thanks everybody we are I have a bunch
of fun things to tell you about in fact
the big news is that we're going to
announce the winners of the air pran
ten-dollar robot design challenge at the
end of the talk so but before I do that
what I want to do is first of all take
you back in time a little bit to
nineteen nineteen ninety-three see so
1993 and you some of you will remember
the birth of the World Wide Web so when
my students and I saw this we got super
excited about the possibility because we
were working in the in a lab that we're
doing robotics we started thinking what
if we could connect a robot to the
internet so we wanted to do an
application that would get a lot of
attention get people to come in and try
it so we thought well we would build
blocks or something like that but then
we struck on the idea of a garden so we
built this thing we call the teller
garden and it was a real living garden
with the grove about eight inches of
soil plants growing in at a robot and
then a web interface so that people
anywhere in the world could log in on
their browsers and then they could log
in they could move around they can move
the robot they could zoom in a look at
the plants but if they wanted to
register they could also start to
participate by watering on the plants
and then they could also go in and after
they watered for a short amount of time
we then granted them permission to plant
their first seen the people did start
planting seeds and watering them and
actually just outside I saw a group that
was found during the hydroponic garden
that's connected to anybody can have a
kind of variation of this at their home
but this was almost 20 years ago and the
idea was we were really excited about
the idea of using the network as a way
to engage large numbers of people and
being able to to share control of robots
now a lots happened since then in most
of you know about Mars Curiosity the
hugely successful a brilliant piece of
engineering that just landed on Mars and
it's also at LOL bot in the sense that
it's being controlled not by the general
public yet but by experts in NASA but
people in robotics with my colleagues in
the research field see a trend you see
that there's over the last ten year
there's been a real inflection point in
the adoption rate of robots so many of
you have Roomba robots at home there's
now about five million of them out there
there's many defense robots there's a
huge number of surgical robots appearing
on the frontier and and actually there's
been some real attention and the
appreciation for this whole field from
some very unimportant people for example
might not know this but one of my
responsibilities as commander-in-chief
is to keep an eye on robots and I'm
pleased to report that the robots you
manufacture here see peaceful at least
for not to help everyone from factory
workers to astronauts carry out more
complicated tasks NASA and other
agencies will support research into next
generation robotics so this is a huge
announcement that was made about a year
and a half ago and a major new
initiative for the national robotics
initiative was launched so the lot of
new research that is going on in robots
here in the United States and i also
want to mention that it's also affecting
popular culture how many of you have had
a chance to see this film robot and
frank just came out this year if you
haven't i highly recommend it it's a
really interesting insightful view I
think it's actually something about the
future of robotics I don't want to give
anything away because it's just a
fantastic story but it also chose an
element this key element is that it
really suggests a role of companionship
between people in humans that I think
we're going to see hopefully in our
lifetime now what I want to talk about
is a particular phenomenon how many of
you know about the Google car almost
everybody heard about that what's
interesting about the Google car is that
it's not just a purely it's not just
everything happening on board what's
interesting is that Google is doing it
because this google car makes use of the
network in fact it integrates large
amounts of data that's been collected
both by its own cars but also by all of
us as we drive around our data is being
collected our local
information and that's being integrated
into a system that allows this robot to
very precisely localize its position at
any given moment in time I like this
quote from Brad Templeton who said a
robot will be truly autonomous when you
instruct it to go to work and it decides
to go to the beach instead we're not
we're not quite there yet but there's
something really interesting happening
now but with just last week California
signed into law legislation that's going
to allow autonomous cars on the roads
and the time that roboticists are
starting to use for this broader idea is
cloud robotics and when we mean by the
cloud is the internet right all the
different aspects that are associated
with it and the reason this is powerful
is that lets say let's take a problem
that people have been interested in for
a long time which is not just having a
robot go around and sweep up the floors
but a robot that could let's say pick up
declutter a house and any of you have
had kids know that that would be really
nice to be able to have the problem is
that with a lot of times the robots
going to recover things it doesn't know
right because you can't store that much
on a robot because it has to drive
around so how do you deal with that and
the new idea is that we make use of the
internet so when you see something you
don't know the robot can access take a
picture of it go online and take out
good access to gigabits terabytes of
information about almost every product
that's out there and it can index into
that to find out information about shape
etc the other idea is that the robot can
make use of the vast computing power on
the internet so we can you don't have to
carry all of your computing onboard the
robot you can in robot on demand when it
wants to do a complicated calculation
with motion planning to a complicated
environment it can index and quickly
access thousands of computers and the
other thing about this cloud robotics is
the open sharing of information and
that's what I'm going to come back to at
the end about the a frond design
challenge which is that for the first
time in my in my career in robotics the
last five years people have started
really exchanging code and data openly
so there's now open source tool kits for
robotics that is vastly accelerating the
progress
of the field now it's not these kind of
tools are with with databases
computation and the sharing of software
that's going to do a lot but every once
in a while the robot is still going to
get stuck it's going to encounter
something it's never really sure what to
do with and when that happens we can
still use the network because we can for
example imagine the robot would call a
call center where a human would be
standing by and then the human could
answer and say oh well that's a Rubik's
Cube it goes in the PO area right so
it's sort of reverses the usual
relationship between the robot and human
but it's a it's a very interesting idea
that it's not so far-fetched that we
could have operators for the rare
occurrences when the robot really gets
stuck and here's another scenario i like
to related you slide that thing from the
matrix not yet she doesn't have a fly
the helicopter let's go I love that
scene right so she doesn't know how to
do it but she could download the
information the robot could download
software on demand and all this is
summed up by a great phrase that Steve
peasants of Willow Garage said stated
recently which is no robot is an island
so this is a new paradigm a new
philosophy for robotics we're not
thinking about it as robots individually
moving around economist beings but
they're actually sharing information via
the cloud now how is this going to work
it's very complex and there's a lot of
different ideas and approaches that
researchers are developing for this in
the research community and there's a
number of papers that you can read about
different ideas that are starting to
emerge on this I want to tell you about
one specific area that's coming out of
our lab at Berkeley that we have been
cooperating or collaborating with Google
on a project that involves the transfer
dress to sub problem of just grasping
parts that I hinted at earlier so we'll
by grasping is a hard problem something
humans even babies do very naturally but
for robots it's hard because parts are
we it's very hard to reason
in the physics of parts so our idea is
the following we're going to make use of
a piece of software that Google put out
for free a few years ago called google
goggles and it's free you can download
this at any time and it allows you to
basically take a picture of something
like a famous landmark and then it'll
index into its its image store google
will do this offline and then download
for you websites that will describe that
object there's fortune ice for landmarks
but you can also do it for household
objects particular like consumer
products you can emit at something and
it will look up and it will tell you
about that consumer product so it's
incredibly powerful to should be able to
index things by taking pictures of them
so here's our idea we're going to have
this capability integrated with a robot
arm and for example it might look down
and see this object it's not sure what
it is takes a picture of it sends that
picture up to the cloud and then to in
particular to Google's tool which index
is that using vast libraries and that
Google will come back and say here's the
object here's the 3d geometry here's the
frictional properties the center of mass
etc that will help the robot in lifting
it up and grasping it the other part of
it is that Google can store with that
object a whole set of precomputed grasp
strategies these can be done offline so
that when the robot needs to pick that
up it could just index into them doesn't
have to recompute them on the fly so
here's the idea the robot picks that
thing up successfully and there's an
offline phase which actually were all
queer all participating right now every
time we take a picture and we or we look
at use google search and we click on a
particular solution that's its found
something we're looking at a cat with
robot and we click yes that's a clan
google makes you say that to enhance and
basically enhance its machine learning
around all of its image libraries so
that's what the humans do we put in all
kinds of information and then the robot
online make use of that by taking the
images indexing into that vast database
taking the data back down and then up
taking making operations with it so
we've done some of this in the lab but
we've done some experiments for some
household objects you may recognize and
here's some of the results we're
actually finding that we're able to use
pick images of those pictures of those
objects
the robot and we can estimate the pose
position of the object with about it
only feels about eight percent of the
time and then we can grasp it only feels
about thirteen percent of the time now
that's not perfect it's really not
enough for household robot but we're
making progress so it's a step in this
new direction of picking tools that are
out there that are actually human
enhanced that take advantage of all that
data that's flowing out there and
helping it using it to help robots now
I'm going to shift gears I want to tell
you about another aspect of the cloud
which is where we're making use of the
vast the best resources of human
ingenuity that is out there in the cloud
and I i was born in africa and i went
back to africa in tonight to ghana last
spring and it turns out i met a number
of people there who are interested
robots actually many different groups
and they have the strong interest in
using robots to teach but for example
they're using the lego mindstorms which
is two hundred fifty dollars or sell the
great system but it's very expensive so
we decided to form a group we called it
the african robotics network efron for
short and we put out basically an
announcement about this our motivation
is to is to connect people with
interests in robotics across Africa and
we wanted to use develop robots for
education to inspire students basically
very similar to their whole mission of
the Maker Faire and it turns out that
there are groups that are doing this at
different parts of Africa and we formed
an advisory board and I'm doing this in
conjunction with a or four core staff is
a professor of robotics at accession
University in Ghana we have now about
300 members from all different many
different countries around the world and
it's growing and by the way any of you
can join so you can be an affiliated
member if you don't live in Africa or if
you don't have pies close ties to Africa
and also institution to conjoin we have
a couple of institutions different from
universities and private organizations
in within Africa remembers
and then our big project this year is
the following this is that the
ten-dollar robot design challenge and it
is can we design an ultra affordable
robot for education so that students
could have their own robot essential and
we set a target of ten dollars we didn't
think anybody could ever achieve that
but that was something that we just
thought we put out there as a goal that
we'll see can we get something that gets
even you know within fifty a hundred
dollars would be would be a big step
forward so we offer we raise some money
for some cash prizes from the I Triple E
and we also got raspberry PI's from one
of our board members and we put out an
open call in June their criteria was our
practicality creativity and costs and
the submissions were due on September 15
one week when we go the two weeks ago
and that take note of that because we're
going to post all the information on the
website as of 6pm or tonight but I'm
going to now reveal the the winners
first I'm going to tell you that this is
a jury so we had a wonderful jury of six
experts from from different parts of the
world we judge them and we got 28
fantastic submissions I by the deadline
we reviewed them very carefully and we
now are ready to announce 10 winners so
they are the following this is we have
to we have three categories the first
one is the all-in-one category so this
is a self-contained robotic system and
this is a the first one is a group from
Brazil who designed something they call
the N by and what's beautiful about this
is it costs about fourteen dollars and
parts excluding the phone but the idea
is ten you can you get ahold of
increasingly there's going to be surplus
phones available so right now we have to
mate that's probably going to cost you
about fifty to a hundred dollars to add
the phone in there but the phone has a
lot of computing power so the beautiful
idea is that they can take the phone do
all the programming on that and then
just be able to plug that in to this
mobile device that can then move around
and perform operations
second prize in that category goes to a
group from India who have developed a
set of robot called MIT bots and these
are there it's a beautiful toolkit it's
actually contains all the parts all the
curriculum for allowing you to do
experiments with them so they really
address the educational component
there's a toolkit 44 on 4th grade the
sixth grade that involves plastic parts
and then from 7th to 12th grade that
involves metal parts and they provide
all the programming there's all the
components and breadboards the batteries
everything else those are not quite as
cheap they come out to about thirty
three dollars but still pretty
reasonable the next category is the
traditional what we call the traditional
roaming robots these are robots that can
that can roam free and the first the
fourth prize goes to disk five this is a
an American developer who put this
design this into beautiful design all
parts that are laser etched out of wood
that he will put together and sell as a
package in this will retail for about
forty seven dollars although the price
will come down in volume and this is a
group from MIT who designed a part based
robot design based on origami principles
and it involves plastic elements that
are folded to achieve strength so here's
an a picture of it moving around and
this robot the the egg robot as a call
it is fourteen dot nine cents the niche
the next winner is the swarm bought this
came out of a group in China here's
their lab so if they have a lot of kids
and students and and people who come
together in Shanghai and build and
design things again in the spirit of
Maker Faire and what they design with
something called the swarm robot this is
an example again all the parts are very
small this sells for they actually reach
the goal nine dollars and 51 cents
and they also not only decide one but
they designed a whole family of
different variations of them again all
using very very low cost components and
the the first prize winner in this
category is simply called the Killa by
and this is beautiful design comes out
of a group at Harvard and there's no
wheels no no legs basically those are
just pins and what the way it moves is
by vibration so it's by patrolling its
vibrational modes it can it can
basically scatter skittle across the
floor scuttle across the floor and
what's also cool about this and these
sell for it's actually a surprisingly
expensive given that there are about
forty three dollars each but they'll
come down to fourteen dollars in volume
so about a thousand if you can bake em f
orders to get a thousand you could get
them down to fourteen dollars but what's
also cool about these is that you should
you can have lots of them and they're
very interesting to explore swarm
behavior root behavior of robots so you
have a global with a LED system here
that they also make available and then
as these light up the robots then
respond to them so you can watch
different swarming behavior and by the
way there's a lot of videos that will be
available on the website to show you
this in their action so now I want to
get to the the last category which is
tethered what we mean by that is that
these robots are still going to have an
attachment to a motherboard a mothership
which will probably be a computer laptop
but to provide power but more
importantly it can provide sensing and
improving so the fourth prize here goes
to a group from Nigeria who developed
something called the robot arm and it's
a little hard to see from these picture
from the picture but it's all made of
plastic laser-cut parts and it has it
has motors and a gripper on it so it can
actually go around and manipulate there
were only ones who are able to generate
a manipulator rather than a mobile robot
and that sells for fifty dollars and 44
cents here's one from a gentleman in the
United States it's called the a cravat
and you notice that it's made some nice
materials this is made with cardboard
and and twist and
zip ties it's a beautiful and elegant
design and this fells for nine dollars
and ninety percent robot start oh I
should mention it has voice commands new
body stop so that is a it's a beautiful
piece of work we're on again nine
dollars ninety-four cents the second
prize goes to another group from the
United States have designed the bow bot
which would be a very elegant robot with
these long elements that are basically
feelers they can use to touch to
determine if it's made contact with
things in its environment has a very
extensive curriculum that goes with it
and now I'm ready to announce the first
prize winner and watching here's another
shot of the baobab so I feel like there
should be a drumroll because this one
really but the first prize we're going
to really blew me out of the water and
it's not what we expected what this this
gentleman did had this he's a piece of
student Tartans associated with
university in thailand and his idea was
to make use of a game controller and
these are very commonly available now
you can get them surplus for about five
or six dollars now that thing doesn't
that's not a robot but he came up with
the idea that has vibration inside so
those motors built up so he decided to
cook out the motors you can re fashion
them into actually driving wheels and
moreover as once you can move that
around it also has an issue that you
want to be able to detect things so he
wants to use the UM so instead basically
use these switches the thumb switches to
detect contact so he has to have an
inertial sensor that will basically
react when it bumped into something so
you need to have some lever arm on top
of those of those some switches so the
way he solves that brilliantly i think
is with lollipops
ah and he has installed this is our
grand prize winner this comes in at
eight dollars and ninety six cents it is
a beautiful self-contained robot system
that can move around and and respond
it's tethered but let me show you a
little video
Oh
hahaha
hahahahaha
okay so you get the idea it's a
brilliant piece of design and
engineering and I have to say the really
out surpass anything that we could have
hoped and that the surprise that someone
in Thailand would have come up with the
best idea that we saw was just a
beautiful example of the cloud at work
because we don't know what the next
great idea is going to come from it's
going to come from somewhere somewhere
in the world and what we're very excited
about the next step is to make these
available and so we're going to post all
the information online for example about
the sucker bot has incredibly detailed
directions you could do it yourself
there anybody anywhere in the world can
build their own and then we're going to
be finding a couple of these that will
be supporting by actually providing more
software and repositories basically so
that others can as they develop
extensions and enhancements these robots
be able to post them online two people
can share them and develop more and more
curriculum around them so this is a new
idea we're very excited about the
potential of how designers all over the
world can come together and come up with
solutions to really complex and
challenging problems like this one and
come up with solutions that you would
just never think about
you