Original subtitles

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: We live in a built world;

engineering and technology,

built upon innovations and inventions,

stretching back thousands of years.

Some of our creations, like machines,

boost our bodies' abilities.

Others help us reach outside our comfort zones.

We have left an indelible mark on the planet

and now the time has come

to use our skills to make a better world.

Like turbo-charging the ancient sling.

JONATHAN YANEY: The idea is 50,000 years old.

NARRATOR: To launch satellites in a way

we've never done before.

A device that boosts our sense of touch

to share a dance.

PAUL GALANDO: I felt I was moving along with you.

PATRICK PARISEAU: Begin.

NARRATOR: Or aid in movement.

A machine to boost a human experience

and inspire a new generation.

Oh my gosh, so good.

NARRATOR: Or even recreating a sense...

Good to go.

NARRATOR: ...to replace something that was lost.

BRIAN BUSSARD: That was the first time in years

that I had a sensation of vision.

(whirring)

NARRATOR: "Building Stuff! Boost It!,"

right now on "NOVA."

♪ ♪

ANNOUNCER: Major funding for "NOVA" is provided by the following:

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Earth is home to more than eight billion people,

living in a world full of human invention.

ADAM STELTZNER: Certainly in our modern world,

we don't really appreciate

how saturated with engineering it is.

Every pen you pick up to write something with

has been engineered.

The paper on which you write

has been engineered.

♪ ♪

FRANCISCO VALERO-CUEVAS: Humans are engineers at heart.

You see a problem and then you identify a solution.

And we've been doing that forever.

NARRATOR: This thing we call engineering...

what is it?

Where does this impulse to make things come from?

♪ ♪

Anthropologists tell us that the roots of invention

reach deeper into our past than we ever imagined.

According to our best records,

some 3.3 million years ago

our ancestors figured out

how to sharpen a certain kind of rock.

Creating a tool for cutting,

much better than our teeth.

Boosting the chances for survival.

KENNETH HARRIS II: Humans dating

way, way back in time

have been inventing things that help efficiency.

They help their survival, that help drive them forward

based on the needs of that time.

MARIA YANG: It's an innate

desire to make things better

through making tools.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: And ever since,

one idea has led to another.

♪ ♪

And every invention around us today

can be traced back to those first tools...

♪ ♪

MAN: We have a cutoff off at T-minus 30 seconds.

NARRATOR: Since the 1950s,

rockets have been our go-to workhorse

for sending people and payloads into orbit.

(rocket engines roaring)

They are some of the most complex machines ever built;

the ultimate boost into the sky.

But they aren't exactly new.

Even modern rockets have historic roots,

going back in time.

Some ancient projectiles

were powered by chemical explosives

like gunpowder.

In 1232, Chinese soldiers repelled a Mongol army

using flaming arrows--

likely propelled by simple rockets.

♪ ♪

Today, rockets are far more powerful.

Able to send humans to the moon

and the International Space Station.

MAN: Solid rocket ignition.

NARRATOR: But rockets have limitations...

STELTZNER: Putting things in orbit is hard.

It takes a lot of energy.

Rockets are hard.

They take a lot of energy.

Basically the amount of fuel required

for rockets to reach,

you know, the outer reach of our atmosphere

is the limiting factor.

YANEY: Something like 92, 93% of the mass

of any rocket is, is fuel;

leaving about 5% or 6% for the actual structure

and only 2% for the payload.

HARRIS II: There is a

high demand... (chuckles)

...to put things into space,

but there are limited means

of getting it there.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: But that may soon change.

If engineers at a company called SpinLaunch

can make the dream imagined

in this promotional video a reality.

YANEY: SpinLaunch is a highly unique way to get to space.

The idea itself

goes back to caveman times.

It's a sling.

NARRATOR: A sling is an ancient hunter's weapon.

It's an improvement on the arm and shoulder's ability

to throw a stone.

Archeologists have found ancient evidence of slings;

some at least 12,000 years old.

For Jonathan Yaney, the sling is an inspiration.

YANEY: It rotates.

And at the end of a rotational element,

you have really, really high speed.

NARRATOR: So Jonathan embraced a radical idea:

use that speed to launch a spacecraft into orbit.

MABRY: A sling is something

you spin around,

and basically the more you can spin it,

the more force you can

basically put on the release

of whatever you're slinging out.

But if you scale this up,

that same principle has the ability

to launch a rocket into orbit.

That's incredible.

NARRATOR: That idea has been met with skepticism,

so the SpinLaunch team has much to prove.

DAVID WRENN: It is one of those ideas

that just sounds too crazy.

I think it's good to look at things,

from a place of skepticism, at the outset.

But then you have to be objective

about looking at, well,

what are the underlying physics

and what might really be possible?

NARRATOR: The SpinLaunch team is using electricity

to generate rotational speed,

faster than the speed of sound.

The proposed payload--

a satellite encased in a bullet-shaped shell--

must withstand up to 10,000 Gs, or 10,000 times

the force of Earth's gravity,

until it is released...

...at just the right moment.

Once the aeroshell gets around 40 miles up,

the casing would separate

to allow two small rocket engines

to propel the payload

the rest of the way to low Earth orbit.

MABRY: The arm itself that's actually spinning around

needs to be able to withstand it

to a certain degree as well.

So you have a need

to not only make sure that it is structurally sound,

but there needs to be precision in the timing

in the programming of that actual release point.

YANEY: I don't have any classical training as an engineer.

I self-educate.

I, I read a lot of books... (chuckles)

...lots of books, and then I read them again

because I didn't really understand them the first time.

I became an engineer along the way.

NARRATOR: The team's first goal

was to build a proof of concept

mass accelerator at one-eighth scale,

to validate the key technologies and use it as a test bed

to spin potential space-bound components

at many times the force of Earth's gravity.

Also known as, as g-forces.

And "g" represents one unit of Earth gravity.

When a pilot pulls up

on the yoke of their jet and they make a hard turn,

they'll feel the equivalent of multiple times' Earth gravity,

upwards of eight Gs, for example.

NARRATOR: But SpinLaunch payloads

will have to withstand forces

orders of magnitude stronger,

as many as 10,000 Gs.

So the team is working on building and testing components

that can survive such extreme acceleration.

STELTZNER: You know, in some ways, we humans are sort of timid.

We feel most comfortable with things

that look like things we're used to.

So you can't really tell at the outset

whether the thing that you're doing that's outlandish

is really going to work.

NARRATOR: Today, the SpinLaunch team

is asking a critical question:

Can a payload like a CubeSat survive 10,000 Gs?

So a CubeSat is this

miniaturization of satellites,

literally making them

into these little cube components.

So this ten centimeter by ten centimeter

by ten centimeter unit,

is one piece that can be

added on top of each other like LEGO blocks.

So we have some of the most critical subsystems

that you would see on any satellite.

We have a solar cell here.

it generates a current that charges this battery up.

And then the battery

stores that energy, right.

And distributes it to all of the critical subsystems

that require electricity.

So the OBC, or the onboard computer, is one of them.

This is the, the brains of the satellite.

NARRATOR: The team is confident the CubeSat as a whole will survive,

but so far they've only tested individual components,

and never the whole system.

CHACHRA: You know, it's a very,

very common strategy in engineering

to say we're going to break this problem

into small parts.

We're going to solve

each of the original parts,

and then we're going to put it back together again.

NARRATOR: The team aims to test

some of the components

that are typically found on CubeSats,

starting with the computer.

JUSTIN WILLIAMS: So this is saying effectively

its power rails are all working correctly.

It looks to be talking to the world just fine.

NARRATOR: So far, they know that the battery pack

is particularly vulnerable.

(machine whirring)

A pretest of the battery pack system

didn't make it out of the accelerator

in one piece.

(crunches)

SANDOMIRSKY: This gave us a great benchmark

when it hit 7,650 Gs,

that it was pretty darn close.

(machine whirring)

(crunches)

And we didn't have to do all that much

to make it compatible with our launch environment.

The batteries aren't designed for 10,000 Gs natively...

NARRATOR: The SpinLaunch engineering team had to figure out

how to make the batteries more resistant

to the high g forces.

WRENN: So this is the original.

SANDOMIRSKY: We saw these batteries

laying on top of each other.

The concern there is that

when you're on the bottom of the stack,

you're getting three batteries worth of mass squished on to

plus your own mass. Yup.

NARRATOR: This orientation of the battery cells

didn't work out so well in the spinner.

The g forces are going this way.

WRENN: And you can even see the bolts

are embedded and bent into the base here.

One of the things that we did was

turned it sideways. Yep.

Let each battery support itself

and itself only. Yeah.

SANDOMIRSKY: So we're going to fully populate this satellite

with all of the key subsystems that we're testing out here.

This is the pre-spin test of the solar cell 1.2 volts.

And then after we're done with the test,

we will check it out again

and make sure that it's still getting

a similar voltage reading.

This is going to be the first time

that this unit with everything in it--

the battery pack, the computer--

is spinning up to 10,000 Gs.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Reaching the acceleration

required for launch is itself

a difficult engineering problem. There we go.

NARRATOR: At those speeds,

friction just from the air would be intense.

So the inside of the accelerator

is actually a giant vacuum chamber.

YANEY: If you can pull all of the air out of it,

then there's no more air resistance

and consequently heat on the rotational structure.

(lock clicks) SANDOMIRSKY: There we go.

(lock clicks) Now we're going to go

let the, the vacuum chamber draw down the pressure.

And then we can spin up.

MARK SIPPERLEY: Accelerating system...

♪ ♪

(machine whirring)

(numbers clicking)

(whirring continues)

♪ ♪

(numbers clicking)

...9,000,

1.1...,

...95, 96,

97, 98.

10,000. 10,000 Gs. Coming down.

Time.

SANDOMIRSKY: Yeah! (laughs)

(applause)

♪ Come on, baby ♪

♪ ♪

♪ Let's go ♪

(tool clatters)

(echoing): Well, look at that.

I don't hear any rattles.

Looks like it's intact.

STELTZNER: The pressure one feels

when you're hoping for success

is mostly about

the incredible personal human

investment that's gone in

and not wanting to let down

all of your colleagues

when the moment of truth comes.

SANDOMIRSKY: Let's crack it open.

I'm going to test voltage on the solar cell.

Yeah. So 0.8.

That's in a reasonable range.

Okay, so now we will take out the computer.

Looks like it is intact.

It's still responding

when we send it messages,

so it looks pretty good.

I would say that that was a successful test.

Pretty cool.

Whoo!

(clapping) (laughs)

NARRATOR: SpinLaunch has done what engineers do--

♪ ♪

methodically design, test, evaluate--

(computer beeping) and repeat--

as they step their way up

to a system big enough

to send payloads into low Earth orbit.

♪ ♪

YANEY: We went to the desert of New Mexico

to build a flight test system, you know, at a large scale

that would allow us to essentially prove

that we had not only the technology validated,

we could test our own ability

to construct and to execute

on a system of this magnitude and scale.

(machine whirring)

NARRATOR: Launching at one-third scale

was a powerful milestone,

spinning the payload

to more than 1,000 miles per hour.

♪ ♪

YANEY: It was an emotional moment for the team.

(people cheering)

You have to have a little bit of faith

to bring something like this

to that level and to that, that scale.

(rockets bursting)

We've conducted ten successful back-to-back flight tests.

We haven't had a single failure,

and I think that's a testament

to the practicality of the technology.

SANDOMIRSKY: This will be, for the first time

since we've gone to space

as a species, that we'll be doing it differently.

NARRATOR: It's common for engineers

to build on an old technology,

transforming it with new materials,

to scale their way to innovation.

It's with a spinning arm

that's throwing satellites into space.

That's totally new.

How could that not be exciting?

♪ ♪

When you look at cutting edge technology today,

you can see that it's just being built upon

the things that we've already seen from the past.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Sometimes we boost technology

from the more recent past.

Consider something we take for granted

in everything from cell phones

to cars to video games.

(video game beeping, controller clicking))

It's called "haptics".

Vibrations and other physical sensations

that enable our technology to talk back to us

through our sense of touch.

(cymbals clinking)

NARRATOR: At Harvard, scientist and engineer Shriya Srinivasan

is thinking about those physical feedback loops

every time she performs an ancient dance.

SHRIYA SRINIVASAN: I've been dancing since I was very young.

The ideas around movement and sensory feedback

have been percolating in my brain

in for a long time.

(cymbals tapping)

When I dance, of course,

I'm intimately aware of my body and its movements.

What the audience feels, however,

may be limited by their conditioning

or what they can perceive visually.

♪ ♪

(voiceover): I am a biomedical engineer by training

and at some point I started to wonder,

can we use the receptors in our skin to communicate

the complexity of the rhythms

that are embedded within the choreography?

And would that enable the audience

to experience then the dance to a higher dimension?

NARRATOR: Shriya turned her curiosity into an engineering problem:

Could she share the rhythmic complexity of the choreography--

as she feels it in her body with the audience?

To find out,

she and her dance company co-founder, Joshua George,

are conducting trials at Harvard's Motion Capture Lab.

♪ ♪

KRITHIKA SWAMINATHAN: So we're going to grab this metatarsal point.

NARRATOR: The motion capture system reads and records

the position of the dots placed on Joshua,

in order to create a digital version of his movements

and understand the biomechanics of the dance. Great.

SRINIVASAN (voiceover): But more importantly, we're interested in capturing

what's not readily visible to the eye.

So muscle activation, for example,

or forces to the ground.

MAN: Now, can you flex your biceps?

NARRATOR: Audience members can see the movements,

but they can't feel the force of a step or a jump.

VALERO-CUEVAS: If you think about how humans interact,

we like shaking hands.

We like hugging.

So being able to tap into

that sense of touch,

or as it's sometimes called embodiment,

is a gateway into allowing you to be...

and experience something

that you're not immediately doing,

for example, it'd be great to feel how a dancer moves.

SRINIVASAN: So as you flex the bicep, you can see in yellow

the activation of that muscle.

SWAMINATHAN: We have these reflective markers that we put on someone.

We have them do a certain movement.

We take that information

and kind of convert that into

body movement quantitative data.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: What we think of as haptics embedded in technology

has roots in aviation.

As planes advanced,

pilots no longer felt mechanical vibrations in the controls

when the plane was about to stall.

So haptics were used to replace these vibrations

artificially, preserving the warning.

SETOR ZILEVU: Haptics is super critical

and very innovative in the design process

because it has the ability to really blend

the physical world with the digital world.

STELTZNER: In our analog world,

haptics were everywhere.

Things felt.

You pushed a button on your radio

and the button went sha-clank and you could feel it.

My brain is evolved

to sense whether that action

that I've taken with my finger

has resulted in a,

um, an actual an effect.

(computer beeping)

NARRATOR: Shriya's team is applying this concept to dance.

SRINIVASAN: Take a feel and see what you think.

NARRATOR: And the team is using modern technology to develop it.

ISABELLA GOMEZ-HJERTHEN: At the moment we're using

two different types of haptics on the phone.

(phone vibrating)

So we can set them at different intensities,

different sharpness.

We can also vary how long they are.

We're able to then assign

a haptic pattern or a vibration pattern

to that move and have it happen at that time,

during the song or during the performance.

NARRATOR: They are under pressure to work out the kinks--

they're giving a performance the next day

and they hope to work with the audience to test the system.

SWAMINATHAN: Okay. Yeah, I think we're set for Friday.

NARRATOR: Besides enhanced dance performances,

Shriya's lab is also using haptics to do research

to help medical patients with muscle spasticity

move more smoothly.

They're asking if vibration feedback

can reduce the symptoms of spasticity;

a condition that causes muscles to stiffen,

making them difficult to move--

often as result of spinal cord injury

or traumatic brain injury,

A.L.S., multiple sclerosis, or cerebral palsy.

Patrick Pariseau,

a PhD candidate,

is one of Shriya's students.

PARISEAU: With spasticity,

it feels like someone

is holding your limb in place.

Any time you want to move,

you have to struggle against yourself.

NARRATOR: In the Motion Capture Lab,

Shriya is working on a potential solution.

SRINIVASAN (voiceover): The nervous system is kind of like an orchestra.

And conducting it is the brain,

sending signals but also receiving feedback

about which parts are playing what.

And having them work together

is the key to executing movement

and moving seamlessly in the world.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: In typical arm motion,

the bicep contracts to bend the arm at the elbow

while the tricep relaxes,

and the tricep contracts to straighten the arm

while the bicep relaxes.

(electronic buzzing)

The device that they're building

is designed to pick up activation of one muscle

and then mechanically tell the opposite muscle to relax.

♪ ♪

SRINIVASAN: In a patient with spasticity, for example,

there's co-contraction, so as your bicep contracts,

your tricep is also contracting

and that causes that movement to be rigid.

PARISEAU: So we're targeting the biceps and triceps.

Let me know if it's too tight.

DARAIO: Biomedical engineering, requires

a fundamental understanding not only of

the basic engineering principles

like mechanics, electronics and...

uh, computer science,

but also of the fundamental properties

of the biology of the human body.

NARRATOR: Step one: put the prototype system

on student volunteer Anni

and use it to collect data

with a simple reflex test.

We've attached E.M.G. sensors.

So E.M.G. is electromyography.

We're going to record the activation of her muscles

and then display it on this laptop.

(device beeping, hammer tapping in rhythm)

Yeah, I think that was...

...that, that was. Oh, yeah.

PARISEAU: Yeah? That was a strong one.

NARRATOR: Step two:

measure the amount

of muscle activation when the device vibrates,

to see if the activation goes down.

PARISEAU: So now we are going to turn on the vibration.

SRINIVASAN: Here what we're looking at is

can we apply vibratory stimuli

at just the right time and at the right amount

and the right parameters to relax the relevant muscles

to allow for more free movement.

(device beeping, hammer tapping in rhythm)

Yeah, I think that's... All right.

So now it should be stimulating on the bicep.

Can you feel it on your bicep? Yes.

(device beeping, hammer tapping in rhythm)

Yup. Yep. Right there?

All right. Great.

NARRATOR: The next step?

Preliminary analysis of the motions.

The hope is that vibration reduces

unwanted muscle activation

so they can use vibrations in their device

to relax the targeted muscles.

If they can demonstrate that,

then eventually they plan to build a device

that will detect activation in one muscle

and determine which other muscle to deactivate.

(electronic buzzing)

PARISEAU: Begin.

NARRATOR: Boosting flexibility

and restoring motion.

Two, three, four, five.

NARRATOR: In today's test... Relax.

NARRATOR: ...the device is giving them encouraging data.

Confirming vibration as an effective strategy

for relaxing specific muscles brings them one step closer

to developing a therapeutic device for spasticity.

PARISEAU: The feeling that we were able to,

What appears to be successfully,

relax those muscles with vibration

was a very good feeling,

because it means that we're one step closer

to help people with spasticity move more easily.

NARRATOR: From one test to another.

Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to Decoded Rhythms.

The human nervous system...

NARRATOR: The first opportunity for Shriya and her dance company

to add a layer to the performance

through haptic feedback.

Sensation is the gateway to the human experience.

NARRATOR: Audience members download an app,

and as they watch and listen,

they'll feel synchronized vibrations.

♪ ♪

SWAMINATHAN: We're hoping that the audience

can be more in tune with the performance

by giving them this sort of understanding,

haptically, what the dancers are doing.

♪ ♪

(music ends)

(audience applauding)

SRINIVASAN: I thought it was a good work in progress demo.

Most of the technology aspects worked well.

Everything synced,

and it was exciting to just see initial--

people's initial reactions to it.

I love this. Um, I'm an ex ballet dancer.

There's something about having this motion and movement

in my hand, but I felt I was moving along with you,

and that was really cool.

(audience applauding)

NARRATOR: Combining two worlds,

each adding a bit to the other.

SRINIVASAN: I would say that the data

that we're gathering from the dance work,

the biomechanics,

the ability to classify movements

to interpret intent,

all of those higher level insights

will guide us in the development

of patterns for patients with spasticity.

Two, three, four, five.

Relax.

NARRATOR: We all have physical limits.

But tools of all kinds help us

go beyond what our bodies can do on their own.

Simple machines,

like levers and pulleys and screws,

boost our strength.

But we also make tools just for fun.

Every invention starts with an idea.

TAHIRA REID SMITH: We're trying to see

how much play there is...

NARRATOR: For Tahira Reid Smith,

her idea comes from a childhood passion:

Double Dutch.

GIRL: One two, three, four,

five, six, seven, eight...

REID SMITH: Growing up in Bronx, New York,

in the 1980s,

Double Dutch was just what you did as a little girl.

NARRATOR: This double rope version of jump rope

was brought to New York by Dutch settlers

in the 17th century.

(kids chanting)

More recently,

it became popular, particularly among Black girls,

in cities across the U.S.

There are even fiercely competitive

national competitions, and in some high schools,

it's recognized as a varsity sport.

♪ ♪

To play,

Double Dutch requires two people

spinning ropes in opposite directions

and at least one person to jump.

Tahira dreamed of a machine that would allow her,

an only child at the time,

to play Double Dutch whenever she wanted.

In third grade, she won a contest for that concept.

And in the years that followed,

she never gave up on that dream.

REID SMITH: Major passion project.

Talking about an idea that I've had for decades.

NARRATOR: Today, she's a mechanical engineer and professor,

working in human-machine systems.

And she's building to her ultimate dream:

to create an affordable version of her invention

that people everywhere could enjoy.

Meanwhile, another engineer,

Sky Leilani, is working on

her own Double Dutch prototype.

Sky works at a robotics software company.

SKY LEILANI: When I was in college,

I found Dr. Reid's Double Dutch machine,

at a point where I was feeling like I couldn't

get where I wanted to go. I was just surrounded by

a lot of people who didn't look like me.

I saw she was from the Bronx,

which is kind of similar to where I'm from,

and that really inspired me.

Problems that matter,

that are informed by culture, then informed by background,

can stimulate the desire to get into engineering,

to desire to go about this process of creating something

that didn't previously exist.

The problems in which we decide are important enough to solve

are influenced by someone's background

and someone's culture.

NARRATOR: Tahira has come to Viam Robotics in New York City

to collaborate with Sky.

Hi! Oh my gosh, hi!

NARRATOR: Bringing along her goddaughter, Sa'nai,

part of the latest generation

interested in engineering Double Dutch.

REID SMITH: When I first learned about Sky,

it really touched me deeply, because

I didn't know that people were watching me from afar.

When I was looking at your designs, I was just like, "Wow."

REID SMITH (voiceover): I was very encouraged by it, I was also impressed by

her passion and her excitement.

NARRATOR: Sky isn't a mechanical engineer like Tahira is.

She's iterated on Tahira's design,

adding computer-controlled motors

and a software interface to control the two ropes.

DARAIO: What are the traits of an engineer?

I think I think it's hard to generalize.

I feel like there's,

there's many different kinds of engineering.

There's many different kinds of skills required

in the different types of engineering.

REID SMITH: She's modernized it,

writing code to control it.

There's vision for even an app,

and doing everything largely through

computer software and electronics.

Very little mechanical engineering.

NARRATOR: As Sky describes her approach,

Tahira sees that Sky is running into

a familiar problem:

synchronizing the ropes.

♪ ♪

The ropes need to extend in a high arc,

turning in opposite directions

and staying 180 degrees out of phase with each other--

in other words, when one rope is on the ground,

the other should be directly overhead.

As they rotate,

they need to maintain a regular rhythm

to truly create Double Dutch.

It looks easy when a person does it,

but as Tahira and Sky know firsthand,

it's anything but simple to engineer.

That was wrong.

(clattering)

REID SMITH: The motor is always

the most challenging aspect. LEILANI: Mm-hmm.

REID SMITH: And that is how it was with us.

With Double Dutch, the biomechanics

that people use to get it to--

it looks so seamless. Yeah.

But trying to recreate that in a robot? Yes.

You realize...

VALERO-CUEVAS: We have to ask ourselves

how does the biology do it with materials and

information processing units

that no engineer would dream of using?

How is it that we can move both ropes so well

at the same time, but a robot can't?

So then the question is, what do we need to do

to replicate that?

Look to your left.

That's so cool.

NARRATOR: Sky has chosen motors

that are powerful enough to swing the ropes,

with an added feature.

LEILANI: The motor for the Double Dutch machine

is from a hoverboard.

They're DC motors with encoders in them,

so they can track the position.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The encoder setup uses magnetic poles

mounted on the motor's shaft.

A nearby sensor detects the changes in magnetic field

as the motor spins,

tracking the motor's rotational position and speed

with precision.

That information can then be sent to a computer,

to adjust the spin in real time.

At least, in theory.

REID SMITH: A and C we're running right now.

LEILANI: Not B. B isn't running, see?

NARRATOR: For now, only three of Sky's four motors are spinning.

REID SMITH: If these are two people's arms,

it's just that--

it's like you step to the right... Okay.

NARRATOR: They decide to align two working motors

so they can work with one spinning rope for now.

Let's just turn it on, let's just see.

♪ ♪

Yeah, this is slow enough

where I could actually just walk into it.

(excited squeal)

NARRATOR: It's an impressive milestone:

the two arms turning the rope are perfectly in sync.

(laughs)

Oh, it's...

Okay.

Yay! (both clapping)

Oh my gosh, so good.

I haven't seen anybody use it

or anything, this-- (exclaims)

Let's see...

It's really important, especially in sort of

engineering projects where there's a consumer,

to sort of take prototypes

and actually test them with your end users

to see what their feedback is.

LEILANI: That's what I love so much

about this project, is Double Dutch is collaborative

and then robotics as an entire field,

it combines three types of engineering: mechanical,

electrical, and software engineering.

NARRATOR: After making some tweaks to the code,

they decide to try

a true Double Dutch jump.

REID SMITH: You want to hear a pat-pat, pat-pat, pat-pat...

Okay, can you take it over for me? Okay.

NARRATOR: With two of the working motors,

Tahira guides Sky to be a stand-in turner.

Just snatch it from me. Okay, okay.

(laughs)

I'm gonna just try it with a little bit...

(jumping echoing)

NARRATOR: With Sky's assistance,

the motors are leading the way.

(jump rope clattering)

And they're working like a charm.

Oh, that's so satisfying!

Oh my gosh. (breathless): Okay.

Thank you so much, Dr. Reid. You are so welcome.

This is... amazing. This was fun.

LEILANI: Working with Dr. Reid today

was incredible.

It was actually a dream for me.

I felt like, if I continue with this project,

I'm gonna get there,

and then I'm going to see myself as a different person

who's capable of more than I used to think I was.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, after decades,

Tahira is finally taking her own Double Dutch design

to the next level.

♪ ♪

And when we've done small tests...

NARRATOR: She's partnering with a product design company,

to turn her prototype

into an affordable, consumer-ready version.

Historically what has been difficult has been

how to design the system in such a way

that it's fully functional and also cost effective.

NARRATOR: Which is why she still thinks

that the most practical approach is to use

only mechanical means to synchronize the motors.

Tahira and director of industrial design,

Steve Escobar, are deep in the proof-of-concept stage.

♪ ♪

For now, they're working with a rudimentary plywood model

to answer a few basic design questions.

ARMANI: Once you have an idea,

how are you going to actually

execute the idea?

How are you going to design

the idea so that people

will actually want to use it?

How are you going to make it accessible?

Both from a cost perspective, but also...

from a user interface perspective.

NARRATOR: This first iteration of the design

uses just one motor on each side,

plus some good old-fashioned mechanical hardware,

like gears, sprockets, and chains.

(creaking)

Already,

they're facing a few familiar challenges.

Looks like it's in sync, actually.

NARRATOR: Including getting the ropes in sync.

It's starting to go out of sync.

Okay.

NARRATOR: With years of Double Dutch experience,

Tahira knows exactly what the ropes should sound like.

REID SMITH: We need to be able to hear

a consistent pat-pat, pat-pat.

But we're hearing...

(slow, uneven clapping)

It's very rhythmic.

That's why when stuff's out of beat,

it's like-- it's like the whole--

it's-it's, it's just wrong.

If anything slips,

it would be a tooth.

NARRATOR: Using gears is a common sense way

to keep the rotation of the ropes in sync.

But something is wrong.

REID SMITH: We think the weight of the rope

was throwing this off.

ESCOBAR: When it's in motion,

it's actually creating too much force

for these arms.

REID SMITH: Let's take some of these off

and let's see what happens.

Let's see, let me just listen for it.

(ropes patting ground rhythmically)

MICHAEL SPRAUVE: So how's it going?

Yeah, it's coming along.

NARRATOR: Michael Sprauve, president of Speck Design,

stops in to see how things are progressing.

Where are we at, guys?

NARRATOR: As a team, they talk about the day's testing,

and how to improve the design.

REID SMITH: There's a lot to think about

with some of the play that's still in the arms.

Your visit with Sky was very inspirational to us,

and that was switching from a single motor with gears

to two motors at each end.

When you shared that with us,

it really kind of turned a light bulb on.

It's extremely important to have

to have different people who can see things

from a different angle,

because each one of us have our own blind spots.

NARRATOR: Tahira's initial designs

were rooted in her experience with mechanisms.

But collaborating with Sky has expanded the possibilities

for realizing the machine.

The best moments of ideation

are, in my experience, collaborative.

And they involve ideas bouncing off one another,

being folded over, the negative of that idea

being turned in into the positive of this other idea.

NARRATOR: Working together across different fields,

what engineers call interdisciplinary collaboration,

can be a powerful multiplier.

Though a lot more troubleshooting remains,

Tahira's project is finally coming to life

after decades of work.

REID SMITH: Semi-surreal.

Exciting... (clapping)

It's a lot.

It's... heartwarming, it's...

(wavering sigh)

(whispering): I'm just glad.

(sniffles)

There's a message

behind this product

when it gets on the market,

there's a story to inspire young girls,

young inventors, young minds, dreamers.

NARRATOR: Tahira dreamt of a machine

that could recreate the motions of another person's arms.

But what happens when engineers take aim

at a biological system

that is far more complex-- like vision?

Restoring the ability to see with an idea

that once seemed like science fiction.

(indistinct radio chatter)

PHILIP TROYK: "The Six Million Dollar Man."

I have to say, if there was any inspiration,

that, that show was.

PILOT: I can't hold it, she's breaking up...

(booming)

MAN: We can rebuild him.

We have the technology.

TROYK: When I was an undergraduate,

I became interested in how

electronics could be mated with the human body.

NARRATOR: For more than 20 years,

Phil Troyk and his interdisciplinary research group

have been pioneering a technology

designed to restore some vision

to those who have lost the ability to see.

We've been using prosthetics to restore our bodies' abilities

for thousands of years.

VALERO-CUEVAS: One of the most useful prosthetics

has been the very humble glasses, right?

So you have a sense,

you have a sense of sight,

but then there's a distortion in the curvature of your eye,

so then you use a lens to compensate for that.

NARRATOR: But this new device

takes visual prosthetics to the next level.

The idea is to take the information you capture

from a camera and bypass the eyes and optic nerve

and go directly to the brain.

VALERO-CUEVAS: The state of neuro engineering is at its infancy

with very, very promising avenues for growth.

One that has been for a very long time a dream of engineers

is to be able to interface with the nervous system.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Phil's group is the first to receive FDA permission

to implant into the brain of a blind person

a network of wireless stimulators,

each just five millimeters across.

PHIL TROYK: You see the electrodes sticking out there.

Even if they meet the criteria--

the visual, the medical criteria--

they have to be willing to embark on brain surgery.

It's hard to find someone that fits into

all of that criteria.

NARRATOR: The team has qualified their first participant--

Brian Bussard, who lost his vision completely

several years ago.

Does the headband match my shoes?

WOMAN: It does, actually.

(laughing): I was kidding.

NARRATOR: Brian agreed to have

a group of these stimulators

surgically implanted in his visual cortex.

When you're considering designing something

that will be implanted in a person,

One of the safety checks

is making sure that whatever that thing is,

it doesn't actually harm a person.

And how did you sleep last night,

on a scale of one to ten? Seven.

NARRATOR: For the trial,

he is referred to as the participant,

not the patient, as his collaboration

with the entire team is essential.

BUSSARD: I was going to be the first one.

In my lifetime,

I get to be the first of something that

could change people's lives later on. You know,

like, who was the first person to walk on the moon?

NEIL ARMSTRONG: It's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

ARMANI: Artificial vision has

really been enabled by advances in imaging technology.

The development of incredibly tiny detectors

and incredibly tiny

communication-signaling transmitters

have enabled these implantable devices.

NARRATOR: The implants in Brian's brain

are receivers for signals, that in turn,

stimulate the brain.

The coil transmits signals

that they hope the brain will interpret

as visual information.

MICHAEL BARRY: Each of those 25 arrays has

16 electrodes that we can stimulate on command.

And the goal is to use those electrodes to

activate the healthy neurons that are still there,

and just haven't been receiving normal visual input for a while.

(pinging)

BUSSARD: What do I see?

Probably the closest thing I would say,

is if you had blips on a radar screen.

NARRATOR: The process requires creating

a new kind of visual language.

DAGNELIE: Imagine getting these

funny flashing lights

from either a retinal or a cortical prostheses

that don't look anything like what vision used to be.

And then your brain is beginning to discover

there's a message to the madness.

There are some patterning here,

and if I can try to find out how things hang together,

then I can learn to understand what's around me.

VALERO-CUEVAS: People used to think,

well, we need to recreate

the signals from the eyes

into that same neural code.

But we've seen examples where if you establish a,

an interface with those areas,

and you give them a consistent input,

the brain will adapt

and interpret those as best as it can.

NARRATOR: As Brian continues to adapt, the work has progressed

from the chair to a smaller, cart-sized version

of the system, connected by a cord,

with researcher Michael Barry

pushing the cart and following behind.

TROYK: So we're putting on the visible light glasses.

(voiceover): The basic idea is to capture images

with a camera technologically,

somehow convert those images

to the commands that go to each of these little modules.

BARRY: Stand up slowly, but to your left.

BUSSARD: The first real exciting thing for me was

when we added a camera to it.

I went like this with my hand,

and then I went like, "oh, there's my thumb."

So that was the first time in probably six years

that I had a sensation of vision.

That was exciting.

It gave me a system.

GRANT: So what we're going to work on today

is a task of finding an open chair.

Can you identify which chair is open?

(clacking)

Right there.

Great job. BARRY: Yeah, good job.

TROYK: What we're providing is

really a targeting system.

It says for whatever the camera is detecting,

"Is something there?"

It says where something is, but you don't know what it is.

Let me find the cart. (laughs)

That way we don't pull the cords.

Hey, so do you want to try something infrared?

NARRATOR: The team decides to expand the testing to include

a camera that can see wavelengths of light

beyond what humans can see.

BARRY: So now we have the thermal sensor.

ARMANI: Why should you limit

your wavelengths to the visible range?

Why not allow someone to see in the thermal range?

NARRATOR: With his limited vision,

infrared allows Brian to distinguish people--

and animals-- by their body heat.

GRANT: For this task,

you'll find there's one occupied chair.

Well, there's Grace right there.

Hi, Grace, nice to meet you.

(chuckling)

(voiceover): But you still have the big donut

in the back of your head, you still have

the wires for the camera.

If you walk too fast, well, we can pull the coil.

You lose signal and you got to stop and reset.

YANG: There are a lot of technologies that

work beautifully in a lab, right?

Where you have a lot of space, it's dedicated,

and everything works well.

But the reality is people move, they have their lives,

they want to live the way they want to live and be mobile.

Nice to meet you.

NARRATOR: With the basic technology working,

the team has been building a system

that condenses an entire cart of equipment

into a wearable device,

so Brian can go mobile.

The camera records images that are translated by

a mini computer into signals his brain can understand.

These are then sent through a transmitter

and beamed into Brian's implants,

reaching his visual cortex.

TROYK: Okay, so I'm going to put this on your belt, okay?

You should be good to go. We're good to go.

TROYK: You're freed up.

Trish was right there, she moved.

(laughs) Now she's right there.

I'm just gonna tell you, you can walk to me.

I was gonna say, she's right there. Yeah, I'm right here.

Okay, so, I'm guessing this is tables over here?

Or somebody or something.

TRACY BUSSARD: So, as soon as he didn't have that starting and stopping

of trying to keep the cart right behind him...

Yeah, he just decided to just walk

around the room and see what all was here.

(clicking)

I'm free!

Becoming untethered was a big step.

It gave me the flexibility

to move and try and figure it out quicker,

or on my own.

Okay, there's something here.

(clacking) Is this another table?

BARRY: So now we have the thermal sensor.

(beeping)

There's somebody right there.

You found me. Yay!

NARRATOR: Watching Brian see his wife-- without his eyes--

is a powerful validation of all their hard work.

The moment today when he had on the mobile unit

and he walked to his wife and saw her,

I just thought that was really a special moment.

She didn't make a sound,

but you went to her, you found her in the room.

YANG: You think, "Oh my gosh, this man has lost his vision,

"and now he can see something with the help of

this engineering system strapped to him."

All of these things have come together.

All that iteration and testing and protocols.

It's pretty amazing.

TROYK: This person is volunteering themselves,

they're putting themselves at risk.

They're doing so not because they expect to get vision back,

it's for advancement of knowledge.

It's for what we learn now

will make possible what will become

standard of care 100 years from now.

There's somebody right there.

(voiceover): Just from a human standpoint,

I think we should be wired that we want to

leave the world a better place

than it was when we got here.

NARRATOR: The following day, the team gathers

to review their progress with the mobile system.

TROYK: Did it accomplish the goal

of making you feel more autonomous and liberated?

Well, full disclosure,

if it would've been nice out yesterday,

it would've been "Oops, I made a left-hand turn

to go out the door." (laughter)

Now it's okay.

Well, what do we prioritize next?

Probably the next...

step would be is if we can combine

either the two cameras into one,

or even adding the second visual camera

so we can get depth into it.

From an engineering perspective,

engineering is not just a technology

stemming from math and science.

And the question we're asking is:

how can an artificial interface like this

be used to provide useful sensory information

for someone who has blindness?

We do have now the interface,

albeit in somewhat simpler form than some would like.

But we do have the interface,

and we are now answering the questions.

YANG: It's such a high risk,

high payoff engineering challenge.

Giving vision to someone who's visually impaired

is just such a holy grail engineering strategy,

and they've done it.

Our aspirations are high,

and we only get there by

making step-by-step incremental progress.

(panting) There he is, hey, buddy.

I think we're proud of the fact

that maybe we got there first.

BUSSARD: Good boy.

TROYK: I think we're done.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: We're here today,

with the world around us as it is,

because we are hard-wired to invent...

design,

and build tools.

As we continue to boost our abilities with technology,

it's anyone's guess what we'll create

in the future.

STELTZNER: When we go to create something new,

we're stepping into the unknown.

NARRATOR: With creativity and collaboration,

we can solve even the most difficult problems.

ARMANI: Science fiction has always

inspired the world.

And it is the job of engineers

to convert that inspiration into innovation

and invent the solutions. (machine beeps)

NARRATOR: Building stuff,

to benefit all.

♪ ♪

(blasting off)

♪ ♪

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