The Robots Return, How Have Atlas, ASIMO, Cheetah, Spot and Pepper fared 4+ Years On?

just over four and a half years ago in what was my eighth video i looked at the five most advanced robots of the time namely asimo atlas spot cheetah and pepper but just as a week is a long time in politics four and a half years in the tech world feels like an eternity so what has happened to some of these robots and are we any close to seeing this type of legged robot out and about in the world in general [Music] this video is sponsored by brilliant the first of the famous five and probably the most famous of them all is asimo by being the first to look like move like and interact with its biological makers asimo was created by the honda company in japan and was quite a step change for a company more commonly known as a car and motorcycle maker but honda has not been afraid to diversify into different sectors and the roots of asimo go back to the 1980s with honda's stated aim at the time to make a walking robot the initial result was the e-series which from 1986 for 1993 would create an increasingly sophisticated series of walking robots but the time they looked like a pair of legs with a giant toaster grafted on top but this was just a means to an end and by 1993 the e6 could autonomously balance walk over obstacles and even climb stairs the following p-series looked more like a humanoid with a torso arms and legs and by using wireless control could perform completely independently this eventually led in 2000 to the asimo or the advanced step in innovative mobility the name assimo is also a nod in the direction of the writer and professor isaac asimov and his three laws of robotics asimo became a robotic icon traveling the world and showcasing japan's advances in robotics up until 2017 when honda announced they were going to pull the plug on the original dancing robot so why when researching two legged humanoid robots he's becoming more widespread did honda pull out well it seems after 35 years of research and leading the field for decades honda just couldn't see a payday for their humanoid robot maybe they know something that the others and the new startups which have sprouted in the past four years or so don't but the tech isn't going to be stuffed into a cub and forgotten honduras said they will be using the underlying tech which they developed in new products and in their cars and motorcycles with things like a self-balancing motorcycle sensors and ai software for self-driving cars and even down to robotic lawn mowers they won't be pulling out of robotics altogether but it seems there will be more money in producing these subsystems and other things on mass compared to the humanoid robots like asimo at least for the foreseeable future while asimo has been signed to the parts bin of history atlas boston dynamics take on the humanoid robot which has been seen doing parkour style running and jumping but more recently has taken the dancing robot theme to a whole new level with the do you love me video released by boston dynamics now it seems as soon as this was released half the comments refer to it as being the thin end of the wedge and that the next dance moves would be the ones used by the robots to dance on our graves as skynet takes over now it might seem like atlas has gained some super robotic ability to dance better and more like a human compared to asimo's previous dead dancing attempts but this has not been gained by atlas watching a human dancer and using some skynet style ai to copy their best moves no this is nothing more than a dancing toaster a bleat a very good dancing toaster now what i mean by this is that it's not a result of a learned routine through ai but what is effectively keyframing a process similar to how animated characters in films and games are made to move however looking at the smoothness of the moves i suspect that this was created for mocap data on motion capture motion capture is used in the film and games industry and usually involves an actor or a dancer wearing a black bodysuit with white or coloured ping-pong balls attached at specific points a computer then tracks the movement of the balls and maps this to a virtual skeleton this can then be used to control a virtual character or if the hardware is sophisticated enough a robot like atlas this makes it much easier to create very realistic looking movement without having to hand code each keyframe and if it was hand coded the guys who did it should get a raise or work in hollywood atlas still has its core stability systems which it uses to balance and move around just like we stand walk and move without thinking about it the dance moves just work like an extra layer on top a bit like if a human dancer were to have a neural implant to download a new dance move but without having to learn it all of this just goes to show how well developed atlas's hardware and software control have become and no doubt many will be thinking when that darpa funded research will find its way into robotic soldiers which will be on the top of a military's list complete with the ability to pull off a cool dance move on the enemy's grave when they've finished something which has also changed in the last four years is the ownership of boston dynamics which started off as an offshoot of mit or the massachusetts institute of technology back in 2016 it was owned by google x who then sold it to japan softbank in 2017 the same people who make the pepper social robot well as of december 2020 hyundai motor group bought an 80 stake in the company so as one motor company bows out of legged robots another one buys its way in our next robot the cheetah 2 was last seen in 2015 autonomously jumping over objects as it ran and using a laser vision system to see the objects and then work out how to jump over them its predecessor the cheetah was recorded running at 28.5 miles an hour or 45.8 kilometers an hour on a treadmill which is still a speed record for a legged robot since then mit has now produced the cheetah 3 which can now leap and gallop across rough terrain it can climb stairs covered in loose debris and recover from an external shove or push but this time it does it without a vision or sensor system using blind locomotion similar to the way in which you shuffle and feel your way across a room in the pitch black the idea is to develop systems that can work where vision might not be possible so this could be integrated into a visual robot that might use cameras to see doors and walls but when it entered an unlit room or an area where it might have high levels of radiation for example which made its camera systems too noisy to use it could still proceed and move around along with cheetah 3 mit has also shown the mini cheater a small agile four led robot that can run jump and do things like backflips but apart from the party tricks it's designed to let researchers develop new controllers and sensors without fear of breaking the robot when things don't go to plan the group of many cheaters you see here are being remotely controlled by the mit researchers and are not using any ai to play with the football or to do any of the synchronized movements and interactions it also shows off things like the reversible knee joints to allow it to recover from any position now back to boston dynamics and their small four-legged robot called spot this has also had a major update and is also now available to buy if you have a spare 75 000 or so spot also appeared in the atlas dancing robots video doing its funky moves but again this was not through ai those were created by the boston dynamics choreographer software but it comes with a warning but this is at the owner's risk and the robot will fall down a lot until you've perfected the routine but spot has competition from both china and the us the chinese company unitry robotics have three models the a1 alien go and leica go based very much on the spot as the company founder has stated he's a big fan of boston dynamics but they start at ten thousand dollars so they are very much more affordable for companies and enthusiasts alike likewise the us company ghost robotics have quad-legged robots similar to spot using direct drive gearless joints to go where wheeled and tracked robots are less able to and by using more 3d printed parts the price is also very competitive this seems to be the major selling point and something that two-legged robots still struggle with these small four-legged versions can go places where men struggle or would be too dangerous be that from nuclear chemical or biological threats for two-legged robots the biggest competitor is from us humans we can still outmaneuver and outlast even the best robots like atlas its battery run time is about 75 minutes and people are much cheaper to hire this is where we can start to see why honda pulled the plug on asimo apart from very specific jobs in dangerous or otherwise highly specialized locations where humans can't go in almost every other situation men can still do a better job than two-legged robots and will do for some time to come in the mars exploration missions the mars rover scientists have said that a man could do in a few minutes but a mars rover would take all day or more to do but getting a rover to mars is far far easier than getting men there and then back again and so we come to the last of our robot five with this softbank pepper robot and here we don't see the emphasis on trying to move around like a human on legs but being more about connecting on an emotional level to people just like another person might do being a personal companion a greeter or an educator as a commercial product it's been quite successful at around about two thousand dollars for an entry-level unit but non-threatening look puppy dog eyes and outgoing personality draw people and especially children in and in no time they're talking to it just like they would another person if anything this is where i think we'll see the most widespread use of the future robotic ai peppers are already used as companions for old people when there are no real people around and although it might seem like a cheap trick to many of the people who use them they would prefer this to nothing at all with the increasing capabilities of ai in the near future this type of personal robot could easily pass the turing test that is to be indistinguishable in communications from that of a real human in a blind test many of the legged robots we've seen so far are controlled remotely by a human but if they are to become more widespread and truly autonomous then having some form of ai on board or data linking to an ai system will be essential but we need people to program these and the upcoming ai systems and our sponsors for this video brilliant can help you understand these challenges brilliant is a fun problem-solving website and app so you're not tied to the desktop and you can help develop those learning skills anywhere their approach is based on problem solving and active learning it's about seeing concepts visually and interacting with them so you can remember them their courses are laid out like a story and broken down into pieces so that you can tackle them a bit at a time there's no big deal here there's no tests or grades if you make a mistake along the way just check out the explanation to find out more this month there's a new course called statistics one which shows how to make the best decisions based on a limited amount of information and of course for the robotic fans out there there are others like machine learning and neural networks and loads of other things in between so if you want to support curious droid and get unlimited access to all of brilliant in-depth courses in learning head on over to brilliant.org curiousdroid and follow the sign up link and to close the video i'd just like to say a big thank you to all of our patreons out there for their ongoing support

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 304,502

Rating: 4.8895421 out of 5

Keywords: atlas, asimo, pepper, spot, cheetah, robots, robot, humanoid robot, honda, softbank, boston dynamics, 4 legged robots, legged robots, paul shillito, curious droid, unitree robotics, ghost robotics, a1, aliengo, laikago, robot dog

Id: OcEY9Mhx4ag

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021