A tale of two research institutes
Boston Dynamics AI Institute's Marc Raibert and Toyota Research Institute's Gill Pratt on the future of robot and AI research
If you’re lucky, once a year you get to put together a panel built on pure kismet. Pairing Gill Pratt with Marc Raibert was exactly that for me. The two go back several decades, to the salad days of MIT’s Leg Lab.
kismet: 숙명, 운명
Raibert founded the lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1980, before moving operations to MIT. The team was focused on robot locomotion research that would pave the way for Boston Dynamics’ work.
locomotion: 보행능력
“When we first got started, all robots that had legs were very slow moving, crab-like things that would hug the ground and then tentatively take a step and hope that things didn’t topple over and then move like a slow-moving spider,” says Raibert. “I was interested in how animals work, and I looked at that and said, ‘Wow, this is about as far from right as you can get.’ I went the other way to see if we can do something where the dynamics and the energy in the machine [were] part of the story, and springs and bouncing were part of the story. My lab worked on that. We built pogo stick robots.”
tentatively: 실험적으로
topple over: 넘어지다
Asked whether there is pressure from Toyota to productize, Pratt says, “There actually is not, and I’m not saying that just to be nice. I think one of the great things about companies that have existed for long times is that this isn’t the first time that they’ve done R&D. Certainly most of the R&D budget inside of Toyota is spent figuring out how to make the next car or maybe the car five years from now. But there’s this notion — and I’m sure Hyundai shares this — that we’re at the once-in-a-century time for transformation in the car industry. Battery electric vehicles are much simpler to make than cars have been in the past — no engine, no transmission, etc. So, we’re going to have to compete in a much fiercer way in cars. But also, can we use the skills, the dreams and the hopes of the company to go beyond cars? TRI’s job is to actually think about [what’s] next. What’s next after cars, as well some fancy stuff on cars.”
productize: 상품화하다
“I’ve heard Gill say that making a car is taking small bits of metal and banging them up, welding them together and attaching them,” Raibert says. “That’s a little on the primitive side. Now we have software, robotics, AI and all that stuff, and the car companies need to embrace that. I think the leadership at Hyundai — the chairman visited me last week, and we’re in close touch with him and the people who work with him — think that getting into the 22nd century is an important thing to do and we’re getting started on it now.”
welding: 용접
For its part, the Boston Dynamics AI Institute lists three key pillars of its research: intelligence, dexterity and mobility. That’s effectively making robots that are smarter, better at mobile manipulation and move more dynamically. Raibert admits that “Boston Dynamics AI Institute” might not be the most instructive name, both with regard to confusion between itself and Boston Dynamics the company, as well as a seeming focus on AI over robotics. A name change is apparently coming, but nothing has been decided just yet.
dexterity: 재주
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