[00:00.000 --> 00:03.260]  of what we're paying for the whole pavilion for the whole weekend just for an elevator operator.
[00:03.440 --> 00:05.280]  We had trouble substantiating.
[00:05.400 --> 00:06.180]  Are you our speaker?
[00:06.460 --> 00:06.760]  Yes.
[00:06.880 --> 00:07.920]  I'm just doing a little stand-up.
[00:08.180 --> 00:08.560]  Perfect.
[00:09.080 --> 00:10.100]  It's not really stand-up.
[00:10.180 --> 00:11.160]  You can do much better than I am.
[00:11.360 --> 00:11.980]  It's not really stand-up.
[00:14.200 --> 00:15.220]  My name's Greg Newby.
[00:15.380 --> 00:17.460]  I'm happy any time to hear from you.
[00:17.620 --> 00:18.460]  Find me, email me.
[00:19.040 --> 00:25.440]  And the type of input and feedback that we get is actually acted upon pretty well.
[00:25.600 --> 00:26.240]  Not 100%.
[00:26.240 --> 00:29.880]  Because often when you get someone saying this and that, someone else says kind of the opposite.
[00:30.000 --> 00:32.740]  And it turns out that if you're in the middle, you're actually doing fairly well.
[00:33.780 --> 00:34.100]  Anyway.
[00:37.440 --> 00:42.840]  I think it's done.
[00:43.900 --> 00:44.220]  Yeah.
[00:45.160 --> 00:46.860]  I should announce that too.
[00:47.000 --> 00:47.120]  Yeah.
[00:47.180 --> 00:47.940]  So you can spread the word.
[00:48.080 --> 00:49.780]  I don't think we're having any more Express Elevator.
[00:49.900 --> 00:50.080]  I don't.
[00:50.580 --> 00:54.620]  The value added for today when you're standing there and you don't know if it's running or not.
[00:54.760 --> 00:59.700]  And I was, I stood there a number of times and I've been in touch with a hotel, you know, people.
[01:00.420 --> 01:02.920]  And I stood there a number of times and nothing happened.
[01:03.100 --> 01:08.260]  And I was like, okay, this is just useless because if it's not reliable, then, you know, why bother?
[01:08.480 --> 01:12.540]  If it was going to be reliable every one minute, every two minutes back and forth, then it would have been worthwhile.
[01:13.600 --> 01:13.920]  Yeah.
[01:16.640 --> 01:16.960]  Yeah.
[01:16.960 --> 01:17.020]  Yeah.
[01:17.140 --> 01:18.100]  That's, that's always a hassle.
[01:18.200 --> 01:18.880]  I wasn't, I don't know.
[01:19.140 --> 01:20.180]  It, it varied a little bit.
[01:20.260 --> 01:24.780]  I think, um, people getting stuck by the elevator today, that was, that was unhappy.
[01:24.840 --> 01:25.520]  I didn't like that.
[01:25.520 --> 01:29.260]  But, uh, overall, it seems like going through the lobby isn't, isn't that much worse.
[01:29.440 --> 01:30.980]  You just book on the extra minute or two.
[01:32.460 --> 01:32.860]  Yeah.
[01:33.480 --> 01:33.600]  Yeah.
[01:34.120 --> 01:34.520]  Okay.
[01:35.060 --> 01:37.420]  Um, I think we're still getting set here.
[01:37.500 --> 01:40.240]  Any other comments, questions, feedback, highs, lows?
[01:40.980 --> 01:41.380]  Sorry?
[01:42.020 --> 01:42.780]  One more thing.
[01:42.960 --> 01:46.680]  Thanks for not flushing the, uh, the rooms between talks.
[01:46.920 --> 01:47.600]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[01:47.880 --> 01:49.100]  Flushing the rooms between talks.
[01:49.280 --> 01:51.800]  We dreamed this up last time and we had a whole system.
[01:52.000 --> 01:55.480]  It was going to involve passports on your, you know, remember we used passports at HOPE Number 9?
[01:55.580 --> 01:56.300]  So those of you here.
[01:56.760 --> 01:59.180]  Um, we had this whole system and we did the math.
[01:59.340 --> 02:07.620]  We were like, okay, we're going to have to take like 800 people, move them someplace, not in these main rooms, and then have some system for getting them back in.
[02:07.700 --> 02:09.880]  And we're like, no, that's not, you know, it's not viable.
[02:10.100 --> 02:13.460]  So, yeah, we didn't, we didn't even consider doing a flush of the rooms this time.
[02:13.620 --> 02:24.240]  I know it was not great because a lot of people sat in the room and I heard some of the security folks saying, no, no, you may not go and pee because we might not let your seat, seat back.
[02:24.420 --> 02:33.500]  And I, I understand that logic, but we probably need to think of some sort of system in the future, so it doesn't turn into like an insurance test to have a reasonable seat and manning for the, uh, for the keynote.
[02:33.500 --> 02:37.460]  But yeah, yeah, we, we, uh, we didn't even consider doing the room flush this time.
[02:37.620 --> 02:44.380]  And last time we considered it, had a plan for it, and then in the end, and announced it in the morning, but then didn't actually do it because it was just going to suck.
[02:45.100 --> 02:46.600]  So, yeah, thanks.
[02:49.670 --> 02:50.330]  Still going?
[02:51.230 --> 02:52.450]  One more question, comment?
[02:55.690 --> 02:56.350]  Yeah, please.
[02:56.670 --> 03:01.230]  The hotel risk, oh, holy cow.
[03:01.510 --> 03:02.070]  I don't know.
[03:04.170 --> 03:17.410]  So, um, I, I hope this isn't a secret, but we were shopping for other hotels because they told us that it was not going to be available due to, um, uh, reconditioning.
[03:17.510 --> 03:19.630]  Not, not necessarily doing to be sold or torn down.
[03:19.770 --> 03:23.490]  I don't think it's in danger of being torn down at this point because of the real estate market.
[03:23.490 --> 03:31.190]  It is in danger of being repurposed, commercialized, upgraded, downgraded, partially commercialized, you know, who knows what.
[03:31.390 --> 03:33.290]  The company that owns it is called Voronado.
[03:33.290 --> 03:35.410]  Some of you might know that if you're on the save Hotel Penn.
[03:36.010 --> 03:41.930]  And, um, I've been like in different places in the country and they're like a big real estate owner in many cities.
[03:42.090 --> 03:43.350]  They're just a monster, monster conglomerate.
[03:43.890 --> 03:48.670]  They own most of the buildings that you can see from, from, from the rooftop here, you know, from the 18th floor here.
[03:48.670 --> 03:51.230]  I don't know, maybe not most, but they own a whole bunch of the buildings around here.
[03:51.570 --> 03:53.750]  So, you, who knows, really.
[03:54.450 --> 03:59.430]  But it doesn't seem like they're in danger of just tearing it down to put up a, a something else because of the real estate market.
[03:59.550 --> 03:59.710]  You ready?
[04:00.010 --> 04:00.670]  No, no, wait.
[04:00.870 --> 04:02.330]  What do you see on the display there?
[04:02.470 --> 04:03.410]  Does it seem to be working?
[04:05.470 --> 04:05.790]  Yeah.
[04:06.710 --> 04:09.190]  So, I don't, let's see if I can find my PowerPoint.
[04:09.430 --> 04:10.110]  Yeah, you got to explore.
[04:11.650 --> 04:11.970]  Yeah, please.
[04:15.210 --> 04:15.530]  Yes.
[04:15.530 --> 04:21.570]  Let me tell you how uninterested any hotel was in hosting us.
[04:23.830 --> 04:27.750]  I mean, it's, I don't, I'm sure some people have been involved in conferences and stuff in the past.
[04:27.870 --> 04:32.230]  And just getting them to, even here, you know, where we're, you know, getting them answered the phone can sometimes be a challenge.
[04:32.410 --> 04:36.670]  But once they found out who we were, we did, literally did not get calls back.
[04:36.950 --> 04:42.230]  Like, you know, we would show up and they would, it wasn't me personally, but show up and, and no one would really be wanting to talk to us.
[04:42.510 --> 04:43.310]  It's kind of amazing.
[04:43.530 --> 04:43.790]  You ready?
[04:43.790 --> 04:48.910]  Oh, I guess I'm having the honor of having some of the organizers fill in.
[04:49.130 --> 04:49.270]  Could you?
[04:49.530 --> 04:50.730]  I'm just, hi, I'm Greg Dubey.
[04:50.770 --> 04:52.750]  I'm just one of the, yeah, one of the conference organizers.
[04:52.970 --> 04:54.530]  But we, well, let's, but it's all about you right now.
[04:54.870 --> 04:57.390]  No, actually, I would like to start with thanking you.
[04:57.530 --> 05:00.650]  And I think the audience would join me in a big time.
[05:01.670 --> 05:01.690]  Yeah.
[05:02.050 --> 05:02.250]  Thanks.
[05:05.750 --> 05:13.750]  Not only for organizing hope, which is just amazing, but also to, to allowing me to speak, which I'm terribly grateful for.
[05:14.070 --> 05:15.890]  And I'm so embarrassed for being late.
[05:16.790 --> 05:18.830]  Despite all that, you still have to finish on time.
[05:19.290 --> 05:19.690]  Yeah.
[05:19.910 --> 05:20.350]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[05:20.670 --> 05:21.610]  Just be no problem.
[05:21.770 --> 05:23.610]  Buttering up doesn't work in the hacker world.
[05:23.790 --> 05:24.350]  You know that, right?
[05:24.490 --> 05:29.230]  Actually, I would probably, I needed one of you guys because I forgot a memory card in my hotel room.
[05:29.430 --> 05:29.550]  Yeah.
[05:29.550 --> 05:30.530]  And the key didn't work.
[05:30.770 --> 05:30.930]  Yes.
[05:31.190 --> 05:36.870]  I'm thinking it would have been faster, faster to get one of you guys to open the lock than having security come down from the hotel.
[05:36.870 --> 05:37.650]  It's been done.
[05:38.170 --> 05:38.290]  All right.
[05:38.590 --> 05:40.050]  So without further ado, why don't you take, take it away.
[05:40.230 --> 05:42.770]  And we definitely, I'm always happy to hear feedback.
[05:43.010 --> 05:44.870]  So this is Pearl with a sea of parts.
[05:45.190 --> 05:47.950]  My feedback is I'm already booked the date for next year.
[05:48.010 --> 05:50.410]  Keep an eye on the time, by the way, because I might need to be back to tell you one day.
[05:50.730 --> 05:50.970]  Yeah.
[05:51.210 --> 05:52.470]  No, no, I'll keep an eye on the time.
[05:52.610 --> 05:58.830]  So I probably, I've cut into a bit of the, of the question time and I'm sorry for that.
[05:58.830 --> 06:17.870]  Um, so, uh, I'm, as you title, you've seen the title in the program, uh, I'm going to talk to you about, so first I'm Pear, if you pronounce my name like the fruit pear, you're spot on if you want to talk to me after, after the speech or during hope.
[06:18.550 --> 06:20.030]  Uh, oh, now you disappeared.
[06:21.030 --> 06:22.310]  All of you, you're just gone.
[06:22.470 --> 06:23.130]  I see nothing.
[06:23.450 --> 06:28.730]  Um, I'm going to talk to you about how we can share our way out of trouble.
[06:28.830 --> 06:36.970]  And I think that this is really beautiful because the more we help each other, the more we, we open up the less problem we're going to have in many, many, many areas.
[06:37.250 --> 06:41.890]  Uh, we're going to do this with a technology called self reconfiguring modular robotics.
[06:42.690 --> 06:50.570]  And if some of you are not familiar with the technology is kind of a niche research interest that is kind of moving out of the lab nowadays.
[06:51.010 --> 06:56.670]  Um, I would like just to give you a short overview so that you know what I'm talking about.
[06:56.670 --> 06:59.110]  First, let's start with modular robotics.
[06:59.470 --> 07:01.730]  Um, I have some examples here.
[07:02.010 --> 07:03.850]  Some of them are self reconfiguring.
[07:03.950 --> 07:04.670]  Can I do this?
[07:04.970 --> 07:06.770]  Um, that one is self reconfiguring.
[07:06.890 --> 07:07.950]  That one is self reconfiguring.
[07:08.050 --> 07:16.090]  You see the small white clause there that makes it automatically engaged and disengaged with, with, with, with other modules of the same type.
[07:16.310 --> 07:18.690]  The other ones are pure modular here.
[07:19.310 --> 07:42.670]  Um, this one, the CK bot is, is kind of cool because I know of a couple of students who in just a few weeks time on, on, except, um, as an additional to the regular studies, um, did a robot that can go and get them drinks from, um, a fridge, uh, for, in very short time and for very little money compared to what,
[07:42.670 --> 07:44.670]  what other people spend doing the same robot.
[07:45.570 --> 07:52.470]  And the MY1 down there in the corner costs you, I mean, dollars.
[07:52.730 --> 07:57.390]  The, the CK bot is quite expensive, but the other one is really cheap and you can make them yourself.
[07:57.590 --> 07:58.470]  They're fully open-source.
[07:58.750 --> 08:03.270]  This is just a small, uh, small selection of what is available.
[08:04.150 --> 08:12.570]  Um, when we look at these modules, we talk about them being minimally viable.
[08:12.570 --> 08:26.370]  We want them as simple, as basic, as just rudimentary as possible because they become more, um, easier to do and we get the result by assembling many of them or having them assemble themselves.
[08:27.130 --> 08:37.390]  Uh, so then we have this axiom saying that keep it really, really tight and you will be, um, better off than if you try to add features to them.
[08:37.390 --> 08:43.810]  Um, self reconfiguring is very, very hard, uh, but it's easy to understand.
[08:44.010 --> 08:49.050]  It just adds a layer of automation to the whole process.
[08:49.050 --> 08:57.810]  Instead of you having to manually reconfigure them from a, um, chair to a sofa to a bed, they can do that themselves.
[08:57.810 --> 09:10.790]  This also opens up interesting possibilities with self organization where you can give the system, um, small number of reasonably simple rules.
[09:11.190 --> 09:18.030]  And it will from that, those rules evolve, uh, a system on its own that satisfies your rules.
[09:18.210 --> 09:20.370]  So say that you want to teach your robot to walk.
[09:20.590 --> 09:25.590]  It's actually better at teaching itself to walk than you are teaching itself, teaching it to walk.
[09:25.590 --> 09:38.350]  And it can do so in a, uh, broader sense when it can change its morphology from two-legged to four-legged or to, to whatever, uh, form of locomotion is best for the terrain.
[09:39.130 --> 09:55.430]  Um, this will give us, as opposed to the computer, which is a, uh, universal computation machine, it can simulate any mechanical or electronical, uh, uh, computation machine that you can build.
[09:55.610 --> 09:58.150]  You can do that in the computer with, with, with software.
[09:58.510 --> 10:01.150]  This will give us the same thing, but for hardware.
[10:01.410 --> 10:08.570]  Any machine, any structure you could imagine building with regular methods, you will be able to build with these.
[10:08.890 --> 10:13.710]  Of course, that's not true right now, but we hope it will be true sometime in the future.
[10:13.710 --> 10:17.350]  Um, and with this...
[10:19.250 --> 10:25.850]  With these modules, you could, of course, go and buy them the way you buy anything today and own them.
[10:26.050 --> 10:28.950]  But this isn't a very practical way of doing it.
[10:29.090 --> 10:33.030]  It is much better if we share them in a pool.
[10:33.330 --> 10:40.110]  So everyone draws modules from a pool when they need them and return them to the pool when they don't.
[10:40.110 --> 10:46.910]  This can be because they don't need that particular module, they don't need as many of them, or they need them in another location.
[10:47.730 --> 10:52.270]  Uh, this isn't as a revolutionary concept as you might think.
[10:52.450 --> 10:58.270]  Most, many things in, in today's world only works if they are shared.
[10:58.430 --> 11:05.790]  Bandwidth, roads, hotel rooms, taxi cabs, they are ridiculous if you try to own all of them yourself.
[11:05.790 --> 11:12.770]  Uh, me having a hotel room in New York because I spend four nights here every other year for HOPE would be a ridiculous proposition.
[11:12.770 --> 11:18.250]  It's only possible for me to come to New York because of a shared resource that is the hotel rooms.
[11:18.910 --> 11:29.230]  Um, but here we can do this in a much broader way and in a new area of physical hardware structures, infrastructure, and machines.
[11:30.510 --> 11:37.190]  Um, and the, the one example I used to use when I talk about this is the power drill.
[11:37.370 --> 11:40.250]  Most of us have a power drill at home, cordless or none.
[11:40.810 --> 11:50.270]  Um, and there, there is this statistic saying that the average power drill is used 14 minutes in its entire lifespan, which is probably decades.
[11:50.330 --> 11:59.950]  The rest of the time it's just sitting there on the shelf doing no use to anybody, but it's still taking up resources and it's still being a hassle for the one who owns it.
[12:00.370 --> 12:09.370]  Um, and although it has benefits to actually owning your own power drill, the benefits and, and, and the, the downsides has to be balanced against each other.
[12:09.490 --> 12:12.150]  And I'm going to talk more, more about that as we go along.
[12:14.110 --> 12:24.630]  The big thing I think here, especially for us as hackers, as people that want to tinker with things, that want to do things, that want to try things out, is that it lowers the barriers in two ways.
[12:25.150 --> 12:28.530]  First, you can experiment as much as you want to.
[12:29.270 --> 12:44.370]  You just get the modules out of the pool, you do your tests, you do build your thing, you modify it, it didn't work, you need to change parts, you need to just evolve the, the, the, the whole solution you're trying to work on.
[12:44.490 --> 12:50.710]  And doing this in the regular way where you, where you have to buy the components all the time, will be very expensive.
[12:50.950 --> 12:58.930]  And most of these robots I showed you are developed in, in, in university laboratories, because it's, it's, it's a quite expensive business to be in.
[12:59.770 --> 13:03.570]  But this drastically lowers those tinkering barriers.
[13:03.910 --> 13:10.630]  I mean, you could rent these units for a month for a very, very low sum compared to, to, to buying them.
[13:12.310 --> 13:17.190]  And then you can also, especially in the development phase, you need a unit for a short time.
[13:17.190 --> 13:19.590]  You did realize it was not what you needed.
[13:19.770 --> 13:20.450]  So you return it.
[13:20.590 --> 13:25.190]  And you get the one that is more powerful or faster or a set different sensor of some kind.
[13:25.690 --> 13:30.790]  And then eventually you come to a stable solution that does what you intended it to do.
[13:31.250 --> 13:35.110]  And then we come to the second barrier this breaks down.
[13:35.250 --> 13:38.670]  And that is the deployment and the distribution barrier.
[13:38.670 --> 13:47.450]  Because even with modular robotics and non-self-reconfiguring ones, everyone can draw modules from their local pool.
[13:47.690 --> 13:56.510]  And either have it self-assembled, assembled by somebody else, or assemble it themselves, according to your schematics and drawings and instructions.
[13:56.930 --> 14:11.870]  Which means that when your idea or solution has reached maturity, and it's actually ready to go out there in the world, you don't come to a world of hurt like you do today when you have to go to China and have somebody make copies out of it.
[14:12.110 --> 14:21.250]  When it's done, it's done, and everyone can take advantage of it immediately without you doing much more than that.
[14:21.390 --> 14:26.870]  Everyone draws the schematics from you and the modules from the pool, and they can go on doing that.
[14:28.230 --> 14:32.210]  This, I hope, will create a much more agile society.
[14:32.210 --> 14:37.690]  A society that can move faster and implement new ideas.
[14:38.070 --> 14:40.450]  More new ideas from more people.
[14:41.190 --> 14:44.890]  Dropping the cost will make this available to more people.
[14:45.630 --> 14:48.850]  Making it faster and easier.
[14:49.490 --> 14:59.190]  will make it possible for faster progress.
[14:59.350 --> 15:02.090]  But not only faster progress, but better progress.
[15:03.490 --> 15:05.170]  It will allow us to...
[15:07.780 --> 15:08.760]  Yeah, perfect.
[15:09.760 --> 15:13.500]  Good sound is 60% of the movie, they tell me.
[15:13.700 --> 15:15.640]  Not that this is ever going to be a movie.
[15:16.620 --> 15:18.400]  But good sound is still important.
[15:20.400 --> 15:26.740]  So this will create a more dynamic society in many ways.
[15:28.660 --> 15:30.700]  And this is also...
[15:30.700 --> 15:34.780]  I'm a big fan of being eco-friendly.
[15:35.100 --> 15:40.660]  And I think this can really address many of those questions in a very, very interesting way.
[15:41.380 --> 15:49.080]  We can implement new solutions without having the large cost of replacing old solutions.
[15:49.240 --> 15:58.020]  Which means that solutions with a smaller benefit can actually be implemented without having a huge cost associated with them.
[15:58.120 --> 16:05.380]  For instance, we now realize that insulating our buildings is important to reduce the energy we need to cool or heat them.
[16:05.380 --> 16:11.860]  But it's very, very hard to implement this in reality, in the practical case.
[16:12.040 --> 16:15.040]  Because you have to tear the building down and you have to rebuild them.
[16:15.600 --> 16:18.400]  Which of course isn't ecologically friendly in any way.
[16:19.300 --> 16:21.820]  At least not if the change isn't huge.
[16:22.300 --> 16:25.600]  And of course it also takes a very long time before that happens.
[16:25.600 --> 16:30.240]  So I'm thinking just in this area, I think this technology can be very helpful.
[16:30.440 --> 16:32.000]  We can implement smaller benefits.
[16:32.200 --> 16:34.180]  And we could actually do it right now.
[16:35.080 --> 16:39.280]  And that I think is very significant to my involvement with this.
[16:40.040 --> 16:42.060]  Sadly, this is not all good.
[16:42.440 --> 16:45.240]  I don't think any technology has ever been all good.
[16:45.500 --> 16:49.720]  I think the first guy with a stone axe probably hit himself in the foot a couple of times.
[16:50.480 --> 16:52.240]  And we have to acknowledge that.
[16:52.240 --> 16:55.840]  And we have to try to handle them and to minimize the impact of the bad.
[16:57.460 --> 17:00.440]  I see this as two levels of bad.
[17:01.100 --> 17:03.040]  One is something we could...
[17:03.040 --> 17:05.420]  The first level is kind of less important.
[17:05.660 --> 17:07.960]  Not less important, but easier to manage.
[17:08.560 --> 17:13.620]  For instance, lag is something we're not used to in the physical world.
[17:13.820 --> 17:19.800]  If I have that proverbial power drill on the shelf in my shed, I could just go get it.
[17:19.800 --> 17:24.420]  It takes me a few minutes and I can drill my hole, put up my painting and I'm done.
[17:25.300 --> 17:30.760]  With this system, I would have to book the units that makes up my power drill and then have them delivered.
[17:30.940 --> 17:38.800]  It can be anywhere from a few minutes, hours or even days before I get the modules needed for the assembly I would like to use.
[17:39.640 --> 17:50.220]  I usually draw the parallel, when I talk to people about this, between going down to the local store and buying what you need and versus ordering it online.
[17:50.620 --> 17:58.520]  I mean, if we go around the corner here, it's basically two blocks away, we can go to B&H Photo and buy a lot of photo gear.
[17:58.520 --> 18:02.780]  They have pretty much everything, but they don't have everything.
[18:02.940 --> 18:08.760]  If we go online, we can buy anything, but it takes a while for it to ship to us.
[18:08.900 --> 18:13.060]  Maybe a day, two, three, four days, probably not a week.
[18:14.580 --> 18:16.460]  So we're used to this lag.
[18:16.800 --> 18:24.100]  We do the choice of either going to the store, getting it immediately or buying the book from Amazon and having it one to two or three days later.
[18:24.580 --> 18:27.440]  But we're not used to this when it comes to the physical world.
[18:27.640 --> 18:34.700]  We're not used to waiting for our bed in the evening because it's transforming from our sofa to our bed.
[18:34.920 --> 18:38.320]  So this is something we'll have to get used to, something we'll have to adapt to.
[18:38.420 --> 18:42.900]  But I feel that there's a good opportunity that we'll do that eventually.
[18:44.400 --> 18:44.840]  Availability.
[18:45.120 --> 18:48.740]  Again, if I have my power drill, it's out there in the shed, I can just go get it.
[18:49.380 --> 18:53.960]  It's always going to be there for me, at least if I'm in the same location.
[18:54.120 --> 18:56.560]  It's not going to follow me between different locations.
[18:57.540 --> 19:03.820]  But if I want to use the pool and draw modules from them, the unit might be out of stock right now.
[19:03.980 --> 19:13.880]  And then I would have to wait to do what I want until the units became in stock again, because there might be a high demand for that particular module at that time.
[19:14.140 --> 19:16.300]  So availability is a slightly harder problem.
[19:16.300 --> 19:20.880]  I don't think people are going to be really comfortable with not being able to do what they want.
[19:23.200 --> 19:23.640]  Hacking.
[19:23.820 --> 19:24.960]  We all love hacking.
[19:25.660 --> 19:29.000]  But I'm actually going to take the fun part and put it to the side.
[19:29.220 --> 19:33.420]  Because I also think that all of us think that hacking is tremendously important.
[19:34.240 --> 19:49.620]  Everything we see around us, every product that we use that today is a mature product that we can buy in the store, started life as something hacked together from pieces that were modified, to test the concept, to develop it, to prototype it.
[19:49.900 --> 19:54.260]  Everything started as a hack somewhere in its lifetime.
[19:54.880 --> 19:56.240]  So hacking is very important.
[19:56.560 --> 20:05.360]  But it's also very hard, because if you draw modules from the pool, you can't really modify them and then return them.
[20:05.360 --> 20:08.500]  That's not the way things would work, I think.
[20:08.720 --> 20:13.980]  So we have to accommodate hacking and we have to accommodate modifying units.
[20:14.140 --> 20:17.020]  But I think that that's not compatible with the pool.
[20:17.240 --> 20:19.360]  So that's something we clearly need to handle.
[20:22.260 --> 20:22.700]  Trust.
[20:23.140 --> 20:25.880]  Kind of comes back to the fact that you can't open them up.
[20:25.880 --> 20:35.020]  When you draw a module from the pool to use it in your assembly, it's very important that you know the capabilities and the content of this module.
[20:35.260 --> 20:40.900]  So it hasn't been augmented with things that are detrimental to you.
[20:41.000 --> 20:45.700]  For instance, surveillance equipment or other things that you don't want there.
[20:45.920 --> 21:00.680]  There has to be a trust between who manages the pool and who draws modules from them that they have a contract saying that when I describe this module that you're about to draw from the pool, it is actually like that.
[21:01.360 --> 21:13.700]  And of course, this also comes back when you return it to the pool, whoever runs the pool has to verify that you didn't modify it to the detriment of whoever draws it from the pool in the next step.
[21:16.140 --> 21:17.100]  Access control.
[21:17.660 --> 21:22.500]  I might buy a power tool today that is really powerful and could be potentially dangerous.
[21:22.760 --> 21:24.820]  But for some reason, it's legal today.
[21:25.340 --> 21:30.780]  And in the future, it might not be legal for me to do so.
[21:30.980 --> 21:33.220]  But since I already bought it, I have it.
[21:33.400 --> 21:37.440]  There's a known relationship between me and what I buy.
[21:37.640 --> 21:40.220]  And if I screw up, that's on me, right?
[21:40.220 --> 21:51.900]  But if I'm drawing modules from the pool, I'm not really sure that I will be allowed to because they might have discovered that this solution that he's attempting to use can be very dangerous.
[21:52.260 --> 21:55.160]  It's powerful for whatever reason.
[21:55.820 --> 22:08.700]  And then they say you have to do this education or you have to have this certificate, you have to be approved for using a backhoe or driving a bus or a truck, something like that, or a car for that matter.
[22:09.800 --> 22:11.960]  This could, of course, also be misused.
[22:12.380 --> 22:17.740]  I'm not very worried about the case where it's used to protect the user or people around them.
[22:17.900 --> 22:22.620]  I mean, we all agree on the fact that you shouldn't be able to drive heavy machinery without education.
[22:22.620 --> 22:23.940]  That's probably a bad idea.
[22:25.320 --> 22:42.060]  But there is a risk here of misuse of this, where we use this as a pretense to prevent people from using the system because we don't like what they would like to use it for.
[22:42.360 --> 22:45.240]  And that is a clear concern, of course.
[22:47.040 --> 22:50.940]  So that was the basic part of my speech.
[22:51.500 --> 23:12.860]  I hope that when we have modular robotics, we have self-reconfiguring modular robotics, and we have an established pool that everyone can draw modules from, we all will be in the sea of parts, both as developers, as hackers, but also as users, where we could really create a lot,
[23:13.040 --> 23:16.660]  we can do a lot, and we can do so in an environmentally friendly way.
[23:17.260 --> 23:23.560]  More people could do so than can today, because it's financially available, it's practically available.
[23:24.540 --> 23:35.060]  And I think that that would be a very cool world, when we can let everyone's creative uses flow and build stuff, and we could also use them much faster.
[23:37.640 --> 23:42.320]  So, if you have any questions, can you turn on the lights in the room, so I see people?
[23:45.180 --> 23:51.260]  So, if you have any questions, you find me online, or you find me after the speech, or you find me during HOPE.
[23:53.480 --> 24:03.800]  I would just like to end the speech part of this with a question and answer it with a quote from my favourite demo.
[24:05.960 --> 24:19.680]  And that was my presentation, and I hope that you have some help for the different issues I've mentioned, or any questions you might have, especially if you know of other risks that I need to address in a further speech.
[24:19.820 --> 24:19.940]  Please.
[24:20.700 --> 24:24.280]  First of all, does the schedule
[24:30.470 --> 24:31.210]  automate this?
[24:31.210 --> 24:31.470]  Yeah.
[24:31.470 --> 24:40.690]  I think it's true to be like automated robots that can come by and, you know, say you already knew, like, where you wanted your picture on, and the robots could somehow, you know, get a picture on the board.
[24:40.710 --> 24:42.270]  You could just schedule that.
[24:42.850 --> 24:46.570]  The common thing that, I mean, you have robots at home, you know, floors.
[24:46.570 --> 24:49.630]  And then when people say, oh, I don't want to wait around for the robot to...
[24:49.630 --> 24:52.730]  You know, oh, but the robot takes three hours from out to the floor.
[24:52.930 --> 24:54.590]  I say, I don't care that it takes three hours.
[24:54.810 --> 24:55.690]  It's doing it.
[24:55.730 --> 24:56.150]  I'm not.
[24:56.430 --> 24:58.410]  You know, it can take all night if it wants to.
[24:58.470 --> 24:58.890]  Yeah, yeah.
[24:58.890 --> 25:12.290]  So, if you could, you know, assuming if you, the, I've done some work with robots before, and, you know, assuming that you have the, kind of, algorithmic knowledge and capability
[25:32.220 --> 25:43.100]  The other thing is, do you know of a, I'm going to serve again, do you work sort of outside the lab to come up with a generalized modular system of...
[25:43.100 --> 25:51.720]  There are things that are kind of leaving the lab and going commercial, but it's really, really early days yet.
[25:52.420 --> 25:57.080]  When you're talking about high quality industrial units, there are only one.
[25:57.300 --> 26:03.420]  It's from a German company and it's kind of sold to research institutions more than anything else, because it's powerful.
[26:03.600 --> 26:06.820]  It could certainly hurt you if you, if you, if you do the wrong thing.
[26:07.040 --> 26:12.300]  There are units in the middle range there that are coming out over the coming year or something.
[26:12.300 --> 26:14.260]  And I'm very excited about that.
[26:14.480 --> 26:21.620]  And being able to put these units in, in, in, in the hands of the hackers and the tinkers and those who actually invent things.
[26:21.940 --> 26:27.940]  So, maybe like the first step would be to come up with modules and, like, for Shopify or, you know, whatever kind of application system can go, and take those...
[26:41.130 --> 26:44.490]  There is several of them that are online and that are open-source.
[26:44.490 --> 26:52.150]  There is, however, a unique problem with modular robotics when it comes to doing what you suggest, that we, we build them ourselves.
[26:52.470 --> 26:55.270]  And that is that you usually need a lot of them.
[26:55.770 --> 26:59.910]  And usually you need, like, like 25, 50, 100.
[26:59.910 --> 27:03.210]  And I even know a guy who made 1,024 of them.
[27:03.530 --> 27:05.470]  Not a randomly selected number, by the way.
[27:05.590 --> 27:06.830]  He made a killer bot.
[27:07.710 --> 27:10.690]  And he can say that the last 200 was not much fun.
[27:11.350 --> 27:19.710]  Because you have, because the units are so, so basic, so simple, you need a lot of them to actually make any, make a useful construction.
[27:19.710 --> 27:23.530]  And that makes, to do them yourself, is very tedious.
[27:23.770 --> 27:27.230]  Because usually when you build a robot, you build one or two or maybe three.
[27:27.470 --> 27:30.250]  Here you have to build 300 before you can actually do anything.
[27:30.510 --> 27:33.450]  So, this is different from... in the back?
[27:34.610 --> 27:40.200]  So, for you to have misunderstood something, but it sounds like pools or...
[27:40.200 --> 27:41.920]  Yeah, or pools, I would say.
[27:42.040 --> 27:44.200]  I mean, anybody should be able to start a pool, of course.
[27:44.380 --> 27:44.740]  But, yeah.
[27:44.880 --> 27:45.140]  Sure.
[28:05.560 --> 28:10.700]  I think that financials and people's laziness will get us there.
[28:11.100 --> 28:14.180]  I mean, it's so much cheaper if you draw them from the pool.
[28:14.340 --> 28:17.540]  And it's so much more convenient for you not having to own them.
[28:17.740 --> 28:27.540]  That if we can handle the trust issues, if we can handle these issues that I've mentioned, lag and accessibility, and what the other question you're here asked.
[28:28.220 --> 28:34.280]  is that getting us used to saying, I want a picture put up there, do it, and tell me when you're done.
[28:34.420 --> 28:36.440]  It takes them three hours or three days, I don't know.
[28:36.900 --> 28:38.720]  Yeah, but it's going to evolve, I think.
[28:38.800 --> 28:41.320]  And it has to do that, too, because it's totally new territory.
[28:41.880 --> 28:42.960]  You were first, I think?
[28:43.140 --> 28:51.680]  I think what I'm hearing is that our community needs to be built around some of these projects.
[28:51.680 --> 29:03.410]  And as far as the financial aspects, you might want to look into something like a Kickstarter or a portal, set up some kind of structure, and I don't know how to do it and all that.
[29:03.890 --> 29:06.270]  But at least, it's not the deal.
[29:06.470 --> 29:07.190]  It's going to be weird.
[29:07.470 --> 29:08.210]  It's going to be different.
[29:08.450 --> 29:10.110]  It's not going to be like anything else we're going to do.
[29:10.570 --> 29:15.150]  Yeah, imagine a life without possessions, because you only own what you need right now.
[29:15.150 --> 29:18.810]  So, if you don't need anything right now, you're just standing there in a meadow.
[29:19.170 --> 29:20.610]  You don't own anything.
[29:21.570 --> 29:23.970]  So, there was a... you?
[29:24.390 --> 29:26.170]  Yeah, so, up or down?
[29:26.650 --> 29:29.710]  So, you can build top down where you're...
[29:36.510 --> 29:40.770]  Drexler's engines of creation, bottom up, time for precise manufacturing.
[29:45.440 --> 29:51.640]  What, in this sort of multi-function vision, do you see as most exciting going forward?
[29:52.940 --> 30:01.720]  I see them as equally exciting, but I think that the slightly larger scale is probably where our technology are right now.
[30:01.900 --> 30:06.860]  I don't think that we're going to be seeing the Drexel system coming out anytime soon.
[30:07.800 --> 30:13.100]  The problems of handling atoms at that level are amazingly hard.
[30:13.820 --> 30:16.460]  There's so much fundamental knowledge we lack.
[30:16.620 --> 30:24.140]  So, building one of the units I showed you here, it's very much hard enough.
[30:24.740 --> 30:26.580]  I can tell you that all of the people...
[30:26.580 --> 30:28.020]  I know the people who built these.
[30:28.180 --> 30:31.300]  And even the reasonably simple ones down here are...
[30:32.180 --> 30:33.240]  They're a challenge.
[30:33.800 --> 30:35.700]  And they're a challenge to make them work.
[30:35.840 --> 30:41.460]  And when you add self-reconfigurability to it, the mathematics becomes enormously challenging.
[30:41.720 --> 30:46.080]  And so, that's more than challenging enough for our generation and our time.
[30:46.080 --> 30:48.980]  But, of course, in the end, I'm thinking we...
[30:48.980 --> 30:54.440]  I have seen one that are 0.2 millimeters times 0.7 millimeters.
[30:55.140 --> 31:00.800]  So, I was told when I saw it in the Petri dish, I was told not to breathe out, because I would blow it away.
[31:01.100 --> 31:06.720]  So, that means that the resolution is then down to a few tenths of a millimeter.
[31:07.040 --> 31:10.080]  And that is basically the resolution of the human eye in distance.
[31:10.080 --> 31:11.820]  So, in the back?
[31:12.380 --> 31:12.760]  Yeah.
[31:13.360 --> 31:20.820]  So, it seems like community ownership and sharing isn't a very common model in the developed world.
[31:21.140 --> 31:24.820]  Like with hotel rooms.
[31:25.460 --> 31:26.680]  Roads, bandwidth.
[31:27.080 --> 31:27.180]  Yeah.
[31:31.200 --> 31:34.520]  So, have you thought about sort of like...
[31:34.520 --> 31:44.600]  Are there like big financial opportunities for corporations to kind of like create markets using these technologies?
[31:45.200 --> 31:52.100]  I think that the running a pool would be a profitable venture.
[31:52.500 --> 31:54.980]  Because I think that instead...
[31:56.040 --> 31:58.860]  Take the hotel rooms, for instance.
[31:59.420 --> 32:00.380]  That you build a hotel.
[32:00.620 --> 32:08.980]  And then you once every 25-30 years when you do a refurbishment, you guess that I am going to have a high demand in single bedrooms.
[32:08.980 --> 32:14.720]  Or I am going to have a high demand for double bedrooms or suites or conference venue space.
[32:15.000 --> 32:17.140]  And you do that every 30 years.
[32:17.520 --> 32:20.960]  And, of course, your guess is going to be wrong as much as it is going to be right.
[32:21.340 --> 32:23.400]  You stand there with a fixed structure.
[32:23.720 --> 32:24.280]  With...
[32:24.280 --> 32:34.960]  If you are a company that maintains a pool, you can flexibly satisfy customer need in a wide range of application because you are flexible.
[32:35.720 --> 32:41.980]  It would be like if the hotel could say, if we have a customer for a single bedroom, we have only single bedrooms.
[32:42.260 --> 32:47.760]  If we have lots of... we need lots of venue space, let's create venue space and so forth.
[32:47.760 --> 32:52.580]  We can adapt to the... the need at any particular time.
[32:52.780 --> 33:05.020]  Which means that a company that runs a pool or bases its operations on a pool will be more profitable because it would need less resources to satisfy the same customer need.
[33:08.040 --> 33:09.480]  Yeah, further in the back.
[33:09.680 --> 33:10.320]  Speak up, please.
[33:10.500 --> 33:10.940]  So I hear you.
[33:18.860 --> 33:27.960]  I have two answers for that question and I'm going to quote Rodney Brooks on one of them because he knows more about robotics than I'll ever know.
[33:28.560 --> 33:35.360]  He said that if robots starts to become... if robots would become slightly annoying, we would probably redesign them.
[33:35.360 --> 33:43.280]  So the fact that they would ever come to the conclusion of taking over the world as the big evil super being, it's unlikely.
[33:44.020 --> 33:46.740]  And yes, we do see emergent properties.
[33:46.900 --> 33:47.280]  Absolutely.
[33:47.580 --> 33:53.980]  I mentioned briefly the self-organizing robots where those properties is what you desire.
[33:54.260 --> 34:07.820]  You try to set these simple rules and allow the system to evolve itself towards... to be a good walker in uneven terrain, to do whatever you try to achieve.
[34:08.800 --> 34:11.840]  Is there a risk of the gray goo scenario?
[34:12.440 --> 34:13.660]  I don't think so.
[34:13.780 --> 34:14.460]  Not at least in...
[34:14.460 --> 34:19.920]  That will be a problem for our grandchildren and I'm thinking that's a speech for HOPE... XIIV or something like that.
[34:23.000 --> 34:25.760]  I hope I intend, but I don't think so.
[34:25.760 --> 34:39.900]  But of course, every risk must be evaluated at each time because we're dealing with powerful technologies and we have to be upfront about the risk and admit them and evaluate them to our best knowledge.
[34:40.320 --> 34:46.140]  Yeah, as they get more and more complicated, the number of states that they can be in...
[34:47.460 --> 34:48.160]  Yeah, yeah.
[34:48.160 --> 34:50.520]  So they'll do things or things will happen.
[34:50.760 --> 34:50.960]  Yeah.
[34:51.720 --> 34:52.200]  Yeah.
[34:52.560 --> 34:52.580]  Yeah.
[34:52.760 --> 35:07.720]  And then especially when you're going into the self-organizing, the emerging behaviors, that is, of course, a real concern because you don't really have any understanding or any real control over why it does what it does.
[35:07.720 --> 35:09.060]  So, yeah.
[35:09.500 --> 35:10.100]  Next to you.
[35:25.800 --> 35:38.460]  So, what you're asking is how does the three laws or the five laws of robotics, which is probably what we should concern ourselves with, to break down when the modules are this reduced.
[35:39.140 --> 35:40.440]  I think that the...
[35:40.440 --> 35:45.240]  I think that that has to be handled by the assembly we make off the modules.
[35:45.400 --> 35:55.040]  I don't think each module should have any responsibility as it comes to the three laws or indeed any form of regulatory compliance.
[35:55.040 --> 36:00.440]  So, I think that is something we need to do on the assembly level.
[36:00.940 --> 36:05.100]  Of course, we can have requirements on the robustness on sensors and stuff.
[36:05.340 --> 36:07.300]  And those will be per module.
[36:07.520 --> 36:11.800]  But for the whole system, that's something for the system integrator to do.
[36:12.680 --> 36:17.600]  And also, there was a thought there on relating to what you said.
[36:17.600 --> 36:23.480]  These unknown behaviors, the fact that we haven't created the behavior...
[36:23.480 --> 36:24.300]  What's my time?
[36:24.580 --> 36:24.960]  Oh, I'm good.
[36:26.580 --> 36:34.800]  The fact that no human being has created the behavior probably will make regulatory and safety authorities quite nervous.
[36:35.060 --> 36:46.600]  And saying, if nobody created this behavior, if they kind of emerged from self-organization, who is responsible for the behavior if they do something undesirable?
[36:46.600 --> 36:49.640]  And that's something we also need to handle over the coming years.
[36:53.500 --> 36:53.980]  More?
[36:59.020 --> 36:59.700]  No more?
[37:01.280 --> 37:02.580]  So, I guess I'm done.
[37:11.220 --> 37:16.100]  At least I compensated being late by ending late so the next guys get to be on time.