"You Can Make It On Your Own" premiered April 8. 2003.

				A Factory on Your Desk A high-powered water jet printer allows designers to print out and refine their own inventions.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Sitting here, I can do things that a few years ago would have been a fantasy. Back then I could write on my electric typewriter and take photographs with my camera, but printing them together in a newsletter like this would have taken many days and involved many other people, but with a word processor and desktop publishing software, and digital camera and a color printer, I can do it all myself in an hour or two. Of course, that's been around for a while. Today I can create games and animations and shoot and edit my own movies, and post them for family and friends to see over the Internet. But all this power extends only to creating and manipulating digital information-- words and pictures. Pretty much the only actual thing I can make myself is the printed page. But what if this printer were instead a little factory, capable not just of printing paper but of manufacturing objects-- being able to make things-- you know, things like... well, bicycles, for instance. ALDA: We're on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, outside the Media Lab, where much of the digital revolution was pioneered. And it's here that today what Neil Gershenfeld believes will be the next revolution in personal empowerment is being explored. Did you make this in the lab? This is an all printed bicycle. This is basically a complete bicycle made from two-dimensional polycarbonate, cut on a water-jet cutter. ALDA: This machine, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, uses an incredibly powerful jet of water to cut through materials ranging from plastic to steel, fabricating, in a few moments, objects designed on a computer. It's just one of the machines available to students taking a course Gershenfeld teaches called "How to Make Almost Anything." ALDA: If I had one of these machines at home, you could e-mail me this bike. My sister actually was e-mailed this bicycle in Sydney, and she's riding one around. You're kidding! No, seriously. Isn't that incredible? So wait a minute... so that means that if I order a bike from a company someday, it won't come in a truck. It'll come... everybody will have one of these machines, and a lot of what we order-- lamps, furniture, bicycles-- will get e-mailed to us. We'll have it a few seconds later. GERSHENFELD: The only thing wrong in what you said is it's not when you order the bicycle, it's when you design the bicycle-- when you design the bicycle. GERSHENFELD: Did you recognize what this is? GRIFFITH: This is actually a model of Matisse's Blue Nude Number Two. You can see the leg here, the hind leg, another leg here, and a thigh, the arch of the back, the head and the hand holding the front wheel. In this how-to-make-anything project, it's not just that students learn to make a bicycle, they learn to make their bicycle. Every bicycle is different, and part of expressing yourself and the bicycle you want is what this is all about. This is an exciting idea, because as we're talking, I just thought of two things I want to make. I remember one thing. I came up with an idea for something, and I wanted to make a model of it, and I went to the art store and bought cardboard. And I got so... so bollixed up in trying to get the cardboard to stick together, I just threw the whole thing away. And it's a good idea, and I'd like to see it made; this sounds like I could make it. GERSHENFELD: So what is it? It's a thing so that you can take any flash camera that makes red-eye-- because the light is too close to the lens-- and there's a ratio, depending on the focal length of the lens. But if you put it about... I don't know, about that far away from the lens, it won't make red-eye because it comes in at a different angle. So a little periscope to sit over the flashgun that would fit on any camera, just fit over anything... So all I need-- to see if it works-- is to be able to build a little periscope. GERSHENFELD: I'll make you a deal. If you bring your camera, we'll sit down, measure it and zap one out. Okay, all right, this will be great. Listen, work on that thing for me, will you? ( laughs ) ALDA: So off I went on what is certainly the first nude bicycle I'd ever ridden. A couple of weeks later, back in his lab, Neil's making stuff with his six-year-old twins, Eli and Grace. Let me see what you came up with while I was gone. GERSHENFELD: Okay. ALDA: Did... I mean, did this... Let's see how it fits on the camera. Yeah, so the... Oh, the other way around, like this? So this is the flash here, and this mirror sends the light up to this thing up here, so that instead of the light coming out right into your eye, it comes down a little bit. GERSHENFELD: Yup, that's right. ALDA: My immediate reaction is that the periscope needs to be longer, so Neil sets to work on a quick redesign. GERSHENFELD: So we'll add, say, a few inches to it, like that? Yeah, okay. ALDA: The periscope has slots all down it at different angles, so we can vary both the height and angle of the mirror. ALDA: Close to the actual flash angle. Okay, so here is a long periscope with teeth all the way down. What we're going to do is we'll take your design, but we're going to print it with a laser that's so powerful that instead of just drawing a picture, it can actually cut it out in materials that we are going to assemble and make your periscope. Then when you come back in a couple of years, we'll have new pieces added to the printer that can actually print not just the periscope but the rest of the camera. ALDA: While this machine cuts out precise shapes in plastic, Neil's machine of the future will print out electronic circuitry, motors, sensors and everything else needed to make... well, whatever you want. Meanwhile... ALDA: We'll put it together, we'll stick it on a camera and maybe I can take your picture, okay? Now, what color are your eyes? Are they red? They're not red, no. Blue. They're blue, okay-- if they come out red, this thing doesn't work. ( laughs ): Okay. And that'll be your fault. ( laughs ): My fault? You were the designer! I just work here! I just thought I had this great idea. In theory, it works. ALDA: So first a shot of Eli without the periscope. GERSHENFELD: That's right on Eli's face. ALDA: And now we can begin experimenting with the Alda All-Angle Anti- red-eye Periscope Prototype. The two of you together, the same as before. ALDA: And there's an immediate problem. You're both out of the frame! ALDA: But this, of course, is exactly why it's so useful being able to make and test your invention while it's still being designed. ALDA: Can you see it? No, go back and... can you angle it a little towards you, the other way? So, see the flash light? ALDA: Okay, get your eyes out clear. ALDA: Not only are Eli's eyes closed; the flash missed most of his face. Yeah, in fact, you can see, because you can see the reflection of the flash on my glasses coming up. We need to angle it down more. That's what these are for. ALDA: So, one more tweak of the astonishingly versatile Alda All-Angle... and bingo-- the perfect shot, with Eli's blue eyes shining bright. Compare this to the first picture we took... ALDA: I'm really surprised to say that I think the eye looks bluer with the periscope on it. GERSHENFELD: Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. I know it, and I'm shocked, because I didn't expect it to work. ( both laugh ) Do we share the revenues? Share the rights... yeah, oh, you said it. Uh, well, you want to... Do we need a handshake on camera for that?

				Never Forget A Face Wearable computers evolve to help us remember peoples' names, our appoinments and everything else that happens to us on a daily basis.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: Not surprisingly, it was at favorite hangouts for MIT students in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that the once-bizarre notion of wearing your computer first went public. Most wore their computers slung in pouches, with the displays mounted on eyeglasses-- but some pioneers had opted for jauntier designs. I'll be getting a small sundae of Belgian chocolate and Vienna finger cookie. ALDA: Back then in 1995, the computers worn by this group of "cyborgs," as they called themselves, weren't networked together. But one of the Media Lab cyborgs was even then online most of the time. Steve Mann's wearable computer was even equipped with a head-mounted camera, continually transmitting images from his everyday life to his Web page. ALDA: You have a very medieval filing system here. Yes, yes. ALDA: Steve Mann had already been experimenting with wearable computers for ten years, and most of them were still stashed away in his dorm at MIT. This is his first helmet-mounted rig, dating from the mid-1980s. It went over my head like this, and then I could see my screen here. What it would do is ease off the heat... ALDA: Steve even had a pair of briefs equipped with a thermostat, wirelessly controlling his dorm-room air conditioner. You never had to get out of bed to change the thermostat, because your, your underwear was changing the thermostat for you? Yeah, yeah. That's unbelievable. ALDA: Surrounded by most of the cyborgs on the planet in 1995,3x I wondered about the next generation of wearable computers. Do you have, like, fashion conversations about these? ( laughter ) Do you give much thought to different ways that this stuff looks? People give it a lot of thought, actually. There's a lot of debate whether it's good to cover the eye at all, whether you might want it on your arm, a screen. We have an undergraduate student working on an even better private eye which would only take up a fraction of this space. It's a little prism that'll directly show you the screen and yet be clear, and allow your eyes to be seen by the person you're having a conversation with. Hopefully be completely invisible. One won't be able to tell that we're wearing special glasses. We won't have these... Uh, this display's about six years old, with a big cathode-ray tube up on top of it. You know, they're getting smaller and smaller. Eventually we'll have them built into a regular pair of spectacles, and the only evidence that somebody is wired will be the fact that their eyes sort of go across in a sort of reading motion. We'll think that they're either possessed by the devil or on the Internet. ALDA: This first generation of cyborgs has now mostly scattered across North America, carrying their gospel with them. Meanwhile, back here at MIT's Media Lab, their predictions are coming true. I will be... ALDA: Now, those glasses look familiar. ( chuckles ) You've been setting that up for me. Well, they certainly should. This is a computer, this thing? Well, it's actually several computers. It's a network of computers on your body, and it's doing a number of things for you. But most importantly, it knows something about where you are and what you're doing, and it can give you information that might help you doing whatever it is that you happen to be doing at the moment. Can I try it on? You certainly can. You can tell me what it does. Can I show you the parts of it? ALDA: Inside Rich DeVaul's computerized jacket is a network of CPUs, hard drives, sensors and wireless cards, making it more powerful than most computers still sitting boringly on desktops, or even laps. DeVAUL: One of the important design goals for the system is that it should look mostly like ordinary clothing, because I want to be able to go through my daily existence without people crossing the street to avoid me, and, believe it or not, this actually happens with previous wearables that I've used. People would cross the street to get away from you? Yeah. You could imagine the difference between wearing this with the jacket covering on and wearing it with the jacket covering off. People will treat you very, very differently, because right now you look like Alan Alda wearing a slightly bulky jacket, and if we unzipped all this, you would look like Alan Alda doing an extra stint on Star Trek. And the bulk will come down as you use smaller components, and flatter. Oh, yes, in fact, this design is almost two years old. Oh my gosh! Look, look! I just looked at you, and there came your picture on my little eyepiece. Yes, so right now... ALDA: It's the little tag on Rich's T-shirt that's telling my computer who he is. The name of my project, MIThril, and if you'll follow me this way... ALDA: As I move, a map tracks my progress. DeVAUL: I'll introduce you to my advisor, Sandy Pentland. Hello there, how 're you doing? ALDA: Oh, there you are! Oh, just a nice big picture of you, friendly picture, and I see how to spell your last name. DeVAUL: If you'll follow me arounthrough the Borg lab, the map will be updating to show your location as you change. The red dot is shifting to show your present location. And we'll head over here to my colleague Steve Schwartz. Steve, this is Alan. Hello, Alan, glad to meet you. ALDA: The most useful feature of Rich's system comes when I face him a second time. My eyepiece gives a little flicker. It's one-third of a full video frame. It brought back your name to me, which I had actually temporarily forgotten, and I realized your name is Rich, right? Well, very good. ALDA: Although too brief for meto register consciously, the flicker was actually a quick subliminal reminder of his name. It's very interesting, because it flashed so fast, if I didn't really know your name and wasn't trying to recall it, I wouldn't have got it. ALDA: As I meet Sandy Pentland a second time, again his name is popped subliminally into my head. You might not even realize that you're getting prompted to remember something you're trying to remember. PENTLAND: That's right. And that is a little bit spooky that you can have something that's sort of paying attention to what's happening-- like, I'm meeting this person-- and then it's giving something back to you that you're not actually aware of. But you perform better as a consequence. So it's a little bit like a psychic crutch or something like that. And for folks like me that don't remember names real well, that's pretty important. What have you found out in wearing this that you didn't expect? Anything? I'm playing with reminders that will help me do things like, you know, if I'm working too late-- really simple stuff. I'm wearing the Wearable, it'll actually pop up a display that says, "Rich, go home." ( laughing ) Or, even, I forget to eat. You forget to eat? I forget to eat when I'm working. So, if it's getting towards 6:00 or 7:00 p.m., and I'm still in the Borg Lab, I probably haven't gotten dinner yet. So a little thing can come up and say, "Rich, eat something." And if it sees that I'm wandering towards the candy thing that we have over there... It says, "Don't eat that. it can say, "Rich, go to the restaurant." I mean, these are the kinds of things that I need, ( Alda laughing ) because I can get obsessionally wrapped up in my work. Is this going to be a new kind of space suit? It's going to be an addition to the existing space suit. Wait... what? ALDA: Steve Schwartz, meanwhile, is literally wrapped up in his work This is going to be an addition to the existing American space suit. And what will be different about this? What will be different is that in addition to the radios that they already use to assist them during their missions, they'll actually be able to receive wireless video information through a wearable computer we've designed. ALDA: Building a wearable computer to fit inside a pressurized space suit turns out to be a tricky technological challenge-- one that NASA so far hasn't solved. And it uses some very, very low-power electronics in a flat and flexible form factor that'll contour to the human body. The reason for the low-power electronics is that the pressure suit is pure oxygen, and it's, you know... any kind of a spark ignition could cause a disaster. So we have to keep the power and the current extremely low to meet the safety requirements which are the most important requirement of a space suit. Can I try that on and see what that feels like to wear that? ALDA: The idea behind the project is that when astronauts are floating around in space working on the International Space Station, they'll have constantly updated video prompts in their little eyepiece. Supposed to lock onto my suit. But wait, here's the... Oh, I'm seeing, um... What am I seeing? Part of the space station? This is great. Wow, look at that. First I see a wide shot. It's like directing a movie. ALDA: Right now, astronauts working on the space station have to use paper checklists Velcro-ed to their arm. As the assembly and maintenance tasks get increasingly complex in the future, a video instruction manual could remind them how to do a task they'd been trained for months earlier. SCHWARTZ: It's a combination of reinforcement and the good old John Madden chalkboard, so they can, you know, circle the little bolt or the cable that they're supposed to be changing. ALDA: And here in my eyepiece is the sort of do-it-yourself video Steve's talking about. SCHWARTZ: So now we're putting in a D-ring. ALDA: I get the impression that even if I had never been trained to do this before, it's so clear what he's doing that I could probably do it. You know, like in the movies when they have the stewardess fly the plane and land it? SCHWARTZ: Yep-- it's close to that. That would be me. ALDA: So far, we've been looking at wearable computers designed to help you with what you're doing. Brian Clarkson is wearing a computer that keeps its eyes on what he's already done. CLARKSON: Basically, I've been spending the last couple years trying to record my life. With that? That's all you need to record your life? Yeah. This actually records about 360-degree video. Because there's two cameras-- one in the front and one in the back. Oh, yeah. Where's the recording device? In that pan? In the turtle shell. The turtle shell. ALDA: Wherever Brian goes, his turtle shell goes with him, spinning out a permanent video record of his waking life. CLARKSON: It records about 20 hours, which is about good for two days, say. And then, at the end of the 20 hours, I have to upload to a server, which I have in the back room over there. And I have about 500 gigabytes of disc space where I just kind of drop my memories onto. Isn't that hard to fish through and find out something significant? Very hard. What I'm relying on is that someone's life isn't actually all that interesting from day to day. There's a lot of routine and things that re-happen over and over again. That's perfect, because a computer can find that and latch onto it and find, okay, the patterns in your day. There's a weekly pattern; you might have a daily pattern. You might get up every morning, brush your teeth, get on the subway, go to work and come back the same way. And so the computer latches on to that pattern that you have and then tries to find the deviations from that. And those are the interesting points. This is a timeline of... of a subsection of the hundred days of memory. This is about ten days' worth. So we have front video, rear video, audio and orientation being laid out in time. If I zoom in on this particular day, it expands out to this view. So we get a more detailed view of that particular day. Have you found anything out that you didn't expect about its relationship to your own life? Um... I found that my hypothesis that someone's routine is pretty much... someone's daily life is pretty much boring and nothing new really happens from day to day has been confirmed. ( laughing ) So now... At least for a graduate student, okay. You have many gigabytes to confirm that. Of me sitting at my desk, typing away, programming. In these hundred days, have you searched for anything a little unusual and found something interesting? Something that you wouldn't have come across without the computer? I met a couple of new people who are kind of important in my life now. And usually, you don't have access to those first couple of moments when you meet somebody for the first time when you're introducing them. And it's interesting to go back and see how you acted around that person and how... You can kind of remember how you perceived the first impressions of that person. And now how, because I... My current girlfriend, I met while I was wearing this. And I can go back and figure out and remember exactly how I was feeling when I first met her. And how I actually acted when I first met her. So here I'm meeting this girl and we're about to go on a business dinner/lunch. So we're getting on the elevator, leaving. We've all met each other for the first time here. So I can speed this up. You walked out of the Media Lab and you headed for a restaurant, right? Exactly. So I'm going to zoom forward. This is amazing-- to fast-forward through your actual life. This is like an out-of-body experience. She knew you were taping this? Exactly. I think it is one of the things that made her interested in me. I was doing this kooky thing. ( laughing ) I had something to talk about. Well, I guess it's a good way to find out if people can put up with you. My friends always joke that when I'm wearing this, that not only do I get girls to talk to me, but I also get girls to talk to my friends who are with me, because they're like, "What is he wearing?" That kind of thing. Well, she looks animated. Talking to the guy next to her a lot, though. This is the rear view. Oh, so you can see what she's looking at over your shoulder? She's checking out the waiter behind me. She's checking out the guy over here. ALDA: But while Brian can now play back his life any time he wishes, the rest of us who happen to get caught by his camera may not always be happy with the idea. ALDA: In restaurants now, they have signs up that say "No cell phones." And I could imagine that they will eventually have signs up saying, "Hang your wearable camera at the door." You know, "Check it." Yeah. I expect this to happen. Basically, what we need to do is inject this hardware and this device into society and then society will build an etiquette around it to sort of make it work, right. I mean, right now we just don't have it; it's new, so it's scary. CLARKSON: There you go. How does that feel? Great. ALDA: Well, let's see how scary it can be. Let's see. Looks very cool. See you in a minute. ( chuckles ) Hi. MAN: Hi. ( snickers ) I point it at him and he doesn't know I got a picture of him. Let's just follow this person here. ALDA: Of course, just like the other wearable computers we've seen, even an all-seeing one like this will come down in size to the point of being inconspicuous. Then we could all carry around with us a way of recording every moment of our lives-- one that maybe one day could even smell the cherry blossom - and allow us to recall the high points, and even the low points, whenever we wish. Hello. ALDA: It could give nostalgia a whole new meaning. Hi, Alan. Hiya, how are you? How are you? ( chuckles ) ALDA: And wouldn't it be great for those, "No, you said, then I said... no, you said" arguments? Don't you wish you had one of these? You wouldn't have to carry that on your shoulder like that. ALDA: But in a world where, increasingly, surveillance cameras are all around us, the idea that they could move around invisibly among us is definitely unsettling. So what do you think? Would you want a permanent record of your life? Or are the costs-- both personal and public-- just too great?

				Toy Symphony Using colors, shapes and textures instead of formal musical notation, special software lets even untrained children compose masterpiece symphonies.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ( singing note ) ALDA: I'm contributing a note to a musical work called the Brain Opera, accompanied by a heavenly electronic choir. MAN 1: That was really good. MAN 2: That was good. Okay, now sing not so well, darn it. ( laughing ) I think I just wrote "Chariots of Fire." ( all laugh ) ( synthesized percussion plays in sync with movements ) ALDA: I was at MIT's Media Lab, testing some of the inventions of Tod Machover and his colleagues as they prepared for the Brain Opera's premiere. ( synthesized percussion playing ) One of the ideas behind the Brain Opera was that it would involve new musical instruments that anyone could play. This? ( laughter ) What's that? You broke it! ( electronic music plays ) ALDA: The Brain Opera has since been performed several times in concert halls all over the world. MAN: See if you can steer left in the next detour. Yay, all right! ( laughing ) ALDA: We caught up with Tod Machover again as he was in final rehearsals for his latest work, the Toy Symphony. ( playing theme by Paganini ) ALDA: Among his collaborators in the Toy Symphony is violinist Joshua Bell, one of classical music's superstars. What made you want to be part of the Toy Symphony? Well, they approached me because I think they had heard... they heard that I played music ( laughs ) and I was interested in the music. And they also heard that I love video games and I love computers and I buy a new laptop every six months 'cause I like to stay ahead of the technology. So, I guess the combination of my interest in technology and my willingness to go there. ALDA: Just where he's going, no one's quite sure at this point. But one thing he'll be taking with him is a computer program that can pick up the sound of his Stradivarius and instantly add to it-- in this case, doubling the melody an octave lower. ( synthesized lower octave plays with violin music ) ( playing virtuosic passage ) ALDA: A few weeks later, at a performance of the Toy Symphony in Glasgow, Scotland, Joshua's enhanced Stradivarius shows off its new musical colors. ( violin and synthesized music play ) In this piece, the Stradivarius is still front and center. ( cheering and applause ) We don't want to use it in a situation where you just miss hearing the acoustic sound of a violin, which is hard to beat, you know? ALDA: Yeah. And especially after spending $4 million on this... ( laughing ) I don't want it to be completely, you know... not useful anymore. ( playing violin ) ALDA: But while Joshua won't be giving up his Strad anytime soon, he and Tod are working together on one of Machover's latest musical instruments, called the hyperviolin. ( still playing violin ) The idea is to take the musical skills and subtleties Joshua employs in playing the violin and translate them into novel musical sounds. What we're trying to do is take this instrument, which has the feel of a regular violin-- has the proportions, the strings, fingerboard-- so Josh can play it like a violin with really no adjustment. But it has lots of extra information. It gives the computer a lot of help as to how Josh is playing and what he's playing. BELL: The bow, um, it picks up all kinds of data like bow speed, tilt, um, pressure. It can take all this data from what I do naturally with the bow when I play the violin, and it can then isolate that and feed it into the computer. ALDA: Diane, there's a radio in here sending the data? Yeah, this... there's a transmitter right here that sends all the data out by this wire here and we pick it up remotely in the studio. You're capturing on the computer... DIANE: Right. ...the tiny, almost imperceptible things that he's doing with his right arm to make the sound that he gets. Right. What it allows us to do is to make an instrument which starts from the basis of a violin, but can then flower and expand into many other things and the other things are really just limited by our imaginations. ALDA: Like what? I don't know. ( group laughing ) BELL: Like he said, it's limited by our imaginations. Any old thing will be fine. ALDA: Here in rehearsal, Tod and Joshua experimented with different sounds in preparation for the Glasgow concert. ( playing smoothly ) ( orchestra playing ) ALDA: At the concert itself, the hyperviolin joined a children's chorus, a full symphony orchestra and some other instruments hatched especially for the Toy Symphony-- beatbugs. ( beating rhythmically, orchestra still playing ) ( beating ) And it plays it back to me. Mm-hmm. I can stop if I don't like it and try something else. ALDA: My introduction to beatbugs came from one of Tod Machover's graduate students, Gil Weinberg. And now I can start to manipulate it. ( beat, pitch changes ) I can change the pitch. The more I press, the higher the pitch goes. Now I also can change the rhythm-- ornament it. ( beatbug playing ) Stop it. Try something else. ( rhythm changes ) ALDA: Beatbugs are supposed to allow even someone with no experience at all at playing an instrument, the ability to create and collaborate. ( toying creative beat ) If you're happy with the motif, hit the bug hard, and it's sent to a third friend of ours. What you played is recorded. I can't change what you played, but I can enhance it. I can use different rhythmic values and different numbers. You can sort of hide it. Develop it. So you can take this one and play with it, and when you point it towards me, I can play with you. ( both beatbugs playing ) ( beatbugs playing ) ALDA: The beatbugs made one of their first public appearances at a trial run of the Toy Symphony in Berlin last year. The children spent about a week working together to create their composition. Tod Machover's goal is to give children a hands-on experience with music, even if they've never even touched a conventional instrument. ( playing beatbugs ) For me as a kid, when I was four years old, I heard music in the family, but there were no toys-- musical toys-- for me to play with, and I actually invented my own. When I was three or four, I used to string rubber bands on my dresser drawers and open up the drawers to different lengths-- different amounts-- and create pitches and I would copy tunes, because I didn't have anything else to play with. It's interesting. Toy companies understood right away that music is something which is very little exploited for young kids. I mean, they're really, not just in terms of the instruments, but in terms of the activity. I mean, I started Toy Symphony because I have now eight and four-year-old daughters, and I was just looking around for music training for them. And it's... it's so conservative and... and just not interesting. It's much less expressive and musical than they are, and than any kid is. ( orchestra playing softly ) ALDA: Just how musically expressive kids can be if they have the tools was beautifully demonstrated in Berlin when the German Symphony Orchestra played a piece composed by a ten-year-old boy. ( orchestra playing rhythmically ) The composer hadn't written his score using musical staves and key signatures and semiquavers, but with a software program called Hyperscore. ( computer playing piece ) ( orchestra playing same piece ) His score had then been transcribed for full orchestra. ( orchestra playing ) ( computer playing same piece ) ( orchestra continuing with same piece ) ( computer continuing with same piece ) ( orchestra playing ) ( computer playing ) ( Alda chuckles ) ( orchestra playing ) ( computer playing ) ALDA: Oh, great! ( orchestra still playing ) ( computer finishes on single note ) ( orchestra finishes on single note ) That's the idea. I'll give you $50 for this program right now-- cash. Actually, it's free on the Web. Oh, no kidding. No kidding. Everyone can download it. You've to give me the link. Oh, this is great. ALDA: Hyperscore uses colors, shapes and textures instead of musical notation. FARBOOD: So if you move the notes close together... ALDA: You start by creating a little musical motif, or tune, using purple teardrops. I have no idea what I'm doing. Well, hit the space bar. Hit the space bar, okay. ( computer playing Alda's composition ) ALDA: There's a lot more you can do with Hyperscore, but in the spirit of this show, why don't you go to the Website and see how you can make it-- music that is-- on your own? ( computer playing Alda's composition ) ( chuckles ) I love it.

				Teetering to Victory Students at MIT build their own robots, then battle for supremacy at this annual design competition.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Three, two, one-- go! ( machines buzzing ) ALDA: We're ending with a contest that's the essence of learning how you can make it on your own-- the annual battle of machines built by students at MIT. MAN: MIT, yeah! ( crowd applauding ) Now comes the fun part-- calling my mom. ( applause ) CROWD ( yelling ): Double win, double win! ALDA: This year's contest, hatched six months earlier, involves a teeter-totter beam and a swinging eight-pound ball. The challenge is to build a machine that starts out sitting on the beam, and that after exactly 45 seconds has managed to tilt its side of the beam down, working against an opponent trying to do the same thing. There's a ten-pound weight limit for each machine and a box of parts to make it from. MAN: A bunch of structural materials that they can... ALDA: Each of the hundred-plus students in the contest-- which is actually a course in mechanical engineering-- gets an identical kit of stuff, including several electric motors from home power tools, as well as things that seem like mechanical leftovers. ALDA: What would you do with this? Nobody in the class knows what that is. ( laughing ) We had a... Is that true? You don't know what this is? No one knows how they're going to use it. Usually people just do this: pop it in, take the motor and do something with the motor and then toss that back in there. What it is good for is... It is a mistake to toss that away. ( all laughing ) ALDA: After several weeks of brainstorming and designing their machines on paper and computer, the class sets to work manufacturing them. And it's now that some of the strategies the students have come up with begin to be tested. Grinding sharp spikes is Jessica Baker, one of several with a plan to have their machines reach down and grab the carpet underneath the beam. Alex Slocum is the professor running the course and one of a dozen MIT staff helping the students translate their designs into reality. So that's about ten or 15 pounds up... from one tooth. Just imagine if you had 20 teeth. When they build a machine, if they do the calculations right, the machine works and you get this intense ( grunts )-- just, like, a geek-asm from knowing that what you created in your mind and on the computer is actually doing what you told it to do. It's going to be dropped from up above there by the strings. And these things grab into the carpet, theoretically. If I grip the carpet well enough, I can harness the full power of the motors. ALDA: Here's another plan to pull the beam down. MAN: This locks on to prevent the whole mechanism from falling off the beam once it drives to the end. It takes about 15 seconds. ALDA: This is Will Lark. ( clatters ) LARK: Once it's flipped open, this rock, which represents the car, will drive over here, attach with magnets and reel the beam in. ALDA: In contrast to Jessica and Will's plan to tug the beam downwards, Nick Martin intends to jack it up. It will drop off the beam, drive over to the opponent's side, and then raise the jack to raise the beam, thus changing the angle. ALDA: Ernesto Blanco has been helping students in this course for over 20 years. The contest changes, but not its intent. Practically everything in mechanical design is involved here. And we're very happy to be able to give the students that kind of an experience. And at the same time, a little bit of frustration. It's an awesome class. It's... it's very, very productive and I've learned so much in this course. It's amazing. But it's also very stressful. And then it goes there... ALDA: It's now just a few days before the contest and a hundred machines are taking shape. WOMAN: It can go in here. ( machine whining ) About midyear there were some worries that maybe the contest was a little too complicated, and, "Oh, my goodness, the students are having a really tough time." But in reality, what they were doing is they were hidden in their warrens, working away on solutions that, when they surfaced-- just "Whoa!"-- blew our minds with how elaborate and cool they were. Folks, it's two days before delivery time, so let's see what you got. So the plan is, this guy, all he does is he goes from here to here and then these syringes apply 500 pounds of force to this... ALDA: Eric Varady has a plan similar to Will Lark's. And it clamps down so it can't be moved. ALDA: He drops a car off the beam and uses it to place magnets on a metal strip. The magnets anchor a string, allowing him to winch the beam down. The car is then free to roam. VARADY: If there's any other robots on the ground, which is what I'm really afraid of, it can take them out. ALDA: Nick Martin, meanwhile, has almost finished his mobile jack. The goal is to drop the robot off the beam onto the ground, drive to the other side of the beam, and then raise this jack, and push their side of the beam up. His strategy of winching to... to the magnets will produce a lot of force. I'm worried about robots like his. I'm worried about him, so hey! ALDA: Jessica Baker's carpet grabber is also almost done and testing well. ( machine whirs ) I think I need to perfect that carpet grabber so it digs in more. But I'm happy with how the rest of it works. ALDA: Sarah Mendelowitz's machine is designed to give her opponent a jolt... then, like Jessica's, drop a carpet grabber to the floor. A winch then hauls the beam down. ( laughing ) Hey, we're going to have a run. ALDA: Will Lark, meanwhile, has built his car but dropped the idea of using it to place magnets. Now he plans to simply drive away, pulling out telescoping rods to maximize his leverage. TEACHER: We have a winner against the brick. ( cheers and applause ) ALDA: After 14 weeks of design, construction and testing, the machines faced one last hurdle. Fit it in the box, however you can get it in. ALDA: To qualify for the contest, every machine must fit within the box its parts came in. Does that go straight? Yeah. There. All right, put the lid on, please. Woo-hoo! The machines must also weigh no more than the ten-pound limit. MAN: Excellent. Oy! MAN: What can you get rid of? I can drop one of these clamps. Do whatever you have to. You've got less than two hours. Yeah. ALDA: Kateri Garcia's machine just slips in under the weight limit-- as does, eventually, Eric's. Yes! Yes! Everybody has to put their machines away with the lock placed backwards, so they know that you've been impounded. And you're not allowed to touch your machine until Tuesday morning, the morning of the competition. At that point you can decorate or do whatever you want, as long as you don't change any of the mechanics of your machine. So... I'm glad it's out of my hands and I'm really excited for the competition. ALDA: It's now the first of two days of head-to-head competition-- with no second chances. One loss, and your machine is eliminated. I'm nervous, and that's, like... I'm a little stressed out by that because, I mean, it's all fun, but I invested so much time in this-- so much time-- that, uh, you know, I want my money's worth. ALDA: Before an expectant crowd in MIT's ice-hockey arena... SLOCUM: Three, two... one, go! ALDA: Nick Martin's machine, flawless in tests, doesn't give him his money's worth. ( crowd cheering, whistling ) MARTIN: It fell over. That was kind of depressing. I'd never seen that before. I mean, I tested it, ran it, but... you know, I guess that's what engineering's all about. SLOCUM: Go! ALDA: Nick's isn't the only machine to dash weeks of hard work in a few seconds of competition. Her opponent's crash means that Kateri Garcia's machine this round simply has to cling on. ( applause ) SLOCUM: Three, two, one... ALDA: Sarah Mendelowitz's jolting mechanism fails to flip open. ( crowd cheering ) But her carpet grabber takes a firm grip and pulls her to an easy victory. ( crowd cheering ) MAN: All right! ( applause ) Let's hear it for Sarah. ( applause, cheering ) MAN: Sarah, Sarah! WOMAN: Yeah, Sarah! ALDA: Will Lark's already made it through a couple of easy wins, and again his machine works as advertised-- almost. His car never really finds its feet, but still pulls the telescoping rods out far enough to get the leverage to win. ( applause ) SLOCUM: Two, one... ALDA: Here's the view from above the beam, featuring a robot that's using a bulldozer technique: shove the opponent off the beam, then drive back to your end to tilt the beam down. The bulldozing robot was built by Malima Wolf. WOLF: It's a pretty powerful robot, and it's pretty simple, but, like, it doesn't have the problem of falling off the beam, which a lot of the robots do. So, it works. It's simple. ALDA: Here's another mobile jack. Dropped off the beam, it drives over to the opponent's side and smoothly lifts it into the air. ( crowd cheering ) Will DelHagen is the piston's designer and builder, and it's obviously a machine to be reckoned with. ( applause ) Now watch carefully. See that projectile flying over the yellow ball? It's attached to a string from a robot that's just been bulldozed off the beam. Oh, my... ALDA: But Alison Wong's not out of it yet. By grabbing the pendulum, Alison manages to keep most of the weight of the whole system on her side of the fulcrum-- and pulls off a win that seems to surprise her more than anyone. ( applause, cheering ) SLOCUM: Three, two... ALDA: Eric Varady's already breezed through several early rounds. The magnets and the winch have provided all the power he's needed. ( winch motor whirring ) So far, his car has had no opponents needing to be harassed. It worked perfectly. So, you know, if it keeps it up, I got a real good chance. ALDA: Jessica Baker's also been doing well with her carpet grabber. But this time it's up against another of those mobile jacks, and before Jessica has a chance to do any serious winching... ( cheering ) ( winch motor whirring ) ( crowd excitement builds ) ( crowd shouts in disappointment ) BAKER: He had a really nice machine. I was hoping to get down there really fast and lift up the carpet so he wouldn't be able to drive over there, but he got over there too fast. ALDA: While Jessica had the bad luck to face a jack, Sarah's carpet grabber has been having a fairly easy time. This round her opponent's magnets fail to get a grip. ( applause ) Nice job. MENDELOWITZ: I seemed to have gotten lucky a lot of times-- I haven't had to go up against a jack yet, and so I think it's a lot of luck who I've picked. But I'm glad that things are working well, and so far, so good. I'm excited that I've gotten this far. SLOCUM: Two, one... ALDA: Malima and her bulldozer are up again, this time against another pendulum grabber. SLOCUM: She's got to winch and hope that she doesn't get off the beam. ( crowd cheering ) ALDA: But Malima simply goes into reverse, dragging everything with her. SLOCUM: Oh, no! Oh! Oh! ( cheering ) Amazing! Absolutely amazing! It works pretty well right now, and it seems to be making it. It hasn't broken yet. ALDA: Now, here's a confrontation we've been waiting for: Sarah's carpet grabber against Eric's magnets and car. Sarah gets a grip and yanks so hard she makes Eric's magnets lose their grip, leaving them dangling helplessly. Now Eric's only hope is his car. ( cheering, shouting ) But Sarah hangs on and Eric's streak is over. ( applause ) It's all good, she deserved to win. That was awesome. That was my toughest match so far, so I'm looking good. I'm really excited. SLOCUM: One, go! ALDA: This is the first match-up we've seen between mobile jacks. One jack maneuvers into position more quickly than the other. ( crowd gasping ) SLOCUM: He may have it. Don't get greedy. ALDA: The faster jack is driven by Alex Jacobson. Jacks that work well, like Alex's, are beginning to look unbeatable. ( applause ) Here's another face-off that promises to be fun: Will's drive-away car against Malima's bulldozer. As long as the front part stays on, it should be fine. I think I can do it. I think I can do it. I don't know-- who knows, we'll see. ALDA: Malima's bulldozer attacks-- but it's stopped short by Will's lock-on clamp. Will's heavyweight car does its thing, and its extra leverage keeps Malima's bulldozer hanging high. ( cheering, applause ) Way to go. That was good. ( applause ) SLOCUM: Excellent. Oh, man! ( crowd gasping ) ALDA: Only a few machines now remain in the running. One is the mobile jack built by Will DelHagen. SLOCUM: All right. ( cheering ) ALDA: Alex Jacobson has the other-- almost identical-- jack, here literally ripping a carpet grabber out of the contest. ( cheering ) MAN: Wow! ( winch motor whirring ) ALDA: Kateri Garcia's bulldozer has been steadily plowing its way through the opposition. ( crowd gasping ) It does it again. ( cheering ) But as time is about to expire... ( screaming ) ( crowd ohs ) No! No... ALDA: With both machines off the beam, it ends up a tie. GARCIA: The controls are really touchy and this thing likes to take off and I shouldn't have touched it, I should've left it alone. ALDA: So there's a rerun. This time Kateri's bulldozer fails to dislodge her opponent, whose carpet grabber clings on. SLOCUM: Look at the climb on that, that's an amazing angle! There she goes-- up, up, up and away! ALDA: But Kateri's heroic climb isn't enough to dislodge the carpet grabber. ( applause ) Congratulations! You killed my machine. I have never seen-- literally in seven years-- any student design a machine to go up about a 45-degree angle, almost. ( cheering, applause ) ALDA: Will Lark's car is still going strong, this time pulling the telescoping arm as far as it will go. ( cheering, applause ) With this win, he's in the semifinals. Whew-- I've got to take a breather for a second. ALDA: Sarah's luck, meanwhile, seems to have run out, as she finally confronts Will DelHagen's all-powerful jack. SLOCUM: It's the carpet grabber... ( cheering, applause ) MENDELOWITZ: I did a lot better than I thought I was going to do. I just came up against a tough opponent. I don't know if there was much I could do.Ñ So, I did my best. Having it done on time and having the opportunity to practice really helped a lot. I think that was a big part of how well I did. You will rerun. ALDA: But then, an unexpected reprieve from the judges. ( giggling ): Okay.ñ? So now I guess I'm rerunning since my control system stopped working again. So they're going to let me rerun. ALDA: Remember Jessica Baker's plan to try to pull up the carpet before the mobile jack could get into position? ( crowd erupts ) It looks like Will DelHagen's jack has finally met its match-- until Sarah gives one last tweak on the controls. She tries to recover, but it's too late. MAN: Yeah, go, go, go! ( crowd gasps ) ( cheering, applause ) Good job! Uh! MAN: You were so close! I know! I got too greedy, I think. I didn't want him to get underneath and I popped off. So... I think if I'd not been so greedy, I might have been able to beat him, but it was really close. It was a good... ( chuckling ) ALDA: The first semifinal. And now it's Will Lark's turn to face Will DelHagen's jack. ( cheering, shouting ) Almost before the car has even jumped off the beam, the jack is hoisting it up. All Will DelHagen has to do is stand by and watch as Will Lark's car desperately tries to hook around the jack and yank it away. Winch it! SLOCUM: Six, five, four,-0 three, two, one... ( applause ) ALDA: For Will Lark, it's the end of a great run. ( applause ) That's my only... way I could have got him, was try to mess him up, so... MAN: That was a great idea. SLOCUM: Go! ALDA: The second semifinal. It's Alex Jacobson's mobile jack against a simple extender that has quietly made it through round after round. For a moment it looks like Alex has gotten trapped by the corner. But then... Up, up, up-- yeah! ALDA: So for the finals, it's mobile jack against mobile jack. There's a lot of things I didn't get done that I wanted, but everything I needed I guess I finished, so. ALDA: We tracked Alex down behind the scenes, where, it turned out, he'd been conspiring with Will. SLOCUM: Go! ALDA: Good friends who have been comparing notes ever since the class began, Will and Alex now plan a final collaboration. Alex! Come on! SLOCUM: Up, up and away! ALDA: Carefully choreographed, the two robots jack the whole apparatus an inch off the ground-- with the beam dead level. ( crowd cheering boisterously ) The result is a tie. Double win! CROWD ( chanting ): Double win! ALDA: Or, in MIT-speak, a "double win." CROWD ( chanting ): Double win! Double win! This has never, ever happened before, and we're so happy it did, because we like doing things different. CROWD ( cheering ): Double win! Double win!

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				International Design Contest International engineering students work together to build machines and to foster teamwork between nations.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: I.T. ENGINEERING CONTEST. IT STARTED WHEN A YOUNG PROFESSOR NAMED WOODIE FLOWERS HAD HIS STUDENTS BUILD MACHINES AND COMPETE HEAD-TO-HEAD. WOODIE IS NOW A FAMOUS TV HOST AND HIS CONTEST HAS BECOME A WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON. IT'S SPREAD TO THE TOKYO INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY... WHERE STUDENTS LEARN THE M. I.T. HANDS-ON APPROACH. AND IT'S COME TO UNIVERSITIES IN GERMANY AND IN BRITAIN. NOW THE BEST, THE TOP TEN FROM EACH OF THE FOUR COUNTRIES WILL MEET IN BOSTON FOR THE WORLD SERIES OF ENGINEERING. THIS WILL BE THEIR PLAYING FIELD. EACH TEAM WILL HAVE A GOAL AND A SUPPLY OF PING PONG BALLS. THEIR TASK: IN TEN DAYS, BUILD A MACHINE THAT COLLECTS THE BALLS AND GETS THEM TO THE GOAL. THEY CAN FLING THEM, DRIVE THEM, ROLL THEM, YOU NAME IT. WHOEVER GETS THE MOST IN, WINS. AS THE STUDENTS ARRIVE, THEY ARE DIVIDED INTO TEAMS. THIS COMPETITION DOESN'T PIT NATION AGAINST NATION. EACH TEAM HAS ONE MEMBER FROM EACH COUNTRY AND ONE OF THE GOALS IS INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION. YOUR ENGLISH WILL GET BETTER HERE NOW. Narrator: RIGHT AWAY AN OBSTACLE BECOMES OBVIOUS. NOW YOUR ENGLISH WILL GET BETTER. Narrator: THERE IS A DIFFERENT-COLOR T-SHIRT FOR EACH OF THE TEN TEAMS BUT THEY EACH GET AN IDENTICAL KIT OF PARTS-- MOTORS, GEARS, SPRINGS, PNEUMATIC CYLINDERS. IT'S A COLLECTION OF JUNK NOBODY BUT AN ENGINEER COULD LOVE. ( music box music ) MY FAVORITE IS THE BLUE STUFF BECAUSE YOU CAN DO ANYTHING TO IT. IT'S EASY TO CUT AND IT DRILLS NICELY AND IT'S BLUE. YOU CAN DO A LOT OF TRICKY THINGS WITH IT. NOT ONLY LISTEN TO THE MUSIC. YEAH, I LIKE THIS AND I AM MAKING LIKE THIS. I LIKE MUSIC. I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN USE IT BUT I LIKE IT. I THINK TO PUSH... I THINK ALSO PUSH. Narrator: BUT THE PARTS ARE ONLY RAW MATERIALS. WHAT'S NEEDED IS A GOOD IDEA. WHAT ELSE? Narrator: AND AS THE GRAY TEAM BRAINSTORMS THEY'RE SEEING HOW IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION IS IN ENGINEERING. WORKING TOGETHER, THEY'RE GETTING A TASTE OF THE FUTURE AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHY M. I.T.'S HARRY WEST ORGANIZED THE CONTEST. TODAY AND IN THE FUTURE ENGINEERING IS GOING TO BE AN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS. PRODUCTS ARE DESIGNED BY TEAMS OF ENGINEERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. TO BE COMPETITIVE, YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE WORK TOGETHER AS A TEAM. Narrator: THE GRAY TEAM IS TAKING AN IMPORTANT STEP IN DEVELOPING TEAMWORK. WHILE IT MAY LOOK LIKE THEY'RE JUST OUT HAVING A GOOD TIME THEY'RE LEARNING ABOUT EACH OTHER. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN GERMAN ORGAN MUSIC? Narrator: BURKHARD, THE GERMAN MEMBER OF THE GRAY TEAM EAGERLY SHARES HIS LOVE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC WITH HIS BRITISH TEAMMATE SARAH. I PLAY THE ORGAN IN WORMS CATHEDRAL AND I LIKE BUXTEHUDE BECAUSE IT'S NOT AS DIFFICULT AS BACH. ( organ playing ) Narrator: BEFORE COLLEGE, BURK WORKED IN A CHURCH. IT WAS PART OF HIS TWO YEARS OF NATIONAL SERVICE THAT'S MANDATORY FOR ALL GERMANS. THE EXPERIENCE MEANS THEY COME TO AMERICA OLDER AND MORE MATURE. AND FOR BURK, THE TIME HAS HELPED HIM PUT HIS MUSIC INTO PERSPECTIVE. MY FAVORITE MUSIC, THAT'S BAROQUE MUSIC. YOU CAN COMPARE WITH TO BE AN ENGINEER BECAUSE ORDER IS VERY IMPORTANT IN THE BAROQUE MUSIC AND ALSO GOOD IDEAS. Narrator: FOR THE YELLOW TEAM UNDERSTANDING EACH OTHER'S CULTURE BEGINS WITH FOOD. ( chatting ) JAPANESE RICE BALL. RICE BALL! Narrator: ASAKO VALIANTLY TRIES TO INTRODUCE HER TEAMMATES TO A CONCOCTION OF RICE, PICKLED PLUM AND SEAWEED. SHE IS A PIONEER-- A WOMAN ENGINEER FROM JAPAN. THERE WERE JUST A HANDFUL OF WOMEN IN HER CLASS IN TOKYO AND SHE WAS THE ONLY ONE TO WIN A TRIP TO AMERICA. I'VE NEVER EATEN SUCH A THING BEFORE. I LOVE IT, VERY GOOD. Narrator: THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HER AND HER TEAMMATES GO BEYOND FOOD. ASAKO WAS RAISED IN A TRADITIONAL SOCIETY ONE THAT DOES NOT ENCOURAGE INDEPENDENCE ESPECIALLY FOR WOMEN. BUT JAPAN IS WESTERNIZING AND WHEN HER COLLEGE TOOK UP FOOTBALL ASAKO BECAME A MANAGER. NOW HER TRIP TO AMERICA IS EXPOSING HER TO MORE PROVOCATIVE POSSIBILITIES. ( speaking Japanese ) Translator: M.I.T. WOMEN SEEM MORE INDEPENDENT. THEY CAN BUILD MACHINES BY THEMSELVES. IN JAPAN, SINCE THERE ARE SO FEW WOMEN IN ENGINEERING WE ARE BABIED BY OUR CLASSMATES. Narrator: IN THE MACHINE SHOP, WHERE IDEAS COME TO LIFE THE OTHER WOMEN FEEL RIGHT AT HOME. BUT NOT ASAKO. IN JAPAN, THE MEN WERE ALWAYS EAGER TO HELP HER. AT M. I.T., SHE'S GETTING THE CHANCE TO DEVELOP HER OWN SKILLS. HER TEAM HAS DECIDED TO CONVEY THE BALLS TO THE GOAL WITH A RAMP. IT'S AN OBVIOUS CHOICE. FAST AND EFFICIENT IT'S BEEN A PROVEN WINNER IN THIS YEAR'S NATIONAL CONTESTS. WITH THIS DESIGN, THE YELLOW TEAM IS FOCUSING ON VICTORY. BUT ASAKO IS DISAPPOINTED. THE RAMP MAY WIN, BUT IT'S NOT VERY ORIGINAL. DESPITE HER GROWING CONFIDENCE SHE WASN'T ABLE TO PERSUADE HER TEAM TO BE MORE DARING. Translator: IT'S AN IDEA CONTEST SO I'D LIKE TO MAKE A MORE CREATIVE MACHINE. BUT IT'S NOT JUST MY MACHINE, SO I CAN'T JUST CHANGE IT. Narrator: IN FACT, THROUGHOUT THE SHOP, CONFORMITY IS CATCHING. WE'RE GOING TO MAKE A RAMP. PUSH THEM DOWN A RAMP. DOWN THE RAMP TO THE GOAL. THE ORIGINAL STRATEGY WAS A RAMP. A RAMP. AN UNFOLDING RAMP. West: WHEN STUDENTS WORK ALONE THEY CAN DECIDE TO COME UP WITH A REALLY OUTRAGEOUSLY CREATIVE DESIGN-- A DESIGN THAT PROBABLY WON'T WIN BUT WILL SHOW OFF THEIR DESIGN TALENTS TO THEIR FRIENDS. BUT WHEN THEY'RE WORKING AS PART OF A TEAM THERE'S A CERTAIN PRESSURE TO CONFORM. Narrator: THE GRAY TEAM, WRESTLING WITH EXACTLY THIS DILEMMA IS MEETING TO PIN DOWN THEIR PRIORITIES. WHAT DO YOU THINK? I THINK, IT'S BECAUSE I AM JAPANESE... Narrator: MASAYA, THE JAPANESE MEMBER, WANTS TO TRY TO WIN WITH A SAFE BUT SURE DESIGN LIKE THE OTHER TEAMS. GERMANS ARE BORING TOO. Narrator: BURK ARGUES FOR THE OPPOSITE TACK-- HAVE FUN WITH AN INNOVATIVE BUT RISKY DESIGN. TO WIN CONTEST IS VERY, VERY... Man: BUT WE HAVE ALREADY WON. IMPORTANT. WE'VE ALL SHOWN THAT WE CAN BUILD A RAMP. WE WANTED TO DO SOMETHING NEW. OUR GOAL IS ACTION. OH, WE'LL NEVER MAKE A MACHINE TO SET IT UP ON A "T. " Narrator: THE DECISION: INNOVATION, WITH A FLIPPER DESIGN. MASAYA GOES ALONG, THOUGH HE'S NOT HAPPY. CHEER UP, CHEER UP. CHEER UP? CHEER UP. Narrator: THEIR FLICKER ISN'T WORKING THAT WELL, BUT THAT'S OKAY. TO BE CREATIVE YOU HAVE TO TAKE RISKS. MATT, THE AMERICAN MEMBER OF THE GRAY TEAM IS NO STRANGER TO RISK. HE LIKES ZOOMING AROUND AT 120 MPH. HIS GRADES SUFFER BECAUSE HE HAS A HABIT OF SPENDING MORE TIME IN THE PITS THAN IN THE LIBRARY. BUT THIS HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE HAS GIVEN HIM A PRACTICAL EDUCATION IN ENGINEERING. I'VE LEARNED MOST OF WHAT I KNOW ABOUT ENGINEERING IN MY GARAGE. MOST OF THE STUFF THAT I DO ON THE MACHINES FOR THE 2. 70 CONTEST IS JUST COMMONSENSE STUFF THAT I'VE SEEN ON CARS OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. Narrator: MATT HAS THE EXPERIENCE AND THE CONFIDENCE TO BE CREATIVE AND IT'S NO SURPRISE WHAT HE CONTRIBUTES TO HIS TEAM'S DESIGN-- A CAR TO DISRUPT THE OPPONENTS. LET'S JUST HOPE HE'S A BETTER DRIVER ON THE RACETRACK. BE CAREFUL TO CONTROL MACHINE. Narrator: ALREADY IT'S THE NIGHT BEFORE THE CONTEST. THERE'S LAST-MINUTE SCRAMBLING TO MEET SIZE AND WEIGHT RESTRICTIONS AND, OF COURSE, THE FINISHING TOUCHES. WITH TIME UP IT'S CLEAR THERE'S CONFORMITY ON ANOTHER ISSUE-- NEATNESS. IT'S CONTEST TIME. THE YELLOW TEAM IS UP EARLY AND ASAKO IS NERVOUS. THEIR OPPONENTS ALSO HAVE A RAMP AND A SURPRISE-- AN ATTACK VEHICLE. BUT THE YELLOW TEAM'S PREPARED WITH AN IMPENETRABLE DEFENSE. THEY STOP THE ATTACK VEHICLE DEAD IN ITS TRACKS. Man: WATCH YOUR CAR, YOU CAR. Narrator: AND ON THE OFFENSIVE SIDE THEY'VE DESIGNED A CHOPPING ARM TO DRIVE BALLS DOWN THE RAMP. IT WORKS FLAWLESSLY. FOR THEIR OPPONENTS, NOTHING WORKS. IT'S A ROUT-- ASAKO'S TEAM WINS BY A LANDSLIDE. AS THE NIGHT GOES ON IT BECOMES CLEAR WHY RAMPS ARE A SMART CHOICE. THEY'RE THE BEST WAY TO GET BALLS TO THE GOAL. NOW IT'S THE GRAY TEAM'S CHANCE TO SHOW OFF THEIR DESIGN. THEY'RE UP AGAINST ONE OF THE FEW OTHER TEAMS THAT DOESN'T USE A RAMP. RIGHT AWAY, THERE'S TROUBLE. INEXPLICABLY, THE FLICKER IS STUCK ON TOP OF THE BALLS. THEN SARAH HAS AN IDEA. SHE TELLS MATT TO BRING THE CAR OVER AND GIVE A PUSH BUT IT DOESN'T WORK. Man: GO UP... GO IN. Narrator: MEANWHILE THE OPPONENTS' DUMP TRUCK IS COLLECTING BALLS AND GETTING READY TO DEPOSIT THEM. FOR MATT, IT'S DEMOLITION DERBY TIME AS HE DRIVES THE DUMPSTER AWAY FROM THE GOAL. THE DEFENSE IS STRONG, BUT THE OFFENSE CAN'T SCORE. YOU GOT ANYTHING? NO, IT WON'T GO DOWN. ( buzzer ) IT WOULDN'T GO DOWN. THEIR EXPERIMENT IN CREATIVITY WON'T WIN THE CONTEST BUT THEY'RE NOT DISAPPOINTED. IT WAS LUCK, IT WAS ALWAYS TOUCH AND GO. IT WAS TOUCH, IT WASN'T GO. Narrator: AFTER THREE GRUELING ROUNDS THE YELLOW TEAM MAKES IT TO THE FINALS. NO SURPRISE, IT'LL BE RAMP AGAINST RAMP. JUST BEFORE THE STARTING BUZZER, THE YELLOW TEAM SPOTS A PROBLEM. I THINK IT'S OKAY. Narrator: IT'S NOT OKAY. THEIR RAMP GETS CAUGHT ON THE WAY. THEY TRY FREEING IT WITH THE CHOPPING ARM. JUST CHOP LIKE MAD. Narrator: BUT TO NO AVAIL. THE RED TEAM MAKES WINNING LOOK EASY. THEY ARE THE WORLD CHAMPIONS. BUT WINNING IS NOT REALLY THE POINT OF THIS CONTEST. IT'S ABOUT UNDERSTANDING OTHER CULTURES COMMUNICATING IDEAS AND WORKING TOGETHER AS PART OF A TEAM. ALL THESE STUDENTS HAVE TAKEN A GIANT STEP INTO THE INTERNATIONAL FUTURE OF ENGINEERING. ( cheering ) THESE CONTESTS ARE SPREADING LIKE WILDFIRE-- FROM ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS TO UNIVERSITIES ALL OVER THE WORLD. THAT'S BECAUSE THEY WORK. THEY TEACH PHYSICS, MATH, ENGINEERING AND OTHER THINGS LIKE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION. BUT MOST OF ALL, THEY LINK TEACHING TO THE REAL WORLD. HERE'S WHAT I MEAN. THIS COMPUTER SYSTEM IS RUNNING ONE OF THE NEW ENGINEERING PACKAGES AND IT'S GREAT! IF I WERE IN ONE OF THESE CONTESTS AND WANTED TO SCOOP UP BALLS... TIP THE SCOOP BACK QUICKLY TO HOLD THEM IN AND THEN DUMP THEM OUT BEHIND THE MACHINE-- THIS LOOKS LIKE A WINNER. DESIGNING IT ON THIS TOOK JUST A FEW HOURS AND SINCE THE SYSTEM AUTOMATICALLY GENERATES PLANS I SHOULD BE ABLE TO BUILD THIS THING. HERE IT IS. AND SEE, IT LOOKS LIKE THE ONE ON THE SCREEN AND IT WORKS THE SAME WAY, TOO. OH... IT WON'T GO ALL THE WAY BACK. AND IT LOCKS UP. NOW, IF I TAKE THE LINKAGE APART AND REASSEMBLE IT IN THE "DUMP" POSITION, IT LOOKS LIKE THIS BUT IT JUST WON'T SWING FROM FRONT TO BACK. EVEN USING A HIGH-TECH TOOL DOESN'T GUARANTEE GOOD DESIGN. UNLESS YOU HAVE THE HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE THAT TEACHES YOU WHAT TO LOOK FOR THE COMPUTER WON'T NECESSARILY TELL YOU WHAT MOTHER NATURE THINKS OF YOUR DESIGN. MOTHER NATURE, YOU SEE APPLIES ALL OF HER RULES ALL OF THE TIME. AND THAT'S SOMETHING YOU REALLY LEARN FROM THESE CONTESTS. ( car horn honks ) THIS TIME ON "THE ART OF SCIENCE" WE HAVE SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT: A DANCE, BY CHOREOGRAPHER THECLA SCHIPHORST. WHAT'S THE SCIENCE CONNECTION?

				Leonardo the Loveable Robots loaded with artificial intelligence are coming soon to a theatre near you, thanks to MIT researchers and special effects wizard Stan Winston.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Oh, very good-- hello. ALDA: For almost a decade now, we've been following the evolution of an idea that began with "It." I'm sorry, would you just say that again? ALDA: "It" was the creation of MIT researcher and famous robot builder Rodney Brooks. If you got too close, "It" could react with caricatured shock. ( laughing ) It opens its mouth in utter surprise. Yeah, and it raised its eyebrows. It sort of got this reaction of "Oh, what's happening here? Get away from me." ALDA: "It" was one of the first attempts to put a human face on a computer with the express purpose of making it easier for us to relate to it. "It" tries to appear to be a human so that we can interact with it in a way that's like a human. ALDA: "It" soon evolved into a robot head called Kismet, built by a student of Rodney Brooks, Cynthia Breazeal. We first met Kismet three years ago. These robots, like babies, are going to seem especially appealing to us. I mean, we spend a lot of time with babies because we can't... we can't resist them. ALDA: Kismet's expressions-- ranging from boredom... to happiness... to sadness... to interested-- were deliberately over the top. It's very much a caricature to make it that much easier for you to read the robot. So that when it looks happy, it's obviously happy. When it looks sad, it's obviously sad. And you go, "Oh, I did something to upset it. I should do something else to make it happy." So it's really trying to get you involved at this kind of unconscious emotional level. Oh, yeah, look at that. ALDA: Cynthia spent long hours in front of Kismet working on giving it the ability to recognize objects and react with its cartoon-like responses. Oh, there you go. ( toy rattling ) Oh, you don't like it when I take away your toy. ALDA: And her willingness to invest the effort is itself a demonstration of the goal of the research-- to make people want to help their robots, so that robots can more easily learn the ways of humans. You like this toy, too. I take it away. Oh-ho, he's so sad. So sad when I take away your toy. ALDA: Robots learning the ways of humans also happened to be a central theme of a movie then in production. This belonged to Martin, my son. ALDA: In Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the teddy bear is a robot. TEDDY: Ahh. ALDA: In the movie, the boy is also a robot. But while he's played by an actor, the teddy bear was created at Stan Winston Studio, which also made the dinosaurs for the Jurassic Park movies. His name is Teddy. Teddy, this is David. Hello, Teddy. Hello, David. David, Teddy is a supertoy. ALDA: Teddy was one of the most lifelike puppets ever made in Hollywood. TEDDY ( threateningly ): I am not a toy. BREAZEAL: So sad when I take away your toy. ALDA: While Kismet was certainly the most expressive robot ever built by computer scientists. So when Cynthia Breazeal was hired as a consultant to A.I. and met Stan Winston, they hatched a plan-- to combine their skills to create the most lifelike and expressive robot ever built. WINSTON: It was probably the most exciting thought concept that had ever come to me in my career. I mean, we have created the most organic-looking and -acting robots ever in the films that we've done, but they don't have any brains. No offense to the puppeteers, but the robot itself doesn't have any brains. And this was a chance to do something that was groundbreaking and historic. ALDA: Oh, my God, look. What? ALDA: Meet Leonardo, making its fist public appearance exclusively for Scientific American Frontiers. LEONARDO: La, la, la. You can make it do that? Or are they making it do that? WINSTON: They're doing it. ( all laughing ) ALDA: Can you do "whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo"? ALDA: Today Leonardo is still brainless. LEONARDO ( slowly ): Whoo, whoo, whoo. WINSTON: Give me a "la-la." La, la, la, la. Whoa, look at that tongue action. ALDA: His 61 different moving parts are controlled by puppeteers. The goal is to replace them with a rack of computers. WINSTON: This is the birth of the first truly artificial intelligence character that will have the ability to emote, that can reach every range of expression, that can hear you and respond to you as an artificial intelligence. It's pretty amazing. What we really are exploring here is social connectedness, social interaction, the human-robot connection. What it is right now is a brand-new instrument that has yet to be learned how to play. Right. It's... we've created a grand piano, but it's never been... this particular character has never been built before, so all of what's happening with him is a learning process. This is, like, the first day anybody's seen it. Puppeteers that are dealing with him right now-- this is a new character, so it's like, "Okay, what things make it do this?" So we have to learn how to use this instrument, and then once we have learned as human beings how to create an expression, how to create a phonetic, how to make it go "whoo," how to make it go "hello," whatever it is, put it all together... Then the computer will know... Exactly. ALDA: It's a few weeks later. His skin and fur back in Hollywood for further primping, Leonardo sits patiently in the Media Lab waiting for Cynthia Breazeal to plug him into his control system. It's the start of another day of Cynthia's translating the skills of Stan Winston's puppeteers into computer code. Of the 61 different movable parts in Leonardo's body, 12 are in his arms alone. BREAZEAL: It gives us a very intuitive physical sense as... you know, as I'm moving Leonardo's arms, to what kind of motions the robot can do well, what's really pushing its limits, and so forth. And I think it will give us additional insight as we write the code to make sure that Leonardo moves in a way that doesn't damage its motors, that doesn't overheat them too fast. ALDA: But making Leonardo move like a living creature rather than a robot isn't enough. Leonardo isn't just a robot. It's a character. BREAZEAL: Character is expressed through the entire body. Often characters have their own little idiosyncrasies, so probably elements of those will be put into Leonardo. We don't know what they are yet. I mean, that's kind of Stan Winston's domain, I think. But anything regarding, I mean, what is the character of Leonardo is going to really be a sort of joint effort between us as well as Stan Winston Studios to try to define: What does this robot sound like when it talks? How does it express? How does it react to things? What is... what is the character of Leonardo? How do you... how do you encode that, really? And how do you encode it in a way that the robot can learn and extend its repertoire over time? ALDA: For Leonardo to know what's going on around it, cameras in its eyes will be able to recognize faces and facial expressions, while microphones in its ears will recognize individual voices and the sounds they're making. And its body will be covered with touch sensors. BREAZEAL: You can imagine people are going to be petting Leonardo-- it's a very lovable little guy. And it should be able to know and respond to that-- to know when it's being touched in a way that it likes, that's good for it; the way when people are touching it that's not good for it, in which case it should recoil, let you know "I don't like the way you're touching me." ALDA: One of the robot's most expressive features is its ears, which can also perform a few tricks not often seen in nature. BREAZEAL: It can do, like, the backstroke, the crawl. ( laughs ) It can wave hello. ( laughs ) You can see all the technology that's gone into creating a robot that is really optimized for expression. The ability of these robots to interact with people in a way that's natural for them, that the way that they want to engage the robot and that they accept the robot, is going to be really critical. And I think, you know, obviously Leonardo is... is trying to push on this idea of not making it look human but kind of petlike, but yet intriguingly anthropomorphic. So like a pet, but perhaps even smarter than a pet. ALDA: With his fur back on, and even with only his mouth able to move, Leonardo is certainly hard to resist. BREAZEAL: When you were in that little interaction, notice how much you were adapting to it. That's what I'm getting at. That's the kernel of the learning interaction I'm trying to capture. And you need something like this to make you act that way. WINSTON: And how much fun you were having. He will learn, because you're so interested in playing with him... BREAZEAL: That's right. That the machine, the computer, the brain will learn. And because of your interest in his organic reality, you'll make him more real. Imagine having to act with a character that doesn't exist and is not there, or to actually have that fantasy character sitting there and acting with you. It allows you a better performance. ALDA: That's it. Therefore you as an actor are going to be more believable on screen. We're going to believe the story, we're going to believe the fantasy character, and the best performance is going to come out of you. You know, you just made me understand Cynthia's work better, because as an actor, I understand how much more will come out of me if the other actor in the scene with me is behaving like a real person. And now I understand through that what you mean about how I'll feel when I sit down or stand up with my computer and talk to it, and it talks back like a person and responds to me with facial expressions like a person. I think I'll be in a different relationship to the computer or the robot than I've ever been before. Absolutely. The wonderful thing about this is we're sort of seeing its birth. ALDA: Yeah. The robot is there. The brains are now coming in and the learning process is going to go year after year. It'll be so interesting, I cannot wait for the deadline, which I kind of... because I've got gray hair, I said, "In six months, those brains have got to be connected." Then the next six months we see how much they learn. You're talking about in the robot. I'm talking about in the robot, yes, because mine are gone. ALDA: The collaboration between Hollywood chutzpah and MIT know-how is unique. And if Stan and Cynthia can pull it off, it may indeed result in a computer-- or a computer-controlled creature-- you can not only talk to but care about and that will at least give the impression of caring about you. WINSTON: Leonardo will actually be able to see, be able to hear, and be able to touch and feel. It will respond to you. It's amazing. And I'm going to take credit for all of it. ( both laughing ) BREAZEAL: Oh, no, you're not. ( laughs ) Oh, no, you're not. ( laughing ) ( laughs ) Do you want to go out for a cup of coffee later? ( Breazeal laughing ) ( chuckling )

				World Cup for Robots Teams of robots programmed for soccer go head-to-head in RoboCup 2001.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: This is a show about contests-- contests between machines and between the people, mostly students, who built them. Contests are fun, they're exciting and they're a great way to learn. But as we'll see, the creative edge generated by the very human desire to win is also pushing the development of these machines. And some of them are able to do surprisingly human things. Welcome to the world of robot soccer. WOMAN: Go, go, go, go, go on. Go, go now! ALDA: There he goes. ALDA: We're in Seattle for the finals of RoboCup 2001. Pushed it in with his chest. Pass, pass, pass! Pass it! Go! ( laughing ) ALDA: But we first met the players and their makers a couple of years ago on a visit to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. There the CM United team was being put through its paces by one of the founders of the RoboCup contest, Manuela Veloso. Shoot again, shoot! ALDA: One of the stars of CM United was their goalie. Trying to beat it gave me the chance to find out how the robots know what to do. How is this working? Does that little guy have eyes in his head somehow? No, actually the robot does not have any eyes. There is a camera that is overhead and sees the whole field. ALDA: From the video image, a computer figures out the position of the ball and any robots on the field. Then it predicts the ball's current direction and speed, indicated by the length of the line. The computer does this 30 times a second-- fast enough to cope with all but the speediest shots. VELOSO: There you go. I went too fast, okay. Vision's fine. ALDA: Behind the scene, Peter Stone's running the vision system, while Mike Bowling's laptop is sending wireless instructions to the robots on the field. But during the competition, it's hands off. You're not allowed, by the terms of the competition, to give it any directions from a human during the game. Yes, we cannot give any directions. It all has to be done beforehand as you design the software. Right, and the challenge is that the domain, the task, is very uncertain. So we have to, up front, program or make the robots think about a very large number of situations. ALDA: So success at robot soccer depends not only on the speed and quick reactions of the robots, but on the central computer's ability to read the game and direct the players. VELOSO: There's a pass, perfect. ( cheers ) ALDA: RoboCup 1999 was held in Stockholm. ( whistle blows ) It's the quarterfinals between two of the top teams in robot soccer. Watched by an audience of computer scientists from around the world, the match pits robots from Cornell University against a team from Singapore, and Cornell strikes first. MAN: Oh, yeah! Oh, yes! REFEREE: Three, two, one. ( blows whistle ) ALDA: Cornell's robots are fast and strong, and they convincingly beat the Singapore team, called the Field Rangers. ( applause ) Manuela's CM United has also made it to the quarterfinals. ( whistle blows ) But in this match they are literally getting pushed around by the fast and aggressive robots of another team from Singapore, Lucky Star. VELOSO: Clear. ALDA: This play sums up the match. A penalty attempt by CMU turns into a beautiful goal for Lucky Star... who go on to crush CM United eight to nothing. Very good game, very good game. ALDA: Now it's Cornell's turn to face Lucky Star in the first semifinal. This is the fastest team that we've played against, so that we have to be sure we can cope with their speed. ( whistle blows ) ALDA: Both teams have similar robots-- fast, maneuverable two-wheelers that kick the ball mainly by ramming into it. MAN: Come on, come on,come on, come on! ALDA: After two ten-minute halves of play, Cornell prevails. ( applause ) ( blows whistle ) ALDA: In the final, Cornell is up against a team from Berlin, called the FU-Fighters. ( audience gasps and shouts ) The German team has made it this far thanks largely to a dramatic innovation, a spinning bar that delivers a devastating kick. ( whistle blows ) ( shouts and applause ) In the end, Cornell's superior strategy wins out over the FU-Fighters' kick, and Cornell takes the championship. ( hoots ) VELOSO: And the first prize is for Big Red from Cornell University, U.S.A., who only suffered two goals during the whole tournament. My most excellent congratulations. ALDA: Also making an appearance at Stockholm were RoboCup's first four-legged contestants. The robot dogs were very obviously beginners. Unlike the robots with wheels, each dog is on its own. It has to figure out where it is with the help of a camera in its nose and colored beacons around the field. Go, blue! Go, CMU! ALDA: Goals were scored mostly by walking the ball into the net. ( applause ) And the dogs' walk was slow and ungainly. But this was 1999. And as we said at the outset, nothing pushes innovation like competition. Jump ahead two years to RoboCup 2001 in Seattle. The dogs themselves have undergone a makeover. But much more importantly, most teams-- including Manuela Veloso's Carnegie Mellon team-- have written new software programs for their dogs that make them walk much faster. ALDA: Ah, okay. ( whistle blows ) It sort of crowds the ball into the goal. Yeah. ALDA: The CMU dogs' new and faster walk can pose new dangers for the opposition. ALDA: Oh, oh, it fell over. VELOSO: Right there, it fell. Did your guy knock him over, do you think? I think so. Not on purpose, but it just happened. ALDA: But as the blue team rallies, CMU's goalie, down here at our end of the field, seems to have lost interest in the game. VELOSO: This is actually our goalie. ALDA: He's out to lunch. Yeah, I know. We have a big problem with the goalie, so for the final we have to... Oh, oh, here it comes. Oh, there we go. Oh, but now I think that when it sees the ball it does the right thing. ALDA: Another innovation CMU introduced last year is this elegant head swipe to move the ball up the field. The coolest new move this year is a two-legged kick, which starts as the dog drops to its haunches. ( Alda laughing ) ( whistle blows ) That was a nice goal, huh? That was beautiful. ALDA: Not only has competition sharpened the dogs' skills, so has cooperation. Every year, each team shares its software secrets-- even the computer code itself-- with all the rival teams. The result is that everyone is building on everyone else's breakthroughs. VELOSO: Years ago, they could hardly see the ball. They spent all the time in the field looking around: "Where am I, where am I?" And now we take it for granted. Everybody's improved because you've shared your information, your knowledge. Of course, you wait until after you win the game. That's true, too. ALDA: The team at the forefront of much of this innovation is from Australia's University of New South Wales, here playing in the other semifinal. This year they've introduced another new kick. MAN: When the ball is between the front legs of the robot, if it does a quick turn, that'll give you a flick sideways, which is quite effective, because it gets the ball away from the opposition. ( whistle blows ) SAMMUT: There's a short-range kick, which is a push forward on the chest. And there's another one, which is two legs forward. You'll see other teams doing that because they copied it from us last year. ALDA: There's another new trick in the Australians' play book this year, one that uses the dogs' sense of hearing as well as sight. To avoid teammates scrapping with each other, a robot will back off if it sees a same-color dog with the ball. As it backs away, it whistles, letting the lead robot know where it is. ( referee's whistle blows ) It's a tactic likely to be widely imitated next year, and this year, it's helped the Australians get to the finals, where CMU's goalie still hasn't quite figured out its head from its tail. VELOSO: Ahh, good pass. ( spectators shouting ) ( whistle blows ) ALDA: Final score: UNSW, nine; CMU, two. I'm very proud, very proud. Of course, silver is not gold, but again, you know, gold is just for one. ALDA: It's not just the robot dogs whose skills have improved for RoboCup 2001. Excellent. ALDA: Cornell's wheeled robots-- the current world champions in their league-- can now move in any direction while facing in any direction. D'ANDREA: Now, this is going to be our ball control. This is our... this is the hard test. ALDA: The Cornell robots have also developed a sophisticated passing game, aided by a spinning bar to put backspin on the ball, holding it against the robot while it maneuvers. ( whistle blows ) In their quarterfinal match, Cornell is up against a team from Portugal. The backspinner comes into play at once as a Cornell robot tugs the ball from a corner, turns and passes. D'ANDREA: Nice pass. ALDA: They're really good at passing. Yup. Oh, nice save. ALDA: Portugal is countering with aggressive tackling. ALDA: This other guy seems to be hitting your shins. It is. ALDA: Cornell has already played four games in the tournament, winning them all handily. They seem to have this game under control, too, until after this hard hit in the corner. ( crash ) D'ANDREA: Whoa! ( spectators shout, then cheer ) ( whistle blows ) ALDA: You've never had a goal scored on you? No. Until now? Until now. ( whistle blows ) ALDA: As play resumes, the Cornell robots remain in firm control of the mid-field, thanks to their positioning and passing. D'ANDREA: Whoa... ALDA: Whoa, what a pass. ALDA: But despite Cornell's passing, the Portuguese defense holds them scoreless through the first ten-minute half. ( whistle blows ) Why is this such a tense game? Um, they're a really good team. They're playing our defense perfectly. They had a great opportunity-- our defender was caught out of the zone. The other player came in and very quickly was able to put the ball in. What we play is, um, an aggressive system that attacks the player with the ball soon, and that prevents Cornell from making deadly passes. So, that's the strong point of Cornell; that's the point we eliminated. Can you make adjustments right now or do you have to it until next year? No, we could; that's what we're doing right now. We're analyzing what happened when they scored. And we're making some changes to the gains of the system to change how fast they're moving, accelerating, their thresholds for passing versus shooting, et cetera. Your passing is kind of a dangerous tactic because you're putting the ball out in the open. What's the percentage of successful passes? Have you checked that out? Um, roughly about 80%, 85%. It's pretty high. And it's also, I mean, it's also fun for us to develop that, too. So, you know, part of it is winning; we want to win, but we also want to play very well. You want to look cool, too. Yeah, that's very important... seriously. Yeah, really? Why does that add to it? Um, you know, it's, uh... Part of what motivates us is to come up with a system that is really fun to watch. D'ANDREA: Oh, nice! ALDA: That was great! ALDA: Cornell's mid-field play continues to sparkle. But like many real-life soccer teams, once in the goal mouth, they seem to falter. ( whistle blows ) Then an overaggressive Portuguese robot shoves a Cornell player into the corner, giving up a free kick. ( whistle blows ) ( crowd cheering ) D'ANDREA: Make the pass, make the pass. ALDA: Oh! ALDA: A few minutes later, the same thing happens. ( whistle blows ) There will be a yellow card for potentially damaging a robot. I love this lining it up. ( whistle blows ) ( Cornell team cheers ) ALDA: Final score: Cornell two, Portugal one. We put up a good fight. And I think Cornell also has a bit of learning to do. We didn't think they could score on us. So they really surprised us by getting that goal. But in a sense I'm glad that it happened. Now we know we have a weakness in our defense and we'll fix it for our next game. ALDA: As Raff and his students plan their changes, another quarterfinal is under way. ( applause ) This one is between a Spanish team and the Berlin FU-Fighters-- the robots with the faces. This year the German team, like Cornell, has omnidirectional robots on offense, but on defense, they're relying on the older, hard-kicking machines they introduced in Stockholm two years ago. Like Cornell, the FU-Fighters forwards maneuver more skillfully than the Spanish robots, and their defense is solid. But also like Cornell, the Germans seem nervous in front of the goal mouth. It turns out this is by design. One of the rules of the game is that any contact with the goalkeeper is penalized. ( whistle blows ) REFEREE: Uh, FU-Fighters. It's a free kick for RoGi. ALDA: I saw one of your players looking very nervous-- backing up, moving forward backing up-- it looked like he didn't know what to do. Had you changed his behavior about the goalie at that point? No... uh, yeah, we changed it, yeah... You told him not to get too close. Yeah. ALDA: As the match progresses, the German team tweaks its forwards' behavior to make them a little less concerned about hitting the goalie, and they're rewarded with a convincing win. ( crowd applauding ) Cornell, meanwhile, is in a tense semifinal confrontation with the Field Rangers from Singapore-- the team they beat two years ago in Stockholm. ( crowd exclaims ) Once again, Cornell's dribbling mechanism is setting up promising plays in the opponent's goal mouth. Pass, pass it! Whoa! Whoa! ( robot's parts whirring ) ALDA: But the Field Rangers' reflexes are lightning-fast. ( crowd exclaims ) Yeah... oh! ALDA: At the half, Raff isn't happy. REFEREES: Two, one, time. ( whistle blows ) Okay, I'm going to see if I can figure out what's going on. ( crowd applauding ) Were you able to make a strategic change here? Yeah, what we did is, um... Hopefully, the change that we made will allow us to have this player go into the box so that he can receive the pass and put it into the net. ALDA: The second half features a superb attacking move down the field, setting up the shot Raff is hoping for. D'ANDREA: Here we go, here we go. Here we go. ALDA: Pass, pass, pass... D'ANDREA: He will. ( crowd exclaims ) ALDA: But again, the Field Rangers are faster to the ball. And then the goalie simply steals it away. ALDA: Whoa, he stole it-- look at that. ALDA: Seconds later, a Field Ranger robot makes a brilliant attacking play. ( crowd cheering ) Time out. ANNOUNCER: Three and a half minutes remaining in this match, Singapore now having the lead. ( crowd exclaims ) ALDA: Cornell again sets up what seems like a certain score-- and again is thwarted. ( whistle blows ) ( cheering ) After a three-year undefeated run, Cornell is dethroned. In the other semifinal, Berlin's FU-Fighters get off to a spectacular start against the other Singapore team to be defeated by Cornell two years ago in Stockholm, Lucky Star. ANNOUNCER: It's a shot. How fast is this game going? Artificial intelligence at 100 miles an hour. Look at these guys go. There's no way a human could keep up with this kind of play. It's happening far too fast. ALDA: A free kick for Lucky Star. ( whistle blows, crowd exclaims ) ALDA: And it's the beginning of the end for the FU-Fighters. In the all-Singapore final, it's Lucky Star who'll go on to become the new RoboCup champions. ALDA: What do you think are the next couple of steps that we'll get to with game-playing robots? So, we actually are trying to get to a point where we can play with humans. Play against a human? With or against, yes. So we'll go all the way until we play on a real soccer field with humans. All the way. ALDA: On display in Seattle is a little two-legged robot called PINO, from the same company that manufactures the robot dogs. VELOSO: We are going to have a competition, probably next year, with these little guys playing. They will be able to follow the ball, again, go to the ball and kind of kick it. That's... you do a very funny impersonation of a robot. Well, that's what they will be like. You spend a lot of time with them, you get to... you get to be able to do them, right? That's how they look, right? So far. Right, so far. Right. ( servos whirring )