Robotics Professor Answers Robot Questions From Twitter

I'm Henny Admoni, I'm a professor of robotics.

Today, I'll be answering your questions from Twitter.

This is Robot Support.

Down low.

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@agg26243 asks, Why are people so obsessed

with making humanlike robots?

Y'all need to chill.

I don't disagree.

Humanlike robots are great.

Usually a robot that's not shaped like a human

is more robust and more capable of doing

the task it needs to do.

One example of a humanoid robot is Sophia the Robot.

Some people would call this category of robots androids.

Sophia is a highly realistic robot,

but if you've ever watched Sophia,

you know that there's still a gap

between what the robot is doing

and what we actually expect from people.

This is often called the uncanny valley,

very humanlike robots can fall into that uncanny valley

and make people pretty uncomfortable.

@furbyfactor asks, How do you program

personality into a robot?

It is hard to define exactly what makes a personality.

Robots are just programs.

For example, if somebody makes a funny joke,

should the robot laugh or should the robot roll its eyes?

This all has to be created in software.

When we're programming robots, what we're doing

is building a set of instructions.

If you run into an obstacle, back up.

To get more complex behavior, you can't rely

just on pre-specified rules.

That's where something like machine learning comes in.

In machine learning, we are building algorithms

which are basically just sets of instructions

that can, based on the information that they're getting,

adapt to themselves to learn the right kinds of output.

@krysteenie asks, Can you pick up a single M&M

with a robot arm?

It kind of depends on the robot arm.

With this one, it's gonna be a little hard.

Some robots are only robot arms

and those are called manipulators, like this one right here.

Ah, so close.

This kind of fine motor manipulation

is really challenging for robots.

Robots don't have the level of motion

and movement that we do in our fingers.

The other thing that we use in our fingers

that robots don't have is a sense of touch

that allows us to tell when

we are actually gripping something so that we can know

that it's able to be picked up.

This box has fiducial markers on it.

These are essentially QR codes that allow the robot camera

to recognize what orientation and position

the box is in.

It's supposed to make it easier for the robot

to pick up the box autonomously.

@SEO_Chase asks, Do you think robots

will one day take over all of our jobs?

The real benefit of robots is taking over

the three Ds, the dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs

that we probably don't want human beings

to be doing anyway.

People are working on underwater robots

that can detect underwater landmines.

Some people have worked on robots

that can go into nuclear facilities after an accident

and shut off different valves.

But I do hope that robots are able to make

people better at their jobs and free people up

to do things that they're actually good at

and they actually want to do.

@bigtechprof asks, What is Elon's goal

for the Tesla Optimus robot?

Elon Musk does not consult with me,

but my understanding is that he's looking to build

a general purpose home robot, one that can do everything

from cleaning up your room to unloading your dishwasher.

To design a robot that's capable of doing

more than just one thing takes a ton of work

and a ton of sophistication.

Tesla is pretty well positioned to do so.

Their autonomous driving division has a huge

computer vision capability, and they're building

the kinds of batteries that would be needed

to power this sophisticated a machine

for a long period of time.

@DisplayYourCV says, What are the major problems

in the field of robotics today?

There are a few big challenges that we face today

when we're trying to get robots out into the real world.

The first one is perception.

How do we get robots to see and hear and interact

with their environment and actually understand

what it is that they're looking at?

Another one is actuation: how do we get robots

to move around in ways that allow them

to achieve their tasks?

And finally, another big problem is intelligence:

how do we make our robots smart enough

to plan the right kind of action to do

in order to achieve what they're trying to?

One major area of interest to me

is how we get robots to interact with people,

like personal home robots or healthcare robots

that are helping nurses and doctors.

@alicejanetaylor asks, I just wanna know

how Boston Robotics plans to deal with humans

who think pushing robots over is hilarious?

There are lots of people who are doing research

on how robots should respond to various forms of abuse.

One that I like the most is that when a robot

is being kicked by kids in a shopping mall,

researchers found that if it just rolls

to the nearest adult, the kids will stop.

@alaviers asks, Have you ever had

a genuine social interaction with a robot?

Although I can't say that I have had

a deep social interaction with a robot,

[Kuri chirps]

I can say that I have felt social reactions to robots.

For example, this is Kuri.

Kuri is really cute.

If you pet Kuri's head, it'll purr.

[Kuri purrs]

And that kind of response actually does generate

some social interaction for me.

A lot of people are working on social robots

to help people in the home or in elder care situations,

and in these cases, it's really important

that the robot is able to connect socially with people.

For example, it should tell when somebody's frustrated

or not wanting to take a bite of food

or somebody's tired and should just go to bed.

Detecting these social cues is still really challenging

to build into an algorithm,

and that's a huge part of social robotics.

@TomaszKosmider asks, How #AI is being used in #Robotics?

AI and robotics have a lot of overlap.

AI is all about how you get systems to act intelligently.

Robotics is about taking devices and putting them

out in the real world and having them move around

and interact with the environment or with people.

So in order for robots to work, we really need

the AI to support them, but robotics

is more than just the AI that supports them,

it's also about the mechanics of building

a physical system and the electronics

of developing safe circuitry.

Robotics and AI, big overlap, but still two separate fields.

@joemorone asks, Self-driving cars

are already on the road.

When there's a problem, how do we understand

the decisions AI makes?'

Self-driving cars are essentially a type of robot

moving around in the world and making intelligent decisions

based on what they're perceiving.

These algorithms that robots are using

for decision making are sort of like black boxes.

Inputs come in in the form of perceptions or knowledge

and then outputs come out in the form of actuation.

The robot decides to merge or decides to stop.

But that black box can be very, very complicated,

and because of that, we need something

like Explainable AI in order to back out the processes

that the robot used to get to where it was going.

@EEWorldOnline asks, What types of sensors

are used in robots?

Some robots have cameras like this one

that can detect not just color images

but also depth using infrared.

Other robots have physical sensors, like bump sensors

or capacitive sensors that respond to touch.

Time of light sensors or other kinds of ways, excuse me,

my robot is escaping.

The original Roombas also had bump sensors,

that's how they knew they were running into something.

Lots of robots also use audio sensors.

Hey Kuri.

[Kuri chirps]

Like that.

@247pressrelease asks, What are swarm robots

and how are they learning from insects?

If you watched the Olympics, you've seen

these beautiful displays of lights floating in space.

Those are swarm robots.

Swarm robots are groups of robots that operate

in a collective, they have intelligence

that's distributed across the entire system

so that no one of them has the central information.

These are designed and inspired by the way

insect swarms operate and it's just one example

of the ways that robotics has been inspired by biology.

@RoboTricks1, How Six-Axis Industrial Robots work?

Six-axis robots are called that

because they can move in six different directions.

Here's an example of of a six-axis robot.

It can move in three directions of physical space,

left and right,

[robot whirs]

up and down,

[robot whirs]

and forward and back.

[robot whirs]

They can also move in three directions

of orientation space: pitch,

[robot whirs]

yaw,

[robot whirs]

and roll.

These robots work by deciding

how to move every joint in the kinematic chain

in order to get the robot hand, which we call

an end effector, to the right position.

This process of calculating how the joints

will need to move to put the end effector

in the right spot is called inverse kinematics.

@SpiCodeX asks, Do you know who invented

the first robot in history?

What was it?

So what makes a robot, anyway?

It needs to be able to sense its environment,

plan using that sensor input in some smart way,

and then act on the world.

So given those criteria for being a robot,

the first broadly accepted real robot was Shakey.

It was invented in the mid-60s in California.

It was a robot that had a big television camera on top

and it had wheels and it could take instructions

and roll around a different obstacle course with objects

in its way, that was the foundation

of a lot of the robotics that we do today.

@edgeronia asks, What if the only thing

that's preventing a full-on global robot takeover

are a handful of CAPTCHA servers?

CAPTCHA servers are servers that run

those kind of annoying little answers that you have to give

to prove that you're not a robot.

You have to identify pictures that have

particular objects in them.

What you're actually doing with those CAPTCHA servers

is training intelligent systems.

On the back end, companies are using that data

to try to build better classifiers

for things like traffic lights or bicycles.

We've seen lots of movies where robots

are the evil beings that are taking over from humans.

The reality is we're still really far

from any notion of robots being capable enough

to operate in environments in order to have

any kind of impact like that.

@localplumbinghe asks, Could 'Star Wars' droids be real?

We are pretty far from robots like C3PO and R2D2.

They are showing super advanced versions

of the technologies that researchers

are working on right now.

Now these are two very different approaches

and they serve different purposes.

C3PO which is a humanoid robot,

it's shaped like a person, it walks upright,

it uses language that people use to communicate,

including the variety of different accents

and dialects that people use, and then we have R2D2.

It's explicitly not humanoid, kind of looks like a trashcan,

it uses wheels instead of legs to move around.

The language that it speaks is beeps and boops,

and humans have learned the robot's language.

That's not something that we see today.

Most of the time, we are getting robots

to adapt to people and not the other way around.

@steveboyl3 asks, Why do we need robotic delivery

cool boxes driving around slowly

getting in everyone's way?

Are we just making robots for the sake of making robots?

The idea behind delivery robots is to make it

more convenient for people to acquire things

like groceries or delivery food.

The idea of these robots is worthy, but right now,

the reality of their implementation

is that they move around pretty slow

and they often do block traffic.

So the technology hasn't yet caught up to the reality.

We don't want to make robots for the sake

of making robots, but I think a lot of the times,

we're building robots because we're trying

to make life a little bit easier

or a little bit more equal for people.

@cif_kh asks, Could a real-life 'Westworld'

be in our future?

It takes a lot to make a robot that is indistinguishable

from a human being.

This is because humans are super sophisticated.

We have dozens of muscles just in our face

to make facial expressions.

Getting a robot to be capable of that

requires dozens of motors, and that's not really

a realistic thing right now.

I'd say we're still a pretty long way off

from these kinds of hyper-realistic robots

like in Westworld.

@ASMEJournals asks, What are the nanobots?

Nanobots are tiny robots, that's what the word nano means

in their name.

They are designed for a variety of applications

including things like medicine going into the human body.

Because they're so small, it's hard to get electronics

that will fit into them.

Often, they're designed to respond

to the chemical environment, for example,

something that you might find in the human body.

It's actually this really interesting connection

between robotics and chemistry and material science.

@MetrologicallyS, How is robot simulation software used

to program robots virtually?

Simulation is a huge part of what we do

in robot development.

We do a lot of our testing in simulation

so that we know that when we bring those

into the real world, that they are more likely to work.

Simulations can be limited, though.

You need to replicate real-world physics

including friction and different kinds of forces

and wind shear.

That can be exceedingly computationally expensive.

Simulations are still easier than putting the robots

in the real world, and so they're still

a hugely popular tool in robotics.

@BlileyTech asks, How are #robots used

in #space exploration?

These robots are being deployed autonomously

to roll around, collect samples, take measurements,

and do all of the scientific data finding

that we need to do to understand what's in space.

We've had several robots sent to Mars.

Here at Carnegie Mellon University, where I work,

we have a huge project on building robots

that are capable of operating autonomously on the moon.

There's a robot that's actually being developed

and tested here right now and we're hoping

to send it into space soon.

@Distrelec asks, How are cobots helping

to transform industry?

A cobot is a collaborative robot specifically designed

to work with human beings.

One big area that people are looking at for cobots

right now is in shared manufacturing,

so you have a person who is building something

in a factory and the robot is able to do things

like fetch materials for them

or hold parts while they do the fine motor manipulation.

In this case, the robot is collaborative

for a few reasons.

One is that it's sharing space and tools

with human beings, but another is that it's actually

being trained by a human being, so it's learning

how to do this from a person,

and that's a big part of collaboration

is this kind of sharing of information.

@wizkellicap says, Agricultural robots a growing trend?

In fact, it is.

There's a huge problem right now

in growing enough food and distributing it

to get to all the people in the world,

and people are looking to robotics to help solve that.

Robots that can roll down a field of crops

and tell a farmer whether the crop is healthy

or needs different kinds of nutrients,

or robots that can very quickly sort

through strawberry plants to tell the farmer

which ones are gonna grow well and which ones

need to be thrown out.

The hope is that these agricultural robots

are going to be able to help farmers

increase their impact and make farming

in general more sustainable.

Those are all the questions for today.

Thanks so much for all the interesting questions,

and thanks for watching Robot Support.

Shh, she's sleeping.

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