Back in 2014, Big Hero 6 fast forwarded us to the year of 2150, to see a world where science is practically magic. Between Honey Lemon's chem lab in a purse able to summon every element on the periodic table, Tomago's electromagnetic rollerblades and Baymax's cutting-edge diagnostic technology, any way you slice it, Disney's vision of the future is filled with technological fantasies beyond our wildest imagination! Which makes it all the more mind-blowing to me that 136 years later, amidst it all, we're still using iPhones. "Everybody say Hiro!" "Hiro!! " Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory!! Just as squishy as Baymax. (not nearly as useful however...) So the other day I was binge-buying a bunch of Disney movies on Google Play since Disney is launching their own Netflix-style subscription service next year, and I expect them to make all of their movies impossible to buy in order to force everyone to subscribe to this thing, and I just can't handle another subscription service in my life! Why can't I just own the things I'm paying for?! Whoo! Millennial angst talking. And already, movies like Cinderella, Little Mermaid and Aladdin aren't available, which is just sad. I just wanna own a movie... :'( T ΚΜ― T Anyway, as I was saying, this binge session got me to revisit a bunch of Disney movies that I kind of overlooked or skimmed over the first time that I watched them and one such movie was Big Hero 6! And you know what stood out? Not just the impressive futuristic technology, but the sheer volume and variety of it in this movie! An inflatable medical robot, plasma weaponry, a deadly sign-spinning exosuit. But by far the most incredible thing, or things, that we see in the movie are these: the Microbots. Our main character Hiro, (that's Hiro with an H-I-R-O, not to be confused with Big Hero 6 H-E-R-O of the movie's title) invents these deceptively simple robots that, when their powers combine, can practically do it all. The technology is so innovative that it does the impossible: it impresses everyone at the science fair ( β ΝΚ β) which, let's be honest: It's the science fair. Anything that goes beyond "I dropped teeth and soda and made 'em dissolve" is gonna be impressive, let alone "I invented a technology that will revolutionize robotics." These micro-bots catch the eye of our villain, who looks like he was ripped straight out of Fortnite season 5, and he ends up stealing the technology to achieve number one victory royale. Anyway, all of it got me wondering: Could a technology like this Actually work? Will I, sometime in the next hundred and thirty six years, be able to control a swarm of micro-bots using only my mind to, I don't know, do whatever micro robots controlled by your mind do. Make a smoothie! Film theorists, start warming up those tri-fold boards now, because today we're looking at Hiro's winning science fair project and teaching you how to steal what he did to get yourself an A-plus. Oh yeah, I changed the history of modern robotics. Why is it always a tri-fold board? Aren't those things used for anything else? The way Hiro introduces these things in the movie make him seem like he's a reincarnated Steve Jobs, showing us the iPhone 70, now with even fewer features and faster planned obsolescence. But looking past Hiro's height, what exactly would it take to invent the microbots that we see in the movie? I think you could break it down into three clear components. One: The microbots are small and are all capable of moving independently. Two: the microbots are capable of moving in a coordinated manner with hundreds, or even thousands, of them acting together in response to a single command. And last of all - this one's the doozy - number three: The microbots are controlled by the user's mind via a neural interface. Think it and it happens. "The microbots are controlled with this neurotransmitter. I think what I want them to do They do it." And we have to do all of that within the next hundred and thirty six years. Think it can be done? Place your bets now in the comments, and then re-watch this video in 2150 and tell me if you are right. I'll just be hanging out in my stasis pod waiting to be revitalized by then So, you know, I'll be looking for a bit of excitement first the size the microbots are as you might guess from the name Individually, very small looking less than an inch long and as it turns out this is entirely possible not just in the future but today right now 2018 as you are watching this video, in fact real-world robotics actually get a lot smaller than what Hiro showing as far back as 2005 scientists were creating robots that were literally named micro robots because they were only 60 micrometers wide and 200 50 micrometers long so tiny that you'd need a Microscope to actually see them moving a hero if your robots aren't small enough for their lengths to be measured in micrometers Maybe you should consider giving them a different name like Milla BOTS or senti bots It's not quite as catchy But it is certainly more accurate truth in advertising my friend now Granted these real-world micro robots are a far cry from the micro robots that we see in the movie these 60 Micrometer robots can move along like an inchworm, but they're not useful for all that much So a better question would be could you actually make a useful? Robot as small as the microbots in big hero 6 the answer is yet again a surprising Yes in 2015 scientists at Harvard unveiled the Robo be a drone whose body is shorter than the diameter of a penny unlike the micro robots which seemed like more of an experiment to simply see how small they could make the tech the Robo bees are actually small for a Specific reason a small size lets them fly more easily and they're so light that they can cling to surfaces like an actual bee wood Using static electricity it also has the really nifty function of carrying a tiny camera Which means that it has real-world applications is the world's smallest spy drone Think about that the next time you feel an insect landing on your neck Maybe it's not some angry Hornet coming to plant a stinger in your flesh maybe it's just some foreign government who wants to really close-up photos of the inside of your ear suffice it to say size-wise Hiro's microbots Go solidly in the territory of not only possible in the year 2115 But actually already done in the Year 2015 Okay So it's one thing to make a robot small, but it's entirely another thing to have an entire swarm of robots that are all able to move together and this isn't just as simple as have a bunch of micro robots and tell Them all to do the same thing when Hiro's microbots Form into the hand and wave at the audience. Think about how hard that action is some of the bots have to serve as the wrist while others have to form the joints of the individual fingers each one of those has to know its position to serve that function and then on top of it all they all have to move in conjunction with all the other micro robots to get into that specific position and then Execute its function in tandem with everyone else and yet for as difficult as it may be looking at the research We once again learned that this isn't simply the stuff of science fiction Hiro's microbots combine two fields of study swarm robotics where a bunch of separate smaller robots work together and Modular design the idea of taking a small number of modules that can then be combined and recombined in a variety of shapes and configurations For an example of a self-configuring robot. See the rebus reconfigurable bipedal snake which is capable of moving as a two-legged biped walker like a human while also having the ability to move around on the ground like a snake or if you're in the Mood for a larger swarm of robots all working together well look no further than Harvard yet again where their robotics teams have also managed to create a Thousand robot swarm capable of assembling itself into various shapes sure. It's nothing nearly as complex as Hiro's microbots swarm. Yes We're the total number of microbots is closer to millions not thousands But we're on the right track and the idea of catching up to Hiro's microbots by the year twenty one fifty seems easy when you consider how far along these two fields are so in terms of size and Coordinated movement Hiro's microbots look not only realistically attainable, but even currently possible However, there's one huge part of big hero six is tag That seems to stretch the limits of believability the neural transmitter. The microbots are controlled with this neurotransmitter I think what I want them to do They do it this feels like part of the movie where things move out of science-fiction and into the realm of fantasy At least that's what you might be thinking but not only her neural interface is a real field of study It's a field of study that has shown some real Results surprisingly enough the idea of creating machines capable of reading and reacting to human thought is pretty old dating all the way back to the 1970s one specific case that we know about comes from a 1975 report titled feasibility study for design of a bio cybernetic communication system Which is based on the findings of a three year study conducted by the Stanford Research Institute and funded by DARPA Which I'm sure you've heard of at some point in a Marvel movie or on TV. Basically, it stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for development of emerging technologies that military uses and yes If you're wondering it is always military defense spending that gives us these weird fringe Sciences that push the limits of what's possible This was especially true when you had an entire country willing to do whatever it took to outwit the Soviets in the Cold War anyway the purpose of the study was quote to test the feasibility of designing a close coupled two-way communication link between man and Computer using biological information from muscles of the vocal apparatus and the electrical activity of the brain during overt and covert Speech end quote, so to break that down into ordinary English. The thinking is that our brain has two ways of delivering words overt Speech speaking out loud and covert speech which is thinking to yourself the idea Is that even when you're not opening your mouth to say words simply? thinking a sentence to yourself will activate the parts of your brain that processed speech and language just as if you had actually opened your mouth and Scobie those words aloud and these brain signals can then be read and Translated and acted upon by a machine in short you could think thoughts to a computer instead of saying them out loud and they weren't wrong in their thinking around this the study found that the electroencephalograph ii readouts EEG readouts which measure electrical impulses in different parts of the brain for overt speech actually matched up with the ones for covert speech now granted the results were far from perfect one source of error was that if subjects were distracted or had a twitchy eye the Signals from the brain telling the eyes to move would interfere with the signals for the speech but according to the report once you accounted for those errors to match between what the Machine read out and what people were actually thinking ranged from 52% to 72% Now those numbers might not sound all that high, but think about what that's saying you've got what is essentially a mind-reading robot That's as much as 72 percent accurate. That is pretty darn impressive and that was way back in the 1970s. And in case you needed any more evidence that Hiro's dream of neuro-BOTS that can react to your thoughts might one day be A reality see this headline from September of 2018 Yeah The year that we are currently in and a month ago stating that it's now possible to telepathically communicate With a drone swarm There are a lot of caveats here the main one being that it's done via a chip that has to be surgically implanted into the brain this isn't just some headband that you're gonna slap on your Forehead and take off at will but if you're the kind of person who's into getting invasive brain surgery So you can show off your latest tech gadget; well, the future is now friends Although you might not want to hop on that boat too soon We all know what happened to Google glass in all seriousness, though Most of the people who've been test subjects for this technology are people who are already having brain operations to help solve Neurological issues like epilepsy and early results are shockingly positive How cool is it that even the most fantastical seeming technology that we see in big hero? 6 is actually feasible not just in a hundred years not just in 50 years but right now, TODAY. We're already there when it comes to size Engineering swarm robots as quickly scaling up and with the right equipment you can even control drones with your mind right now even though film theory is usually in the business of ruining your childhood or honestly just your favorite movies since big hero 6 is only Four years old at this point that's not the case today. I am here to make your favorite movies come true well Except for the fact that heroes device here is impressive to everyone but he's simply just ripping off technology that exists today a hundred years prior to the events of that movie Oh and the fact that the microbots managed to perform amazing feats of strength without ever being at risk of draining the teeny tiny Batteries that they run on, in a film where it's established that simply waddling around San fransokyo for a day is enough to drain Baymax's battery to practically zero Microbots, mind control, No problem! Effective batteries; now, that is crazy talk But hey that's just a theory a FILM theory and If you want to see more about how modular robotics technology is making transformers into a reality well then neurologically move your mouse over to the left and click the box or Alternatively if you want to see me ruin another of your favorite Disney movies That's the box to the right and make sure you subscribe because we've been hovering just under 7 million subscribers for a long time now And it would be so sweet to get 7 million subscribers on this channel before the end of the year Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you for something a bit scarier in a bit more Halloweeny next week
Where did MatPat hear that the movie takes place in 2150? In one scene there's a poster for the 95th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, and considering that the bridge was opened in 1937, wouldn't that mean Big Hero 6 takes place in 2032?
Did anyone else notice the upside down red game theory trophy on the poker chip at 4:07? ARG Easter egg or hint?
Again, I would like to know how the bots are able to lift Hiro and the storage container.
Wow I forgot about That movies existence.
Oh yea Big Hero Six was a thing
Did anyone else notice the weird noise coming from the taped guyβs mouth around 10:04? ARG?