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Humanoid Robots For the Next DARPA Grand Challenge?
HizookRobotics writes "The official announcement should be out very soon, but for now here's the unofficial, preliminary details based on notes from Dr. Gill Pratt's talk at DTRA Industry Day: The new Grand Challenge is for a humanoid robot (with a bias toward bipedal designs) that can be used in rough terrain and for industrial disasters. The robot will be required to maneuver into and drive an open-frame vehicle (eg. tractor), proceed to a building and dismount, ingress through a locked door using a key, traverse a 100 meter rubble-strewn hallway, climb a ladder, locate a leaking pipe and seal it by closing off a nearby valve, and then replace a faulty pump to resume normal operations — all semi-autonomously with just 'supervisory teleoperation.' It looks like there will be six hardware teams to develop new robots, and twelve software teams using a common platform."
With the nuclear disaster in Japan this seems like the right time to make the push in this direction. Lets hope that we have a winner in the next 10-15 years.
Is there such a thing as a non-bipedal humanoid design? Humanoid suggests bipedal, does it not?
Excellent. Can we make one weighing 60 ton's armed with dual LBX-20's, a Large Clan Laser, and 4 C Streak SRM 6's, with 12 tons of extra ammo?
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
[A]ll semi-autonomously with just 'supervisory teleoperation.'
It seems like this would be far easier and far more broadly useful if you went the other way and tried to find a way to make it fully and naturally teleoperable by a person using a normal range of human movements, like a full-body waldo.
That would be awesome for all those situations in which you'd like to have a tank, only far slower, more cumbersome, and easier to disable.
Bonus points if you can also add the BattleTech universe's atrocious targeting computers and ridiculously unsafe, overheating nuke power plants.
...the last part of the course is 'how to love' and 'question whether or not the unit has a soul'.
This is very ambitious. Yet it's almost within reach, if enough money is thrown at the problem. A lot of money.
First, this requires solving low-speed legged locomotion over difficult terrain. Walking over rubble and climbing a ladder will be very tough. But it's not totally out of reach. A machine which can walk on either two or four limbs would be an advantage over rubble. Ladder climbing is a four-limb problem, and it's been done at least once. Grabbing the rungs with all limbs will make it easier.
Replacing a pump is an interesting problem. I don't think anyone has yet demonstrated complex part replacement in an unstructured environment. That's probably the least well developed part of the problem.
Building a suitable machine will be expensive. Each Boston Dynamics robot has cost upwards of $20 million. Even the Willow Robotics machine is over $100K per unit, and it's just two arms on a wheeled base. This thing has to have roughly human dimensions and be self contained. Petman isn't self-contained; it needs external power.
Yet, looking at the problem, I can see how to approach it. Modern control theory is good enough. Machine learning and vision processing are good enough. Simulators are good enough to allow debugging in simulation. Enough people know this stuff that the job can be staffed.
They should just admit they're calling for people to make sexbots and quit pussyfooting around it.
Is it just me or does the robot's task sound like something straight out of Half-Life?
The ultimate test of robotic ability is if it can go in the kitchen and build me a sammich! With limited or no tele-presense.
Say one, perhaps gold in colour with a slightly annoying, camp voice, that's humanoid and another that's really the brains of the operation in a tri-wheeled body that communicates with a series of clicks & beeps (it's also got a useful rotary arm for shutting off that valve).
It would make for a more entertaining video at the end of the competition.
Moore's law is not a law. Theory, yes; Predictable trend, certainly; Law, no.
Cyborgs!
The advantage of a humanoid robot, especially a bipedal one is that it can make use of tools and vehicles designed to be used by humans. Such a robot can perform tasks too dangerous for a human that could be done by a human. More specialized robots in non human form can be designed especially for high risk jobs, such as clean up of a nuclear disaster. The Japanese have been specializing in humanoid robots for some time as they have special needs. With an aging and shrinking population they see the need to develop service robots to take care of the ill and elderly. A proposed 'first step' was Project Atom to develop a humanoid robot with the Intelligence level of a 9 year old child. (The name for the project comes from Tezuka Osmau's Tetsuwan Atom manga, better known outside of Japan as Astro Boy).
This is going to be awesome.
- Should they be nuclear powered? Or perhaps sufficient to trail a power and comms cable for 1km from nearest comms station.
- Should study the exact jobs done by cleanup workers in Fukushima.
- It would be great if the workers could stay miles away while an army of robots was slogging through radioactive ground water etc instead.
- IANA Robotics Engineer but perhaps very good teleoperation and ability to get through tight spaces, reconfigure, work without wireless capability, and be radiation hardened, is much more important than being self deterministic.
- Consider making a batallion of robot army engineers. A number of individual complementary robot types, effectors and utility modules would be useful.
- For example a robot batallion could bring along its own high power telescope, power plant, communications gear, wheeled transportation modules they can snap out of, shovels and block and tackle, etc. and create a supply line back to where human operators are. I could see how speed is important, when you need to get something done very quickly, but other times you need to bring in sensitive detectors or perhaps set up a field station.
Make up a list of scenarios and tasks.
- Sample scenarios: earthquake has destroyed buildings / infrastructure, volcanic eruption, power plant rupture, perilous natural environments like rockslide, flooding, forest fire and avalanche.
- Sample tasks: crossing impassible routes, locating and saving people trapped under rubble, breaking through rubble indoors and outdoors, climbing through ventilation ducts and shafts, diagnosing and fixing engines, hauling hoses, executing operations in a control room, evaluating contamination, running quickly while carrying injured humans or robots, sending tiny auxiliary sensing robots via pipes or airlift from quadcopters and parachutes, mapping and climbing broken buildings and mapping safe paths, braving extremes of temperature / moisture / radiation / smoke / chemical environment / shock from dropping, etc.
Personally I would much rather have a lot of cheap robots with all these capabilities and have them trail tons of cables and local wifi routers, than spend all that time about building smarts into them. Making them stable, robust and reliable is a big challenge itself. Next time we won't have to risk human lives is why.