Robots Searching for Life on Saturn’s Moon with Matt Travers

Could we use robots to explore the oceans of Enceladus? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Harrison Greenbaum dive deep into the EELS Project, sending a snake-like robot to Enceladus with Matthew Travers, a roboticist at the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Harrison, we had a roboticist in my office from the Carnegie Robotics Lab. This is institute, it was an institute.

• 0:07Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, they might replay this video when the robots take over and go, they could have stopped them then.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this, this, uh. That was the key point in.

• 0:17Harrison Greenbaum?

  This was a part of the timeline where things went dark.

• 0:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Timeline of civilization. Yeah, both exciting and terrifying, what can happen in a robotics lab.

• 0:26Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah.

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what we're trying to do is put robotics in the service of exploration of space. And that's most of what that conversation was about.

• 0:35Harrison Greenbaum?

  There could be life on Saturn.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, we'll keep looking. All right, coming up on StarTalk.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I've got with me as my comedic co-host Harrison Greenbaum. Harrison, welcome back.

• 1:05Harrison Greenbaum?

  Thank you. It's so nice to be back.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were last here BC, before COVID.

• 1:09Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yes, before the pandemic, absolutely.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, like four or five years ago, just welcome back.

• 1:15Harrison Greenbaum?

  Thank you.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you've been busy since you had a stint in Vegas?

• 1:18Harrison Greenbaum?

  I was in the hot, hot desert.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, so you've been getting around. It was like a residency in Vegas, right?

• 1:24Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah, I was the first comedian to headline Cirque du Soleil show and probably the last. I think, I think they realized they're maybe not prepared for a clown with opinions.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have to swing from the rafters?

• 1:36Harrison Greenbaum?

  I aggressively campaigned for my, my first entrance was through a lift in the floor, which is very cool. They give you like a safety training because they don't want you to get hurt in the lift.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course.

• 1:46Harrison Greenbaum?

  Um, and this is a true thing. The two main companies that make it are Otis and Schindler's. So I was like, let's not have a Jew killed by Schindler's lift. I don't want to be a part of that obituary. But for my second entrance in the show, I really wanted to come in Miley Cyrus style on a on a giant bagel. And I campaigned real hard for it and I never, that's a dream unrealized.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Still to come, still to come.

• 2:09Harrison Greenbaum?

  Exactly.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, excellent. So you know what we're gonna talk about today? We're gonna talk about robotics.

• 2:14Harrison Greenbaum?

  Love it.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody doesn't love robotics. So, we combed the land. Yes, we did. And we found Matthew Travers. Matthew, welcome to StarTalk.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you came in all the way from Pittsburgh?

• 2:28Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be the home of Carnegie Mellon.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  That is absolutely correct.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they have one of the greatest robotics labs around.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. The home of the robotics institute.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's not just a lab, institutes.

• 2:40Harrison Greenbaum?

  The institute. And then the next level is what, society?

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, institute, that's a good fundraising level for the title of what it is. So you would call yourself a roboticist?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that correct? Okay. And I've got you here, senior systems scientist.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carnegie Mellon.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  I'm doing well for myself.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Robotics lab, bi robotics lab, that sounds a little scary. And Mat Lab. What is Mat Lab?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  The Mat Lab is my lab, lack of a better description.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Mat Lab, Matthew Travers Lab.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, no. No, I will not allow.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Same for the scientists out there.

• 3:21Harrison Greenbaum?

  I don't mean to brag, but we're currently in the Neo Institute.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  There's another Mat Lab, not to be confused with the Mat Lab.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I can't believe you went there. Okay. Gosh. But anyhow, we want to just get all into your stuff.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Please.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Matt, tell us, what do you think when someone says robot compared to what your average person on the street thinks? Because you know. Robot, it's gotta be, it's gotta have two arms, a head and legs and and not, and not sound exactly human, right? It's gotta have a robot.

• 3:53Harrison Greenbaum?

  C3PO.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, for example, there's a gap there. Is one of your goals to close that gap between imagined robots and reality, or you just don't care? You'll make robots serve whatever the needs are of those who come knocking on your door?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's an interesting question. So, I mean, I think it's probably philosophical more than anything else.

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, bring it on.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  What's a robot? Um, right? Like a coffee maker could be a robot.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would call it a robot. It does a task that you wouldn't otherwise do or wanna do or

• 4:21Speaker 02

  I would say it's

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  care about?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's arguably one of the most, by that definition, one of the most reliable robots at the Robotics Institute, without any question. Works day in, works day out, you know, provides a service. But, yeah, I mean, it's a daily activity, right? We work on robots of all different shapes and forms. Um, and it's everything from, you know, sort of more mechanical systems like you're talking about, things that are biomorphic, things that, you know, look like humans, look like dogs, look like snakes, you know, all the way down to us, uh, what we consider, you know, uh, more on the intelligence side.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, what have you been working on lately?

• 4:55Speaker 02

  A bunch of different things. Uh, so big program, uh, with NASA, I think we'll talk a little bit about.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Uh, I've been working in recycling robots, uh, for quite some time, uh, and I've been doing a bunch of work.

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 5:08Harrison Greenbaum?

  Robots that recycle? Or recycling current robots?

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how many people are done with their robots that you wanna recycle?

• 5:16Harrison Greenbaum?

  Well, that coffee maker's been rebuilt so many times, it just wants sand.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, say, oh, so these would be robots that know how to sort, uh, recycling materials?

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's a mechanical thing with some AI built in, right?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  That's absolutely

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's gotta be a whole AI dimension of what you're doing?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Yes. There's a lot of interest in the robotics community and AI, um, right now, um, sort of like overnight.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So let's unpack this a bit. Obviously, the coffee maker is not making decisions for you.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Whoa. It's grinding the beans, right?

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, but you told it to grind the beans.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not otherwise. It's doing tasks for you, but it's not deciding for you. It's not looking at you, get out of bed and say, we need a triple espresso this morning. If you pop up wide-eyed and then it gives you a single espresso.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where is the frontier now? Because

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It seems to me, we're capable of building anything mechanical. Mechanical is just some engineers in a room for a day. It's this decision-making that seems to me the big frontier here.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, related to the question of what actually makes a robot. So for me, you know, when we get down to it, actually combining the mechanical with some form of intelligence and some decision-making and some ability to sense the world so that you can get feedback.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, we had as a guest on StarTalk, you can dig it up in the archives, the actor who played C3PO.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. So at the time, he had written his biography. And in there, what he said was, he's the only person in the world who knows what it's like firsthand to be a robot. And I said, well, what do you mean by that? And he said, I'd be standing there and if people chose to ignore me, there's no social cost to that because he's just a robot. Whereas if he was an actual human being, you'd have to feel some obligation to fold them into a conversation. And so I don't know if this is, gets to the point of can robots have feelings? Could you have feelings for a robot? Does that matter?

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are there psychologists working in your mat lab?

• 7:29Speaker 02

  They're all dating back.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That could guide your morality and your ethics when you invent one of these things?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  It's become a very big subcategory in robotics has been ethics, roboethics, if you may. And it's an interesting question. Certainly, you'll talk to people who work with like bomb disposal robots. And, or people, you're starting to see more like a dog-like robots, police bomb squads and like will have them. And they start to really develop personal relationships.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, part of it is probably because people will name the robot.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the moment you name it, like, don't name the animal you're gonna slaughter for your dinner. Because that affects you emotionally.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Fair enough. Yeah, I think the emotions that they might be feeling, it becomes part of your team. Right? So people do study psychology of teaming and that. And so it's starting to extend some of that to now incorporate robots on those teams. And the sense of codependency, especially in these jobs that are life critical, for lack of a better description. When you start to depend on something and you have a form of relationship with it.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It becomes part, part of your... Your life as well, yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay, so the future robots should have caution page about...

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Getting too close.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And stop there, because there's no...

• 8:49Speaker 02

  My car was named Rebecca. I'll just leave it at that.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I won't ask you what you did with Rebecca. So, I have a question, and this has bothered me is not quite the right word, but it is the right word.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've been deeply curious why anyone would build a robot that resembles any life form at all. Just build a robot that is exactly shaped for your task, and that should not have to be something that looks like another life form.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're correct.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's build a bomb-sniffing dog. No, just because dogs have good sense of smell doesn't mean you have to build a robot that looks like a dog. Build a robot that is for the task.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, people do definitely build platforms that are specialized for tasks, but it comes down to almost more of a philosophical question.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't it have to be true that a specially-designed robot will do its task better than a generally-designed robot would?

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Eh, it doesn't have to be.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speaking as an engineer, that kind of has to be the case.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, what you typically find, one example from, you know, stuff that we work on in MATLAB is, you know, we design robots that can go up and down stairs. So you can design a robot that's really good at going up and down stairs, but, you know, the action is at the beginning and the end of the stairs. Right? So like, if I design a robot that's only good for that one portion of the task, of course, I'm gonna, you know, have a robot that's really good at going up and down stairs, but going and exploring a floor after it climbs the stairs might be an issue. So there's always gonna be a trade-off.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  I'm Ali Khan Hemraj and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how many legs does this robot have that goes up steps?

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Uh, we use quadrupeds. Stairs were made for legs. Trust me when I say that.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Legs, but made for four legs, not two legs.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Eh, legs in general.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I used to walk dogs and dogs had no-

• 11:06Harrison Greenbaum?

  I've seen some footage of past presidents.

• 11:09Harrison Greenbaum?

  Having legs is not necessarily all you need to go up and down stairs.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, I've been, I used to walk dogs, like, for a living and dogs are completely fluent on stairs. Okay, provided they're not bred as city dogs. City dogs don't know stairs. But any other dog, they'll just walk and, and they're perfectly fine.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're pretty good on horizontal ground, too.

• 11:33Harrison Greenbaum?

  I don't think I want a robot dog walker that looks like a dog. Does a robot dog holding other dogs?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Eh, seriously, alright with it, to be honest with you.

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you need the arms to hold the leash. So, you have to design a dog with six legs.

• 11:46Harrison Greenbaum?

  Oh, God.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can do it!

• 11:47Harrison Greenbaum?

  You can do it!

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why can't they do it?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Hexapods, more legs.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, hexo, what's it called?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Hexapods.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hexapods.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:53Harrison Greenbaum?

  That makes sense.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Alright.

• 11:56Harrison Greenbaum?

  What's the most legs you've put on a robot?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Uh, six, personally.

• 11:59Harrison Greenbaum?

  The way you said it makes it sound like you want to do more.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Eh!

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he sounds like he's, he's still aspiring. But, but, doesn't six-

• 12:06Harrison Greenbaum?

  Octopods.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't six legs maximize a certain efficiency of locomotion? Because any three points that are not in a line creates a stable foundation. So, a stool is like the minimum thing you can sit on.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it had two legs, you can't sit on it, okay? You give it a third leg that's not in line with the other two, that's stable.

• 12:31Harrison Greenbaum?

  That's the reason you don't sit on a person.

• 12:35Harrison Greenbaum?

  Duh. Two legs.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see, okay. So, three legs is stable, the minimum stable number of points. If you have six legs, at any given moment, three legs can be raised and moved forward while the other three legs give it stability. Those other three legs go down and then it swaps three legs for three legs. Keeping in mind that when we lift up one leg, you're not stable. You have to land once you've lifted it up.

• 13:05Harrison Greenbaum?

  Right.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, otherwise you'll tip over unless you're a ballet dancer and you don't, I'm not thinking you're a ballet dancer.

• 13:12Harrison Greenbaum?

  Wait, what are you trying to say?

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, do people think about the stability of what legs are still touching the ground versus which others can move forward? I think that's how beetles can scurry so efficiently. Their legs do this thing.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's called an alternating tripod gate, as you might imagine.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a term for it.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Alternating tripod gate?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't know that, thank you.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'll say next time, instead of spending five minutes explaining.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  I was gonna cut in, but I didn't want to be rude.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be rude.

• 13:44Harrison Greenbaum?

  I was gonna call it the mat gate, but it's, uh, might be too much.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  But, uh, you're correct, it might not be the most efficient, maybe the most effective in terms of maintaining, uh, static stability. Um, so with humans, right, sort of the main difference between what you're, uh, talking about with hexapods and humans, is we actually have a dynamic stability, um, which is sort of a different.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The way a bicycle has a dynamic stability.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  That's exactly correct.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  If you don't pump energy into the mode of going forward, you're gonna fall over.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, interesting.

• 14:16Harrison Greenbaum?

  But on the flip side, as I think a famous roboticist once said, uh, "Mow legs, mow problems."

• 14:21Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, I think it might have been me.

• 14:25Harrison Greenbaum?

  Is that, is that a problem where like if you have too many legs? Cause I feel like you have to know where each leg is gonna be at all times.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Demillepe didn't seem to have an issue with this, okay?

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's an interesting question, so when we start to get into robots with even more degrees of freedom, for each of those legs as a roboticist.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me about degrees of freedom.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, sorry, excuse me. So a degree of freedom is like, you know, in your elbow joint or any of your joints is a degree of freedom. Typically one joint, um, so like a simple hinge joint, you can get one degree of freedom.

• 14:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it, but the rotation, I guess that's also, so now I'm moving but not moving to a new place. So is rotation a degree of freedom to you?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, good.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Uh, rotational and translational.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Translational, alright, good.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so as you start to add more and more degrees of freedom, you need to start to be a little bit sophisticated in how you are gonna coordinate this, right? I mean, just, you know, I have lots of degrees of freedom in my body, but I'm able to coherently put those into forward motion, to walk, to jump, uh, climb stairs.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not a badly connected skeleton trying to walk down the street.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No skeleton has ever had swagger. They're always like ready to crumble into a pile of bones. So as you boost the degrees of freedom, it comes with higher responsibility. It requires more control.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, you can articulate more, so the overall number of, uh, you know, lack of a better description, degrees of freedom that you have. And the expressiveness, uh, that you can get out of more degrees of freedom, the number of places that I can weave into and, and, you know, whatever, add capability does go up, but it comes at the cost that it becomes more complicated to coordinate all of those degrees of freedom. For me.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into some coherent project or task.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got into a little dust up on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, because I just, we had both seen Dune, the, we went to the world premiere, and I didn't hang out with him there, but we, we saw each other, and I was on his show shortly after that. So what'd you think of Dune? Cause he loves these big fantasy stories, right? Big, he's a big fan of Lord of the Rings. So what'd you think? And I said, "Well, the worm, okay, but there's a scene where the worm..."

• 16:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moves really fast and it is straight as it does that. The worm has no legs or arms or wings. So you can't take a straight thing and just zoom down the highway. Okay, if you ever see a snake, it has to coil and then propel itself off of that. If you ever see a stretched out snake, it is harmless to you. Okay, it can't just all of a sudden bite you or chase you down. That's not gonna happen. Okay?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Straight things are slow. That's why the gay pride parade is so much quicker.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what good would a robot be that has no arms or legs? Cause I'm reading up that you're collaborating with NASA on this E O project. Okay, this sounds like a tortured acronym. Let's see what they've pulled out of this. Exobiology Extent Life Surveyor. Did I get that right?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Eels.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eels. Okay, so this is, it's a robot.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  It's a robot.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In design right now, presumably, right? When is it, when will it be ready and deployed?

• 17:51Speaker 02

  I believe 2028 is target.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In, in, in just a few years to come.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what is its prime directive?

• 18:00Speaker 02

  The scientists at NASA believe that the greatest probability to find other biological life in our solar system is on one of the moons of Saturn, Enceladus.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Uh, it's the name of the moon. It's a ice covered planet and you can see, so they've sent previous missions.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this context, he's allowed to call the moon the planet.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it's, it's a world, okay? It's a, it's a spherical world and I'm giving him that, okay? But don't come at me saying, but how about Pluto? No, it is okay. Okay, go.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  My bad.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  All right, so previous missions have found these geysers, plumes of whatever material coming up from the surface.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming from below the surface through the ice.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because there's pressure down there, and then each had pressure and some fluid, something's got to give. I'm keeping it so clean. I'm keeping it so clean right now. Thank you.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  So they believe, yeah, that that pressure is being created by subsurface ocean. And they believe that, so they, the scientists at NASA, believe that that has the highest probability for finding life.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, if you have geysers, you don't have to go to the ocean because it's coming to you. How does that?

• 19:14Speaker 02

  So you-

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Help or hinder your effort?

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one of the theories that you could fly through the plumes as they're happening to try to collect data there. There's other thoughts that you can just go to the surface and start taking samples there.

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the geyser comes back down and it's- It's water?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, well, well, excuse me, we don't know.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's very likely water.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very likely, yeah.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  So there's a couple of different theories on what would be the best way to go search for life there, which is ultimately what they're trying to do. With this, with the Eels project, we are actually trying to get into the ocean via the sinkholes.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh. Do we know- Have you considered knocking?

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that means we have some idea how big the opening is. I didn't know that, that's interesting.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Sort of. I believe the resolution of surface, any pictures that we have of the surface of Enceladus are about six meters per pixel. So I believe that the openings into whatever the sinkholes, we think that they can see them.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  So, but not with great enough resolution that I think you could measure to down to meters.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so it's got to be worm-like to get in the hole?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then what does it do?

• 20:24Speaker 02

  So this project, basically, we're trying to, in the same way, sort of like a boa constrictor, actually, exactly the same way can constrict around something, with snake robots, which is the, the Eels robot is basically a snake robot.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't look like an eel?

• 20:40Harrison Greenbaum?

  Good one. Wait. He needs a minute. Wait a second. Okay. The eel robot is designed to look like a snake. Eels and snakes look alike. They look alike, that's what I'm saying.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Harrison uncovered the flaw in your project. Okay.

• 20:52Harrison Greenbaum?

  This is unbelievable.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Snake-like robot. Tried to climb down the geyser by pushing out against the sides of it. So they don't just, we're not going to drop a robot basically down the geyser. So we want to do a controlled descent by pushing out.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, this is like very, you know, Mission Impossible kind of.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Very much.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, yeah, okay, cool.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have things that protrude from the side of your eel.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  It is using its body, the body of the robot, to actually push out and create friction against the sides of the.

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So does it do it in a curvy sort of way? So it can, it can span whatever the width is?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  That's absolutely correct.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just by curving to do that?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, now you designed it to get in, but now you want to do interesting things. How's the eel going to do that?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  So that's where I think the eel comes in, is it actually, we want to be able to get down through hole and then swim in ocean and take samples and search for life.

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have, where are the sensors?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Um, so right now the sensors are in the head, um, and in all of the individual degrees of freedom. Um, so the degrees of freedom, in this case, all have motors attached to them as well. So you can control them.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and does it have to come back out and?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Excellent question. Um, so as of yet, um, on, so once you collect the information, which you have to do physically, collect the samples, getting the information back out, you can do wirelessly. Um, right? If you have something flying over, you have line of sight.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it, got it, got it. Okay, so whatever it's doing, it's information in situ, and then it sends that information back about whatever it collected.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  One way to do it. So as of yet undecided, I think, for the, for that program.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:23Harrison Greenbaum?

  So you're leaving that poor eel? And we're talking about personalizing the robot. Don't name this thing. Don't name it. You're going to feel real bad abandoning it on Saturday's Monday.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think anybody has feelings for eels. I'm sorry about that. Is it furry? Doesn't know, doesn't have big eyes? So this is not designed for a sample return, then? It's going to get all the samples it can?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think the answer to that question yet exists.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you made quick mention of the constricting part of a boa, constrictor. In what way is your eel constricting?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Uh, so it's doing the opposite, or like the complement of constricting, it's actually pushing out.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, so it's the same dynamic, I guess.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Uh, so you're using forces, um, instead of like a normal robot, you think of in a factory where it's doing pick and place type actions, you know, very robotic and mechanical. Um, in this case, it's, it's more biological in the sense that it's trying to engage with the environment. It's trying to actually feel its way appropriately, in this case, feel its way through the environment.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Saturn is an hour and a half away light travel time. So no one is giving it fast commands. You know, look out for the monster, it's too late. The subsurface monster, so it's gotta have some decision-making abilities, what might that include?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  100%.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So yeah.

• 23:40Harrison Greenbaum?

  Just looking outside the hole, I'm not going in there. What, are you out of your mind?

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That looks dangerous, you go first.

• 23:45Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah, this is so boy.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  So we just had, actually a paper in Science Robotics that just very recently came out that actually...

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, that's a journal.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  That's a journal, that's correct.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Science Robotics.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  That's correct, yep.

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  So that article goes into, in great detail, exactly what the autonomy system is. Uh, but in general, um, you know, very, very high level, you have sensors, you have your platform which can move around, interact with the environment, you have some sensors on it so that you can sense the environment. Is there a rock over there, is there a crevasse over there?

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what good is a robot if it can't sense its own environment?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  That's correct. So yeah, sensors, uh, mobility platform, and then basically decision-making, um, at the high level. So it can take in the sensor measurements and be like, alright, there's a big hole over there, maybe I wanna explore the hole. Maybe I don't, maybe that looks dangerous, um, so you have a planning algorithm, what we, uh, would call it, um, which is making decisions. And then something that's doing the control, which is making sure that your robot is actually doing what you're trying to get it to do.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And again, because of this, it's an hour and a half there and an hour and a half back. You don't even know if it did anything you wanted for three hours, a three-hour delay, so, so...

• 24:54Harrison Greenbaum?

  In that way Saturn is closer than Pittsburgh.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  So, you know, I mean, depends how you measure by it.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He drove in from Pittsburgh.

• 25:07Harrison Greenbaum?

  And that was like two Saturns.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  And back.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up till now, you have not described what this thing is made out of. Is it just hunks of metal that you guys welded together? Is it?

• 25:39Harrison Greenbaum?

  Iron man style?

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Iron man style.

• 25:41Harrison Greenbaum?

  In a cave under duress.

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, in your garage. I cannot begin to think what you would make this out of.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Basically, it's a bunch of metal and motors and sensors that are put together. Perhaps welded in some cases, but yeah, mostly aluminum, steel, normal, that.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how long is it? How big is it?

• 26:00Speaker 02

  It's about two and a half ish meters is what the.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meters?

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's.

• 26:05Harrison Greenbaum?

  But the lady is asking five meters.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it weighs, I think around 200 kilograms, so like around 400 pounds.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, on Earth?

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Enceladus, weighs practically nothing.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  You probably know better than me.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. And when I think of a millipede, it's in these little segments and each segment has legs. So because it has so many segments, it can turn in any way that it wants. So can I presume that since this is snake-like, eel-like, it has segments that can simulate the wiggliness of a eel? How many segments is this made of? Approximately?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Let's say eight segments.

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Only eight.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Eight segments-ish. Don't exactly quote me on that. But there's two forms of actuation, primary forms of actuation on the platform. So it can bend its body and then it has counter-rotating screws that can actually produce forward locomotion, even if the body of the robot is straight. It can actually drive itself forward.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are like an Archimedian screw? So that you can move it forward or backwards?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, Archimedian screw has a surface. It's what the hole diggers are, where it's like a corkscrew, but it's got a surface so that as it turns, the dirt rides up. The screw and you can actually empty out the hole of what's there. But if that's on a surface and you turn it, yeah, it'll propel it forward for sure. And counter rotating so they can go forwards or backwards.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Uh, counter rotating so basically it doesn't just spin in place. You need something to have the opposing force.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so one of them is touching the outer surface and the other one is inside not touching anything.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  No, no, no, sorry. There are two counter rotating, uh, counter rotating screws on the outside of the body of the robot. One of them is basically gripping while the other is pulling. So they're both like, if you just had a screw on the front of it, the body of the robot would start to rotate.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The opposite of that.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  So the screw, the body of the robot doesn't rotate. The screws are handling that additional torsional force.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that can only be true if the two screws have opposite threading.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, that's exactly.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:23Harrison Greenbaum?

  I was about to say that also.

• 28:27Harrison Greenbaum?

  I was thinking about it and I was gonna say, I'm gonna let Neil say it, it's his thing, but that was what I was gonna say.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I had to like figure that out in real time.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  If you look at a picture of it, you can see it exactly.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, got it.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the two screws rotating opposite directions.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Both propel it forward.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And thank you, okay.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  I'm here to help.

• 28:50Harrison Greenbaum?

  And are you, are there a lot of redundancies in the robot? Like, cause you, yeah, it's gonna take a lot of time, energy to get it to Saturn. Do you have things like in case things go wrong?

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what we used to do? We, because there was so much to design something from scratch, we built two, two identical ones.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we'd send one and we leave the other one behind so that we had a model for what in case something went wrong, we could mess with it. Or if we had enough confidence in that, we just launched the second one. That's what Voyager, Voyager one and two are identical spacecraft.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're identical. We said, "We got another one. We're done with it. Send it off." Send it off.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  So, yeah, part of the going to this eel or snake-like design is you have multiple degrees of freedom that are all working together to produce one desired outcome. So if you have like a motor, right, you have 10, 8, 16, whatever motors in the robot, if one of those motors goes down, you now have 15 other motors. So you're not just completely dead in the water.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You meant literally dead in the water.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  You're literally...

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Well, if you made it down, yeah, you actually made it down to the cremass.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just expression.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, but in this case, then you also have the screws, the counter rotating screws. So those are your two main propulsion. You can either undulate with the body or use the screws for propulsion. So you actually have redundant locomotive methods.

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're doing robotics in collaboration with NASA, which has my people, astrophysicists. So first, how are we to work with? Are we...

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Oh, just absolute pleasure. Bye!

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Pleasure to be here now.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  It's been a nightmare. They made us call it eel, but it's actually a snake. NASA's calling me like on the way out of this office.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do they come to you or do you go to them?

• 30:33Speaker 02

  It's an interesting question. So one of the primary tech leads on this project is actually one of my former graduate students who actually worked on snake-like robots at Carnegie Mellon. So he, I believe, was sort of the driving force for my inclusion in this project.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is this a fully funded project? It's WillFly, is that right? Or there's some contingencies here?

• 30:56Speaker 02

  I think it's too early to tell.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Have you named your eel yet?

• 31:00Speaker 02

  To the best of my understanding, there is no name for the eel yet, but I could...

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil the Eel?

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Neil the Eel. Neil the Eel, thank you! Neil the Eel actually works.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil the Eel, okay. You don't have to give it one more letter. It's very easy. So my understanding of engineers is you guys live constraints.

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because that forces you to be creative in ways that wouldn't otherwise be required of you. So at NASA, there's the payload, the weight of the payload, the temperature constraints, the shake and bake constraints, because it's hot, it's shaky, it's cold. So you get all these specs. And then you just go into, you know, lock yourselves in a room and come out with something at the end?

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Robot.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  That'll be all, thanks.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To us, you're kind of like a black box, right? Just hear the specs, just do it, right? And then, great creativity comes of this. For example, we wanted to put telescopes in space that were bigger than the rockets that could launch them. And we said, engineers, figure out how to do this. They said, oh, let's create a segmented mirror that unfurls when it gets into space. We couldn't have come up with that. You guys come up with this, right? So, we're very happy about this kind of relationship. And how has it worked in practice between you and the astro folk? Do they hand you specs and you come back and it iterates?

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like, here's a car on a, you know, one of Saturn's moons. We're gonna put an autonomous robot down. We're gonna climb down the thing and go take samples from the sea. So like, as an engineer, you're like, yeah, this is awesome. Right, like, this is, and I say this in the most respectful manner possible, like, this is crazy.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's dope.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is, but like, as it, you know, for me, as an engineer, you know, I like challenges, and this is a challenge.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Constraints are the challenge.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  You're correct.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what a constraint is.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  You know, it's a big problem, it's a hard problem, and, you know, that, I find that cool.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so let me, let me bring some closure here. When I reflect on portrayals of robots, mostly through cinema and other forms of storytelling, you know, they, they always make them look human. And I remember thinking early how unimaginative that is. Because if you have tasks to perform, the human body might not be the best designed for it. In the Jetsons, the idea that something is robotic meant a humanoid robot did it. Even in the Jetsons, he had to fly his own car without realizing that maybe the car itself could be a robot.

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is very limited thinking for all of us, going back even just a few decades. Now, that's been blown wide open. And we have no end of tasks that robots can and should perform for many reasons. For safety, for just dignity, for things that a human being, we'd just rather not do. So you let a robot do it. And I foresee that transition coming faster and faster. Because now it's not just the skeletal, mechanical object that's doing a simple task.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's actually going to be imbued with some form of intellect, decision-making power. Yeah, I'm good with that. But we need a tandem, a tandem review of the ethics of what you just created. The, and possibly even its morality for what task you would have it do. Violating one or two of Isaac Asimov's laws in a robot that you designed that brings harm to other people. So, cautionary tale, but a beautiful one, knowing that if we do it right,

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  it's as bright a future as anyone has ever imagined. That's the cosmic perspective. Matt Lab, thank you for coming. Thank you, Matt.

• 35:19Harrison Greenbaum?

  Pleasure.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So thanks for coming in for this.

• 35:20Harrison Greenbaum?

  Pleasure, thank you.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right here in my office at the American Museum of Natural History, Hayden Planetarium. And Harrison, we can find you off-Broadway.

• 35:27Harrison Greenbaum?

  Off-Broadway, yeah.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Call me when you're on-Broadway.

• 35:29Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, what's your show called?

• 35:33Harrison Greenbaum?

  It's called Harrison Greenbaum What Just Happened. You can go to HarrisonGreenbaum.com, get all the info on touring and all that good stuff.

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent, we'll look for you. Okay, this has been yet another episode of StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.