YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Playter

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161
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2023-04-28
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2023-04-28
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  1. “And that was not something everybody was doing at that time. Now, the world's changing now, and I think the approaches to controlling robots are going to change, and they're going to become more broadly available. But at the time, there weren't many groups who could really sort of work at that principled level with both the software. and make the hardware work And I'll say one other thing about you were sort of talking about what are the special things. The other thing was it's good to break stuff, you know? Use the robots, break them, repair them, fix and repeat, test, fix and repeat. And that's also a core principle that has become part of the company.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “So I'd say in the early days, the thing that made Boston, the researchers at Boston Dynamics special is that we worked on understand figuring out what that central principle was and then building software or machines around that principle. And that was not easy in the early days. And it took real expertise in understanding the dynamics of motion. and feedback control principles, how to build with the computers at the time, how to build a feedback control algorithm that was simple enough that it could run in real time at a thousand hertz and actually get that machine to work.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Mark got some stuff to work starting from the simple ideas. So maybe the other important idea that has really become a value of the company is try to simplify a thing to the core essence. And while Mark was showing videos of animals running across the savannah or climbing mountains, what he started with was a pogo stick because he was trying to reduce the problem to something that was manageable and getting the pogo stick to balance had in it the fundamental problems that if we solve those, you could eventually extrapolate to something that galloped like a horse. And so look for those simplifying principles.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I think the most important lesson, which was have the courage of your convictions and do what you think is interesting. Be willing to try to find big problems to go after. And at the time, legged locomotion, especially in a dynamic machine, Nobody had solved it. And that felt like a multi-decade problem to go after. And so have the courage to go after that because you're interested. Don't worry if it's going to make money. That's been a theme. So that's really probably the most important lesson I think that I got from Mark.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “We see our attrition at the company is really low. People come and they love the pursuit. And I think part of that is that there's perhaps a natural connection to it. It's a little bit easier to connect when you have a robot that's moving around in the world and part of your goal is to make it move around in the world. You can identify with that. And this is one of the unique things about the kinds of robots we're building is this physical interaction lets you perhaps identify with it. So I think that is a source of happiness. I don't think it's unique to robotics. I think anybody also who is just pursuing something they love, it's easier to work hard at it and be good at it. And not everybody gets to find that. I do feel lucky in that way. And I think we're lucky as an organization that we've been able to build a business around this and that keeps people.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The memories, the distinctive lessons, I would say I learned in that time period and that I think Mark was a great teacher of was it's okay to pursue your interests, your curiosity, do something because you love it. You'll do it a lot better if you love it. That is a lasting lesson that I think we apply at the company still and really is a core value.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “It's definitely more efficient. It also becomes easier to control in its own way because the physics are solving some of the problem itself. It's not like you have to do all this calculation and overpower the physics. The physics naturally inherently want to do the right thing. There can even be feedback mechanisms, stabilizing mechanisms that occur simply by virtue of the physics of the body. And it's not all in the computer or not even all in your mind as a person. And there's something interesting in that melding.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Those natural physics with also intent, how do you then control that, but not overpower it? It's that coordination that I think creates real potential. We could call it beauty. You could call it, I don't know, synergy. People have different words for it, but I think that that was inherent from the beginning. That was clear to me that that's part of what Mark was trying to do. He asked me to do that in my research work. So that's where it got going.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “We had this concept in gymnastics of letting your body do what it wanted to do when you get really good at gymnastics. Part of what you're doing is putting your body into a position where the physics and the body's inertia and momentum will kind of push you in the right direction in a very natural and organic way. And the thing that Mark was doing in the basement of that laboratory was trying to figure out how to build machines to take advantage of those ideas. How do you build something so that the physics of the machine just kind of inherently wants to do what it wants to do? And he was building these springy pogo stick type. His first cut at legged locomotion was a pogo stick where it's bouncing and there's a spring mass system that's oscillating, has its own sort of natural frequency there and sort of figuring out how to augment.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Robots can do that, and because of my own interest in gymnastics, there was like this immediate connection. And, you know, I was interested in, I was in an aeroastro degree because, you know, flight and movement was all so fascinating to me. And then it turned out that, you know, robotics had this big challenge. How do you balance? How do you build a legged robot that can really get around? And that just was a fascination. And it still exists today. You're still working on perfecting motion in robots.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Love is relevant because I think Fascination, the deep fascination is really about movement. Was visiting MIT looking for a place to get a PhD and I wanted to do some laboratory work. And one of my professors in the aero department said, go see this guy Mark Raybert down in the basement of the AI lab. So I walked down there and saw him. He showed me his rob And he showed me this robot doing a somersault. And I just immediately went, whoa.”

    2023-04-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source