Original subtitles

[narrator] On this episode of How Tech Works.

Are these swarming robots

on a mission to take over the world?

And...

watch out! There’s no stopping this avalanche... or is there?

[intro music]

[upbeat electronic music]

Hello, I’m Basil Singer

and you are in for a wild ride of a show.

[narrator] We’re going up, up, and away

in a customized hang glider

Now I hope you’re not squeamish,

because we’re also going to check out the latest

in creepy crawly robots.

Depending on how you feel

about hundreds of swarming robots,

our first story may fill you with hope and possibility...

then again, it might scare the wits out of you.

You see, these Swarmanoids are a perfect example

of bits and bytes of technology uniting for a common good.

Or...

they're the proof that the world will soon be taken over

by soulless drones.

Watch, and decide for yourself!

[soft mechanical sounds]

[narrator] Professor Marco Dorigo

is calling out to all wheels, motors, grips and rotors

to join forces.

His lab specializes in swarm intelligence,

trying to get robots to work together

to achieve a common goal.

Marco is the scientific coordinator of "Swarmanoid".

Swarmanoid is a particular approach

to swarm robotics,

in which we have a heterogeneous swarm of robots,

so many robots of different types.

[narrator] Unlike typical swarms,

which are made up of identical robots,

Swarmanoid is more like

one robot divided into many distinct parts.

We have three types of robots. One is called "footbot."

[Marco] It is a robot that stays on the ground and moves around,

it is capable of transporting objects.

Another one, the "handbot",

is a robot capable of grasping objects,

but cannot move around, and it can climb structures.

And the third one, "eyebot,"

is a robot that can fly and has a good vision system.

[narrator] Time for this motley crew to report for duty.

Helping to train the troops is Nithin Mathews.

He’s working to improve swarm performance.

[Nithin] There is strength to the group,

so whatever a single robot is not able to carry out,

can be carried out in collective fashion.

[narrator] Today they’re trying to overcome a hill,

which for such disparate parts might as well be a mountain.

I add the eyebot into the experiment

and ask the eyebot to help out the footbots on the ground.

So the footbot can use

the perception of the eyebot from the air

to carry out certain tasks.

[narrator] Before any of this can happen

they need a way of communicating.

Here are three things you need to know

about speaking Swarmanoid.

First off, every color light means something.

Green means, “I'm here, I'm alive, notice me.”

Blue means, “I see you and I’m ready to take orders."

Red means, "It’s time to execute the plan or let’s get busy."

[narrator] Unlike Wi-Fi,

lights are a signal that are easier to locate in space.

Next there’s spinning.

Not only is it good exercise,

but it’s also how they send out infrared and radio wave signals

to help read distances between bots.

On top of that, cameras calculate and relay

another layer of information

and eliminate a lot of guesswork.

But even though they’ve dealt with blocks to communication,

they’re still struggling with that block... in the road.

There’s a hill kind-of-thing in between,

which a single footbot cannot cross by itself,

simply because it is physically not capable to do so.

[narrator] This is where they go into self-assembly mode

to become a swarmbot!

[Nithin] Footbots, for instance, are able to self-assemble

and change their shape depending on what they are supposed to do.

[narrator] Whenever two or more bots hook up,

that’s what we call a "swarmbot,"

and teaming up is what Swarmanoid does best!

[soft electronic music]

[narrator] Great! They have passed the physical challenge,

now time for the intellectual challenge of a good book.

[mechanic parts moving]

[narrator] Fast forward,

and this swarmbot game of hide and seek is destined

for real search and rescue missions of the future.

We jump now

from the artificial threat of robot invasion

to the very real threat of natural disasters,

avalanches.

Avalanches are extremely difficult to predict,

because the snow of an avalanche is constantly changing.

Even tiny fluctuations in the weather

can have huge impacts on its overall strength.

And that's where the lab in our next story comes in!

[narrator] It’s a crisp, clear day

at Montana State University.

But inside this building, a winter storm is blowing!

[Ed] We built this lab

so we control the temperature of the sky,

the intensity of the solar radiation,

the humidity.

We’ll change one and see if it changes something over here.

Change this, what does it do?

[narrator] The sub-zero lab is a precisely controlled

cold research environment,

where researchers can reconstruct

one of nature’s deadliest weapons...

an avalanche!

The average over the last 10-15 years

is somewhere around 26 fatalities.

[explosion in distance]

[narrator] Ed Adams has been tracking

deadly slides in the US for over 30 years.

Trigger! Trigger, yes! [exults]

[narrator] In his younger, wilder days

he made headlines for putting his instruments,

and himself, right in the line of fire.

People thought we were a little crazier than we were.

[narrator] Today, he’s burying himself in the finer,

microscopic details of avalanche research.

[Ed] I kind of like to call the microstructure of snow

sort of a shape shifter.

It keeps changing its shape,

based on the environment that it’s subjected to.

[narrator] They may be tiny,

but if their shape and structure are just right,

a thin layer of snow crystals like this

can take down a whole mountain.

If you think about them as being holding the snow up,

with-- and these are little grains, they fall over,

this whole thing goes down and it just cascades

through the entire region and we bring down a whole slope.

[narrator] To investigate how crystals' shape

affects the strength of the snow mass,

the team is building a mini-avalanche inside the lab.

For the next 24 hours, they blast their snowpack

with a metal halide lamp, which mimics a bright sun.

They set a refrigerated ceiling to a frigid minus 50,

which simulates a cold, cloudless sky.

Beautiful conditions for a skier today, but tomorrow,

a potentially major avalanche hazard.

[narrator] Now, because snow is translucent, on a sunny day,

short-wave solar radiation penetrates into the snowpack,

which warms it up below.

But when there’s no cloud cover,

the long-wave radiation that bounces back

escapes from the environment, and it makes the surface cold.

And this large temperature difference

in the top few centimeters

causes what’s known as radiation recrystallization,

which changes the structure of the surface crystals

into long, slippery, skinny grains

that just don’t bond together.

That’s not a problem when it’s on the surface.

It becomes problematic

when we bury it with another layer.

That weak layer in between doesn’t allow this bottom layer

to adhere to the top layer.

That tends to be a very weak structure.

It doesn’t support it very well. Put it on a slope, it slides.

[narrator] The next day, the team is back.

[Ed] Ok, so we’re good to go.

[narrator] They place a hollow metal frame

onto their newly formed weak layer,

and fill it with a fresh load of snow.

This is to simulate

a hard-packed slab layer on the surface.

In a few hours, this new snow will be settled,

and the avalanche stage will be set.

[man] Alright, straight up.

[soft anticipatory music]

[narrator] Isolating a vertical column of snow,

the team uncovers the 3 buried layers.

A strong, thick base layer,

a pencil thin weak layer, and another strong slab on top.

A perfect avalanche layer cake.

The final step: tiny specks of black paint

are spattered onto the snow.

Then a special image-recognition system is put in place.

Monitoring how the specs move with respect to each other

the team can track exactly where and how the weak crystals fail.

[man] Tony, go ahead and start taking images on my mark.

Three, two, one, go!

[narrator] And then, at about 5 pounds of force,

the weak layer suddenly breaks.

Not much to see with the naked eye,

but in the last day and a half,

the crystals have lost 80% of their strength.

And the camera tells the whole story.

[man] And now you can see it's starting to show up.

And, what that’s signifying is how much the two planes

in that sample are sliding by each other.

We step it one more, and you can see,

we’ve had that catastrophic failure.

[narrator] Disrupting a layer cake of snow like this

on a steep mountain slide

would almost certainly create an avalanche.

[narrator] There are still lots of unanswered questions

in the understanding the specific weather patterns

that create certain snowpacks,

and knowing exactly what it takes to break them.

But thanks to this lab,

we’re getting closer than ever before.

The lab may be a long way

from being buried alive on a mountain slide,

but for this researcher, investigating the finer details

is now what life is all about.

Coming up on How Tech Works.

[narrator] We’ll meet a disabled man

with extremely “heightened expectations"

to fly the skies!

And... this spider reacts to human commands.

And good thing, ‘cause it’s a monster!

[upbeat electronic music]

Hello, and welcome back to How Tech Works,

I’m Basil Singer.

Now this next story features one of those people

we just love to meet.

He’s determined to prove that the seemingly impossible

is actually quite doable if you have the passion, drive,

and technological know-how.

Now, his name is Dan Buchanan,

and he wants to fly a hang glider, but

Dan has got a bigger challenge than the fear of heights,

because he’s disabled. Have a look at this.

[narrator] The California International Airshow

in Salinas: Acrobatic Stunt Flying,

fabulous formations, explosive recreations.

It's not the place you'd expect to see this...

Dan Buchanan will fly his hang glider

just about anywhere, and there's a good reason.

I have to fly because I can't walk!

Dan’s amazing performance

is done before thousands of airshow fans,

week after week...

He refused to be held back

by the accident that paralyzed him 30 years ago.

In fact, flying gives him a feeling of invincibility...

[Dan] You kind of feel like Superman!

There's nothing like this.

[narrator] Now, the only thing that can ground him

is the weather. Will the wind at today’s airshow be a problem?

[man] We have no idea what's going on!

[Dan] It sure is windy up here!

[narrator] His interest in flying goes back

to his very first time in the air, at the age of 18.

My first flight ever in an airplane

I skydived out of it.

So I never landed with the airplane.

I just took off and never landed!

[narrator] His love with hang gliding began.

There's nothing like this,

you're completely out in the open,

you're laying horizontal, head forward, like Superman.

[Dan] Below you is nothing except the ground,

however far away that is,

and the wing is above you so you really don't see it.

But it's all feeling, it's all subconscious

After a lot of hours, you don't even think about it,

you just do it.

[narrator] Just a short time into his hang gliding career,

though, on a stormy day, Dan’s life would change forever.

When I landed, ok.

Then the glider smacked me on the helmet so hard,

that it broke my back.

When I paralyzed my legs it was instantaneous,

I knew what I’d done to myself,

and what the road was going to be from that moment on,

nobody had to tell me.

[narrator] Something else nobody could tell him,

“You can’t fly anymore.”

No, I never thought about giving up flying!

I was just in a hurry to get back in the air. [laughs]

[narrator] And just six months later,

Dan was airborne once again, in a slightly modified glider.

[Dan] Laying in a hospital bed I had a lot of time

to think about how I was going to adapt the glider

so I can launch and land it.

So, it turned out to be incredibly simple, I just

put two wheels on,

that was the only modification I had to do.

[narrator] After a chance meeting

with some airshow promoters,

he was asked to fly in their event.

[Dan] I knew about these tow systems

for flatland launching of hang gliders.

A friend of mine had one,

we went out and practiced a bunch,

and performed in the show.

That was the first airshow I'd ever been to,

and here I am flying in it! [giggles]

[narrator] The tow system is a finely tuned machine.

A rope and pulley system with tension read-outs.

Ray Leonard doesn’t pull any punches

on his role in the process.

We call it Energy Management.

We provide the energy, and Dan manages it.

[Ray] This is the tow line that's attached

to the glider and the pilot.

We've got a pressure gauge

that monitors the pressure on this line.

At the very end, the glider releases,

from the tow line and he free-flies down.

[narrator] Time to suit up for today’s show!

Dan uses a regular hang glider harness,

with one alteration.

I just added this leather skid plate

to get more life out of it, because my legs

drag on the pavement.

[narrator] Once he’s ready, he’s hoisted up onto the glider.

[Ray] Getting the line hooked up to Dan's harness...

[narrator] They have backup safety systems in place,

and even backups for the backups.

For today’s show, Dan will launch himself

into the airspace of a stunt pilot’s acrobatics.

It’s all part of the act.

[Dan] Everything is extremely structured and timed

right to the 30 seconds window of when to go,

regardless of what's happening in the atmosphere.

[narrator] As they watch the stunt display,

Ray knows just went to get the truck up to speed.

[Ray] So we get going about 35 miles an hour,

and that’s our launch speed.

[Ray speaking loudly] Wait a minute now, hold it,

out on the runway...

air boss Gale Willy, what is happening?

[Ray] Ah listen, close line boy, with that tow truck,

you’re not supposed to be on Kirby's runway.

We have no idea what’s going on.

[narrator] The act starts as planned,

but the winds are just a little too strong for Dan.

[Dan] It sure is windy up here!

[wind howling]

Hell yeah! It's gonna get a lot windier

when Kirby comes up on you 6 o’clock position like...

Right about now.

[narrator] Unfortunately, Dan has to cut the act short,

and he lands after just two minutes of airtime.

But despite the short show, it’s a safe landing.

And that’s the key in making the decision to end it early.

Airshows are Dan’s life now,

and there’s always another one waiting.

[Dan] It's very stressful, it's a lot of anxiety.

But that's also some of the fun, too, making it all work.

Earlier in the show

we took a look at some very smart robots

that were capable of completing a number of difficult tasks.

They were also capable of, well, creeping us out a little bit.

Our last story continues in a similar vein.

For all you arachnophobes out there, I present...

“The Spider Puppet.”

Me? I’m not scared of spiders...

honest.

[narrator] Just when you thought you were safe,

your worst nightmare comes to life.

It’s bigger than you ever imagined...

and it’s loose on the street!

[dog barks]

[narrator] It's... it's... [suspenseful music]

It’s a giant Spider Puppet!

Oh come on, admit it!

It is pretty scary, even for the guy who created it.

[Tim] Actually, I’m quite scared of spiders.

I really don’t like them. I can’t even pick them up.

Little ones don’t bother me but anything bigger than that,

and I’m going to run away screaming.

[narrator] Whether you scream or giggle, Tim Davies is happy.

He just wants a reaction.

[Tim] There’s been quite a lot of really impressive puppets

made recently on a very grand scale.

So I wanted to make something that was big

but also had the ability to have kind of an emotional response

to people on the street.

[narrator] His inspiration were the incredible puppets

built for the stage production War Horse.

To get the same kind of emotional response

those puppets do, Tim knew

his spider would have to move just as realistically.

I wanted to make a big puppet that could move delicately.

[narrator] It’s taken more than a year to get there,

from conceptual drawing to working prototype.

[Tim] I built maybe 10, 15 different trial versions

of the legs to see what would work best

that's the hardest bit to get right in a way,

all the kinetics and the various weight balances

to make the legs work properly.

[narrator] Assuming the legs work properly together,

which is hard to predict.

After all, this is an inflatable puppet.

[Tim] One of the main problems is that you can’t see it

until it’s done, so basically you’ve got a huge heap of cloth

on the floor that looks like a pile of bin bags lying there,

and you’ve got to imagine how that’s going to be

when you actually blow it up, so you rely on your modeling

to make sure you’re going to get what you want.

[narrator] Tim first thought he could use compressed air

to make it move.

But after a long time of trialing that,

I realized it wouldn’t work, so I started

on a different technique which is working

with the cable-operated, cable actuated joints

that I’m using at the moment.

[narrator] The cables take care of leg movements.

But before this spider can walk, it has to stand.

And that’s not easy on eight spindly, air-filled legs.

[Tim] Inside the spider there’s sort of an aluminum skeleton,

adding some support to the legs, and there’s also glass fiber

that allows it to be very long and thin

whilst also being strong.

[narrator] Behind all great puppets

is a puppeteer.

[Tim] You want to have as close a connection

between your hand, which is doing the work,

and your body, and the object that you’re manipulating.

[narrator] And that’s why Tim’s created a cable system

that turns hand movements into spider movements.

All of these rear handles here control the lift of the leg,

and on the second handle here,

these handles control the curl of the legs.

So if you pull all the levers in sequence,

what you get is the whole spider lifting and curling its legs.

It’s really simple, it works a bit like a...

a finger tendon.

And then the rest of it is all just gravity,

so the leg’s falling back down to earth by gravity.

[narrator] A fan is used to inflate the spider

during the performance.

You can hear the fan running, that’s setting up air

straight up into the center of the spider’s body

and then the air is coming out and being delivered

via the center of the spider through all these tubes

into the ends of the legs.

[narrator] Tim’s spider is getting

even more of a reaction than he bargained for,

not just on the street, but online.

I’ve got 300,000 views of video,

I got e-mails from all over the world,

from different people who were interested in getting involved,

or offering me project possibilities,

or wanting to cover it in the media,

so that's been really brilliant.

[narrator] He’d like to make his spider easier to use.

Right now, it’s heavy to wear.

More plastic or aluminum would make it lighter.

And he wants to build a long-lasting battery pack.

After that, Tim has even bigger plans.

Working on large kinetic sculpture,

this kind of scale is a lifelong project.

You’re never going to get to say, “Oh great,

I’ve finished it, lovely, that’s the one I want.”

You’re always going to be developing and inventing

and re-engineering it, so...

I see it as an on-going project.

[narrator] Who knows? Someday there could be

a swarm of spiders coming to a street near you.

On second thought, one is quite enough!

Oh, would you look at that?

All the time we’ve got for today,

I’m Basil Singer,

and I’ll see you on the next one!

[ending music]