The Coming Robot Swarms

the information age is changing nearly everyaspect of life on earth. i have a computer in my pocket that weighsless than 200 grams, and i can use it for everything from learning about quantum mechanicsto watch cats be frightened by cucumbers. and last week, the white house hosted a summitto talk about a project to help information and technology do even more -- especially,to treat diseases. it’s called the precision medicine initiative,and about 40 organizations are splitting more than $200 million to help make it happen. so, what is precision medicine? it’s based on the idea that diseases workdifferently in different people, depending

on their genetics, environment, and lifestyle. for example, if we know that some genes affecthow diseases responds to treatment, then doctors can use that information to help pick theright treatment for a patient based on their genetic code. and doctors are already using this kind ofapproach -- cancer cells, for instance, usually have genetic mutations that allow them togrow and spread, and specific mutations can affect how the cancer will respond to certaintreatments. so doctors can test for those mutations. as genetic testing gets easier and cheaper,these tests are being done more often.

but there’s a ton more information thatwe could be getting out of genetic testing -- we just don’t know about it yet. this initiative is hoping to change that. the main thing researchers need is data -- theyneed access to the genomes of lots and lots of people, so that they can look for associationsbetween genetics, diseases, and treatments. so, some organizations involved in the initiativeare developing plans to collect as much genetic data as possible, with patients’ consent. by 2019, they’re aiming to have a databasewith the sequenced genomes of at least a million americans. and, hopefully, all of that new informationwill help researchers figure out which treatments

work best for which people, and maybe evendevelop some new ones. but, moving on, progress in the informationage isn’t without its casualties. sometimes, in order make things better andsmarter … you just have to mess with a robot. last week, robotics engineering firm bostondynamics posted a video of its newest humanoid atlas robot. and it was awesome, and also kind of sad. in the video, atlas does a lot of walking,slipping and sliding on uneven, snow-covered ground. they also show it moving around boxes -- butthen, a human uses a hockey stick to knock the box out of it’s hands, or to push itaway right as atlas is trying to pick it up.

then pushing it away from the box with thehockey stick... eventually, atlas gets attacked from behindand pushed onto its face, and has to get back up again. robotics engineers...you must know what it’slike for people to push you around. it’s not nice. but, by pushing atlas around, the researchteam is actually showing off capabilities that, for a robot, are a really big deal. atlas is designed to be used for things likesearch-and-rescue missions -- which often involve a lot of uneven terrain and unpredictableobstacles.

and, from the looks of it, improvements tothe robot are making it better and better at getting around in that sort of environment. for one thing, atlas used to have a tetherthat would provide it with power and communications -- and sometimes act as a safety line to stopit from falling over. this version -- as you can see from the video-- doesn’t. instead, it comes with a huge battery pack,uses wireless communication to get commands from its users, and relies on programmingand hardware to keep from falling over, all on its own. and that programming seems to be working!

even though it’s walking up and down a snowyhill, atlas manages to regain its balance before it falls. and when it eventually does get pushed over-- with what looks like a nice, strong shove -- the robot is able to get right back upagain. it also seems to be good at figuring out howto accomplish a task, even when circumstances change -- i.e., when someone’s being a jerkto it. that’s what’s happening when the box it’strying to pick up gets moved around -- this problem-solving is an important skill fora robot that might be, say, searching through rubble. those black-and-white patterns on the box,by the way, are basically qr codes, and the

robot uses them to track the box’s location. for example, it might know that one patternmeans “this is the top of the box,” and that to pick up the box, it needs to positionits arms in a certain way relative to that pattern. if the box -- and therefore the pattern -- moves,atlas can use its programming to figure out the particular way it needs to move to pickup the box. so, all that pushing and shoving means thatatlas is improving, and fast. i, for one, can’t wait to see atlas continueto improve. i just hope they give it, like, a nice fruit basket or something to apologize. thanks for watching this episode of scishownews, and thank you especially to sr foxley,

our patreon president of space who helps makethis show possible. if you want to help us keep making videos like this, you can go topatreon.com/scishowâ­. and don’t forget to go to youtube.com/scishow and subscribe!

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