Chimp, the Vaguely Humanoid Robot

[Host] You're looking at a living legend in robotics.

Well, more or less living.

Its name is Chimp.

Chimp doesn't look like you'd expect a humanoid robot to.

And that's for good reason.

Because your puny human form is imperfect

and will probably be obsolete soon.

(electronic scanning, beep)

Well, maybe humans aren't going anywhere.

But Chimp is a fascinating take on the humanoid form.

It was built to compete in DARPA's Robotics Challenge,

a course meant to prove how humanoid machines

might navigate a disaster situation.

The robot had to drive itself

to get to the remote site,

get out of the vehicle on its own,

which was one of the more challenging tasks

of any of them.

Crossover rubble,

open up a door to get into the facility,

climb stairs, cut a hole in a wall,

open a valve and disconnect power.

[Host] You might think that to best

navigate an environment built for humans,

you'd want a robot that looks exactly like a human.

But that turns out to be an incredibly

difficult thing to pull off.

Because walking on two legs is hard as hell.

(crowd exclaiming)

So instead, Chimp rolls on treads.

[Mike] We sought to design something that would be

more stable over rough terrain,

that could roll around instead of walking,

but then also be able to stand up and then

free its upper limbs to do manipulation.

We were telling everyone before,

oh this is a rolling robot,

we don't have to worry about dynamic stability,

it's never gonna fall.

Just watch us fly through this course.

And then of course, because of operator mistakes,

shortly after opening the door,

we shifted the center of gravity too far forward

and boom, fell right on its face.

[Host] If robots in this competition

were good at anything, it was falling down.

(bouncy classical music)

But that wasn't about to stop Chimp.

Chimp was actually the only one to get back up

on its own.

That of course would be an invaluable skill

in a real life rescue situation.

To be able to get the robot back up on its own

and keep going,

that became source of pride for us.

[Host] The other neat thing about Chimp

is its joints.

These are electric motors known as actuators.

You can see it standing here without any power.

All of these actuators have brakes on them.

Some of the humanoid robots,

especially the hydraulically powered ones

if they lose power, you see it just kind of

collapse into a heap.

[Host] Chimp also had to deal with navigating

a complex environment.

For that, it was equipped with a range of sensors.

Up on the head, we have most of our sensing,

we have the primary sensing

is a pair of laser scanners.

By spinning them around,

we're able to rotate that plane

and get a full 360 degree point cloud.

[Host] So this is how Chimp sees the world.

While a human operator can joystick it around,

the robot can do other tasks autonomously,

like turning a valve.

And for early days of humanoid robots,

Chimp's pretty good.

But manipulation remains a challenge.

After all, nothing beats the dexterity

of a human hand.

But the machines are getting better and better

at navigating our world.

And it's thanks in part to Chimp

and the other pioneering robots of the

DARPA Robotics Challenge.

Okay, maybe not this guy.

But, still.