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				Robot Pals Part 1 - Ripley Ripley is a robot that can see, hear and manipulate its environment. Alan watches him figure out how to 'pick up the heavy one' from an array of objects.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Hand me the one on my right. RIPLEY: Sorry. Hand me the one on my right. ALDA: Believe it or not, this robot is called Ripley. He-- somehow I'm assuming it's a he-- lives at MIT's famous Media Lab, where right now he's trying to understand me. Thank you. Let go of it! MAN: Yank. Yank harder. Yank... you can do it. There you go. All right, that's it. Hand me the blue one. Hand me the blue one. ALDA: Ripley's world is confined to this circular white tabletop, but within that world, he has a pretty good notion of what's where-- although right now he seems to think the camera is me, and he apparently hates to give things up. Good boy... let go, let go! RIPLEY: Sorry. ALDA: Ripley is actually the test bed for an attempt to make robots better understand human speech... You know, this is really a weird sight: a hand with eyes. ALDA: Not just by listening to words but by trying to relate those words to what it sees. It's programmed to keep looking around, especially for human faces. But to keep its motors cool, it also takes frequent rests. So in its quest to understand its world, Ripley has to balance native curiosity with occasional naps, much like a human infant, and that's no coincidence. MAN: So, here's the basic idea. When you were an infant, when I was an infant, the way we learned language was by connecting words we heard to what we could see and feel and touch and taste, and those are the earliest bits of meaning that we picked up. And then we built on top of that levels of abstraction, where you could talk about things that were far more abstract. If you look at the way we build machines today that you talk to, we're trying to run before we can walk. We haven't built in those more primitive levels of meaning. ALDA: The creature sitting next to Deb-- a robot called Toko-- was the first in his lab to try to connect words with what it could see. Toko was not much more than a camera on an arm... That's a yellow ball. ALDA: But by looking at objects from different angles, it was able to learn both what things look like and what they're called. ROY: Look, it's a red cup. TOKO: Look, it's a red cup. So we used Toko as a way to develop some ideas. But then we went to an infant lab, and we actually had mothers and infants play. We didn't tell them why; we just gave them toys and said, "Play with your infants." We put wireless microphones on the moms and recorded spontaneous speech. Look what we've got. Peekaboo! ( giggles ) He's got a blue hat, doesn't he? And what is this? ALDA: Before an infant can attach words to things, she has to first recognize what a word is in the stream of sounds coming from her mother's mouth. Blue hat, and a... oh! Press the button, and it comes up! ALDA: Deb wanted Toko to do the same, so... ROY: We took the speech recordings and we brought back the toys. We let Toko look at the toys and listen to the mothers' speech. What... what happened? It wet itself! Toko learned. ALDA: Once Toko learned what things are called, it took the next step-- recognizing objects and putting names to them. In other words, it went from learning language to generating it. TOKO: Red ball. ALDA: But Toko had reached its intellectual limit. It was time for a robot that could learn not just the names of things but their context. ROY: One of my favorite examples is just the everyday simple use of words. We're sitting across the table from each other, like right now, and there's a cup of coffee between us, and I say to you, "This coffee is cold." So what is the meaning of those words? On the one hand, there's something like... just imagine, almost, the words are floating between us-- I've just spoken them. You can think of almost an arrow pointing down at that thing between us, right? That you can see, that I can see... "This" already is a clue. So "this" is a clue, "is" is a clue-- that I'm talking about the coffee now, not yesterday, not tomorrow. The words "coffee" and "cold" have meaning for you, because you've tasted the stuff, probably, and so have I. You know what "cold" means, not because you looked it up in the dictionary but because you can feel what things are like when they're cold and hot. So there's this experiential background that we're both relying on. ALDA: Enter Ripley... sleepily. He looks like a dog resting on the floor. He's up. Okay, he's back. Don't make any sudden movements. Well, he hasn't killed me yet, so you figure you've got a little bit of leeway. He's pretty heavy, he could really... Oh, yeah, totally. Those are 300-pound base motors. Holy moly. ( bang ) Oh! Right! You all right? Yeah, I'm okay now, yeah. ( laughing ) What do you suppose that was? I reset the system, and... You reset the system... And it just kind of dropped. ALDA: Once Ripley and I recovered, it was time to do a little work on context. Hand me the heavy one. ALDA: Now, Ripley can't tell which object is heavier just by looking at them, so... So what it's got to do is it's got to try it, just like if you were holding on to... and you were, like, "That's pretty heavy, you know?" Yeah, he's weighing it a little. Yeah, he's weighing it. ALDA: This is just one example of what Deb Roy calls grounding-- connecting words to the physical world, something we do naturally but that most speech recognition machines that look up a word's meaning in an internal dictionary are clueless about. Because he hasn't got two arms. If you had two arms, you'd be, like, "Well, this one's heavy, this one's light," you know... ALDA: Which is why to really understand what things are, Ripley has to have a body to experience them with. And with any luck, he'll decide which one is the heavier one. There you go. Ah, thank you. Thank you. RIPLEY: You're welcome. It's funny how easy it is to anthropomorphize it. Sometimes it looks like a puppy, sometimes it looks like a snake. And as these things start to get more sophisticated, that's probably going to be a factor... What is it? I'm talking-- excuse me. ( man laughing ) Talking to your maker. Do you mind? Close your mouth. The way it looks is probably going to have an effpect on how I relate to it and how it relates to mecC. ROY: Absolutely. You can't completely separate function from form. So it's not just "Here's a piece of software that's running on a computer." The computer has a body, right? And so just like we're not just brains in vats, we're brains that are embodied, and the particulars of how you look, how you sense, how you interact with the world-- they don't just shape the way that you perceive the world; they shape the way that people perceive you. ALDA: This is a theme we'll pick up in our next story. Meanwhile... ( singing reveille ) RIPLEY: Sorry. You know, I tried that in the army; it didn't work. Sorry. Watch out, watch out, don't get excited. Sorry. Someday, being a robot will mean never having to say you're sorry. ( men laughing ) RIPLEY: Sorry. Not yet!

				Robot Pals Part 2 - Leonardo the Lovable Cute little Leonardo learns from his interactions with people and their reactions to him.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: WOMAN: So sad when I take away your toy. ALDA: Kismet is a robot dedicated to being cute. Built by Cynthia Breazeal, Kismet's deliberately cartoonlike responses were designed to encourage us humans to play with it. A couple of years ago, Cynthia joined forces with a Hollywood special effects wizard to build Kismet's successor. MAN: 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: This is Leonardo, who made his first public appearance exclusively for Scientific American Frontiers. La, la, la. You can make it do that? ( group laughing ) Or are they making it do that? WINSTON: They're doing it. ALDA: Yeah, right. Can you do "Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo"? ALDA: At this point, Leonardo was still brainless. Whoo, whoo. MAN: Give me a "la, la." BOTH: La, la, la... Whoa, look at that tongue action. ALDA: His 61 moving parts were controlled by puppeteers. The goal was 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 it 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... And the computer will know how to do it? WINSTON: Exactly. ALDA: His skin and fur back in Hollywood for further primping, Leonardo-- or rather the computers that control him-- had to acquire for himself the skills of Stan Winston's puppeteers. Cameras in his eyes help Leonardo pick out human faces and gestures, while microphones in his ears recognize voices and translate the words they're saying. But Leonardo's ears can do more than just listen. BREAZEAL: He can do, like, the backstroke, the crawl... ( Breazeal laughing ) He can wave-- hello. ( Breazeal laughing ) 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, the way they want to engage the robot and that they accept the robot is going to be really critical. And I think, obviously, Leonardo 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 was certainly hard to resist. BREAZEAL: When you were in that little interaction, notice how much you were adapting to it. Yeah. 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 with it that way. He will learn because you're so interested in playing with him, 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: Hmm, 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 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. The robot is there. The brains are now coming in, and the learning process is going to go after year after year. It'll be so interesting. I cannot wait for the deadline, which... I've kind of-- because I've got gray hair-- said, "In six months, those brains have got to be connected. "Then the next six months... we'll see how much he learns." You're talking about in the robot. WINSTON: I'm talking about in the robot, yes, because mine are gone. Press the red button. ALDA: Since we first met Leonardo, his brains have indeed been connected and he's begun to collaborate with his human designers in learning a simple task. Turn all the buttons on. ALDA: Leonardo appears obviously baffled by this instruction... I can teach you to turn the buttons on. ALDA: And it's here that his social skills are serving him well. Press the green button. ALDA: Leonardo uses his gaze both to show what he's done and to seek approval. Now all the buttons are on. ALDA: The relationship between a teacher and learner is, at its best, a constant exchange of social signals, enabling each to see into the mind of the other. Can you turn the buttons on? ALDA: And that's one of the goals for Leonardo-- for him to become a better learner by being able to keep checking in with his human instructor for feedback and by being able to signal his own impressions of how well he's doing. Leonardo is gradually emerging as the first-ever robot to achieve the goal so beloved in science fiction... Not quite. Press the red button. ALDA: Of becoming a friendly, smart and helpful mechanical companion, socially adept and eager to learn. The collaboration between Hollywood chutzpah and MIT know-how is unique. And if Stan Winston and Cynthia Breazeal can pull it off, it may indeed result in a robot that's not only useful but that you can care about and that will at least give the impression of caring about you. You want to go out for a cup of coffee later? ( Breazeal laughs ) ( chuckles )

				Robot Pals Part 3 - Robonaut Robonaut is meant to become a robot that's just another member of an astronaut team. We see how a remote operator could control Robonaut to do complicated tasks in space.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: We're at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where astronauts are trained. But Josh Mehling isn't planning to be an astronaut. He's training to become a Robonaut, or rather, a Robonaut's puppet master. The Robonaut itself has recently acquired a set of wheels-- odd, you might think, for a robot designed to help out in space. We'll come back to those wheels in a moment. Right now, Josh is gradually bringing the rest of his robot counterpart on-line. When Josh moves his head, Robonaut moves his head. When Josh moves his arms, Robonaut follows along. And as Josh flexes his fingers, the exact motion is picked up by sensors in his gloves and sent to the electric motors controlling Robonaut's fingers. In fact, Robonaut's body is as much like a human's,– at least from his waist on up, as his chief creator can make him... with exceptions. MAN: So, what you won't find is the appendix. I didn't copy that from the human anatomy. There's no reason to copy things if they don't have some function. So, we really started with the functions. And the functions are two dexterous hands with a sweet zone right here where the two arms can work together. And it's not an accident that that zone right here where the two arms are so nice-- the head sees that zone perfectly. Okay, Robonaut, reach out here and take this handrail, please. ALDA: Josh shares Robonaut's view of the sweet zone through his goggles. That's a good grasp-- thank you. ALDA: This tool in NASA-speak is an EVA tether hook, what astronauts use in space to attach themselves to the handrails on the outside of their spacecraft. So, now he's going to hook it onto the handrail, simulating tethering something in space. Very nice. Now, Josh is going to do a more complicated task now. He's going to remove it from the handrail without me helping him. This is simulating things just floating in space. And what's really nice about this is Josh only has perhaps 12 or 14 hours' experience working with Robonaut, but because it is such a natural system to use, it is designed with body parts similar to what a human has, it's a very intuitive system to work with. All the skills we've developed since we were children transfer very nicely to the robot. ALDA: Robonaut started out as one arm and a head suspended in Rob Ambrose's lab. It was here that the team developed Robonaut's stereo vision and began to work on the most complex and sophisticated of its body parts: its hand. Dozens of electric motors control Robonaut's fingers, allowing the thumb and first two fingers to flex and rotate like human fingers. The ring finger and pinkie simply open and close, but because the palm can also flex, the hand can grasp objects securely. The robot Josh is controlling is Robonaut B, the younger brother of the original. And while the gloves covering Robonaut B's hands are much more than cosmetic, they're not as fancy as those now being tested on Robonaut A. AMBROSE: The younger brother seems to always get the hand-me-down gloves. Uh... but we try out the latest here on A. You can tell by the dirtiness of this glove, this robot's been put to some serious work. This is the third-generation glove that we've developed. It has tactile sensors all along the underside of the fingers and on the palm-- kind of like callus points-- and out in the palmar fascia. It's able to sense where objects are after it's grasped them and pull them into its palm. And that's part of the most important signature of what it means to have a good grip on an object. ALDA: Getting a good grip matters more than usual when working in space, and here Robonaut has an advantage over his human co-workers. by being designed with a single plug-in leg. In this NASA animation, Robonaut is helping build the international space station by setting up equipment before a human astronaut arrives... and dutifully putting it away when the astronaut's work is done. Which brings us back to Robonaut B, which has no legs at all but wheels... and not just any wheels but those of a self-balancing Segway scooter. No, you're not going to see a Segway on the moon. And it makes no sense in zero g; you know, they'd just be flywheels causing it to pivot around. But what it allowed us to do very quickly was learn how to coordinate moving the torso and the arms on the torso. When we first built it, we weren't even sure if one person would be enough to drive it. We were pleased to find that a single person could both coordinate moving the body and reaching with the arms. ALDA: But the ultimate goal is to eliminate Robonaut's puppet master altogether. The NASA researchers have begun working with the Media Lab team behind Leonardo to give Robonaut the ability to work autonomously as a member of a team, able to interpret its fellow astronaut's voice commands and even gestures. Recently we've been working with a human paired with the machine, where the human is more of the experienced master technician able to task the junior member of the team, the robot, as an apprentice: "Robonaut, go torque that bolt, that one right there. "Go do that one. "I'll be back in a few minutes. "I'm going over there. Call me if you have a problem." We know that we've gotten there when the person standing next to it working-- floating next to it-- is able to just pretend it's another person. ALDA: A robot astronaut would not only be helpful building structures in space; it could-- or more likely they could-- be sent ahead on missions to the moon or Mars, perhaps mounted on wheels like a Centaur, to prepare the way for humans. AMBROSE: What I would like, if I were going to be sent to Mars, is I would like the robots already to have set up the habitat, have already manufactured the fuel for my return, have tested the rockets of the return vehicle, make sure that they're working fine; the habitat is already filled with oxygen. And at that point I would be really excited leaving Earth to go live in this habitat, knowing that everything is working fine. That's what we'd like the robots to do long before the people get there, is to get everything set up. ALDA: Already NASA has an active research program in robotic vehicles designed to accompany astronauts on lunar or Martian expeditions. But the growing skill of robots, especially robots that can do jobs unsupervised, brings up the obvious question: If robots could do so much to explore other worlds, why send humans at all? AMBROSE: There's a reason that humans go to the beach. It's fun, it's exciting, sometimes you discover things at the beach. I could send the robot to the beach and it could do a much better job recording the temperature there for me, it could do a much better job taking pictures of the beach. But at some point, I want to go to the beach... because I'm a human.