How Robot Armies Will Save Our Future Cities

[Music]

imagine

being commissioned to dismantle a

radioactive

exhaust stack or to dispose of

millions of tons of water contaminated

with

radioactive material it is not a

hypothetical situation

today close to a decade after the 2011

fukushima nuclear disaster in japan

real people are facing these toxic

questions

have to handle danger safely so as not

to poison

a people a country or divorce water

supply

our world faces inhuman challenges every

day

whether industrial accidents natural

disasters

or self-inflicted catastrophes

circumstances that i call

inhuman because they compromise our

safety

and our survival our future world

needs in human help we will need

robots

until now engineers mathematicians

and roboticists have worked together

to build and move single robots like

this one

the model for this was simple at least

for me

when my son nikon took his first

steps two years ago i saw matt

a numerical sequence that played out

like computer code

called an algorithm isn’t that

what you see when you watch a baby walk

for the first time

turns out babies are the perfect

mathematical models to help us

understand the principles of locomotion

that underline

human agility but like my son

i was not content with baby steps

i wanted my research to take off running

too

a robot modeled after a boy is not

enough to do the work our future demands

we will need teams of robots or

collaborative robots

core robots and so we have studied

new models to understand how to build

more agile and collaborative robots one

model

to inspire their form and another to

exemplify their function

the first model was trotting around my

house with nikon

telly ever notice have your pet cat or

pet dog

has an almost uncanny ability to land on

its feet

or maneuver the obstacle course of

furniture and people

in your house turns out

four-legged animals exercise and

unparalleled dexterity

that enables them to traverse a globe of

value train

more than half of our world is

inaccessible

to humans and the real vehicles we have

invented

so to be most useful our robots

should take form as quadra pets

the second model was circling my house

in the dirt and armies social ants have

evolved effective competencies to

cooperate with each

other towards collective goals

collective phenomena

in social ants are the result of a

hundred million years of evolution

they work together to transport large

payloads that can be hundreds or even

thousands of times the individual ant

they work in homogeneous or

heterogeneous teams

with smart leaders to carry objects over

rough terrain to their nest

an impossible feat alone is made

possible

together so our quadrupedal robots

must function like ants with models in

place we could now ask a new question

one that still plagues us today how do

we mobilize

teams of collaborative leg robots put

another way

how do we get individual robots to work

together

to solve a problem when they have no

intuition

to react sensibly to changing

circumstances

we could just throw into one computer

all of the programmed instructions we

have created

for the single leg robots and then their

instructions overlap

hope they will cooperate doesn’t sound

good

does it here is why let me explain the

calculations necessary to

inform a single robot’s movement the

quadrupedal core robots we are

engineering

have a manipulator that looks like this

essentially an arm that enables them to

help humans

with manual labor intensive tasks

like construction manufacturing assembly

or disaster relief

each of these robots must decide where

it will move

how and how much force it will exert

on a target while maintaining its

balance

the execution of these variables depends

upon the control algorithms we create

for the robots remember

control algorithms are sequences of

computer implantable instructions

that address the decision-making problem

for individual

members of a team for example a set of

algorithms must compute

the required torque generated by each of

22 joint motors

during every millisecond of a single

robot’s movement from point a to point b

while accounting for any environmental

obstacles it could encounter okay

so that’s for one robot

now imagine a team of 50 collaborative

leg robots

working together to carry a container of

contaminated water

individual team members still have the

same variables

where to move how much force to exert on

their target

and how to balance plus an additional

variable

how best to coordinate its individual

movements

with others to play as part of a team

leader puller or lifter

that means we would need to design and

implement

control algorithms that compute required

torques for

50 times 22 joint motors

while accounting for thousands of

optimal decision variables

environmental circumstantial or

otherwise

every millisecond and if that is not

enough

all of these decision making algorithms

will have to be

executable in real time

okay we buckle down and do it right

like ants well we have a few

problems that ants have had about 100

million years

to solve at the root of them

is the fact that we cannot have a

centralized computer

to disseminate and coordinate the

control algorithms

like the ones i just described it

creates

a computational bottleneck too much

input

for too complex and output put another

way

one computer brain cannot interpret the

data from all joints

and variables and relay instructions

back

to robots for simultaneous optimal

function

we must instead establish a paradigm

shift from

centralized approaches to more versatile

approaches

that use distributed networks of

computational

algorithms to orchestrate sophisticated

core robot teams

each robot must have its own computer

and computational algorithm

that is resilient and versatile enough

to make

cooperative decisions based on its own

measurements and if each robot

function reactively it can efficiently

cooperate with

others

okay how do we do it the evolution of

robotic teams

that cooperatively manipulate objects

can be described by complex systems

complex systems are composed of many

components that

interact with each other in my lab

we develop what are called advanced

distributed control algorithms

based on optimization techniques that

allow

collaborative locomotion of leg robots

while carrying objects

but every step forward prompts

a new question and the search for

answers

leads me back to my yard where nikon

and telly are playing looking closer at

the ants i wonder

how can our mathematical algorithms

replicate

the biologically driven collective

phenomena

that these social insects have perfected

how can we advance the growing body of

research

suggesting that the animal locomotion

control is achieved through distributed

control schemes

how can we transcribe ant behavior into

control algorithms and why are those

instructions

into mechanics of core robot brains

answers would not only save lives

they would improve the quality of human

lives

in addition to disaster relief medical

applications

of distributed control algorithms

and collaborative locomotion include the

development

of robot guide dogs for the 1.3

billion people living with visual

impairment

and the development of powered

prosthetic legs

to stabilize accident victims and people

with disabilities our future cities

need robots teams of robots

to execute sensitive and sophisticated

solutions

to otherwise life-threatening

environments

to bring stasis and efficiency to our

ever

increasing human needs to collaborate

with humans to navigate an uncertain

future

that is guaranteed to include a

complexity only matched

by an interconnected network of

quadropodalco robots

how do we get there the answer

might be crawling in the dirt

you