looking at the way a lot of roboticists framed this, they say, all right, well, it is a reality that robots are taking over actual jobs. But the hope is that it also ends up creating new jobs that are better paying jobs, less dangerous jobs friendly, more old books friendly. But yeah, like um, the idea being that that it frees up people and encourages the pursuit of jobs and engineering in computer science. Now, we live in the real world, and we understand that it's a lot more complex than telling someone who's been working on a manufacturing line. Hey, I'm sorry your job's gone because there's a robot here. But guess what, we have an opening and engineering. So if you just go and pursue a four year degree and then some post graduate work, you'll be right back to work. That's that's obviously not uh something that's going to be easy, especially in the short term. But the long term hope is that more and more of these jobs that are are dangerous for people, are less desirable for people, will be taken up by robots, and then the will there will be the creation of better jobs that are higher up on the food chain. And I think that makes sense to me. It's just the once you enter the sociability, yeah, because without sociability, you there's no reason to create a humanoid robot. Everything else can look like a robot. Yeah. Um, so it's it's when you enter sociability that you lose me. Not only does it can it look like a robot, but we can still socialize with it even if it doesn't look like a human people. There. You know, there's the story Rumba owners named their rumba. Yeah, so you we we end up having these kind of emotional attachments and investments in things that don't look Not only do they not look human, they don't look like any other animal that we would interact with on a like owner or and pet or whatever. I mean, they they're They're just a robot. So I think at the end of the day, Josh, I think we're on the same page. We think humanoid robots are an interesting idea, but not necessarily the end goal. There's there's not a whole lot of of incentive to go after it for its own purposes. We can see the benefits of going after it in the sense of the developments that are made in that pursuit help us in other ways. And that wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes, please reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff h SW and I'll tell to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.