Life in the robotic lab

The REEM Lab

My team is made of 12 people including myself. I am the "boss", but also one of the researchers that works on the robot. The project started more than 3 years ago and lead to the construction of two humanoid robots, REEM-A and REEM-B.
We work for Pal Technology, a company of the United Arab Emirates located in Abu Dhabi.
Anyway, we are located in Barcelona, Spain. It was necessary, since most of are Spanish (actually, I am Italian). Pal Technology wasn't very happy to keep us thousands of kilometers away, but it was a mandatory condition.
Our office is actually an apartment in the very center of Barcelona. Once, we have been visited by a photographer that is doing a documentary-book about humanoid robots and he told me:"I have been in all the robotic labs of the world: Japan, Korea, France, USA... but I have never seen a laboratory like this!".

Actually, if you watch our video in YouTube or the website, you will notice that we are the only humanoid that shot its videos in front to a fireplace. Sorry, it is the bigger room...

1. The beginning

Memory is a bitch.
When you live a moment of your life that is very important, you think that you will never forget it.
The emotions that vibrate in that very moment are so intense that it is hard to believe that they will disappear "as teardrops in the rain".
I lately realized that I remember what happened to me, but sometimes the episodes of my life are grayscale snapshots of facts. The emotions associated with the facts are gone.
I hope that this blog will help me to store my memories somewhere, before time takes them away.

I have always dreamt to be a scientist. Today this definition sound silly to me... I am just an engineer. But "scientist" is the word I was using when I was 7 years old and I used to spend my afternoon watching TV and Japanese cartoons.
When you are a kid, people ask you about the profession that you want to take when you growth up. Football player, fire fighter, astronaut, singer?
My answer was: " a scientist that builds robots".
When you are a kid, the only idea of robot that you have is humanoid robots.
Well, 23 years later, this is what I do: I build robots.
Everything comes with a price... but I will talk about that in the future.
When I became a boy, adults started to tells me that robots are (were) just science fiction and that what I really wanted to be is an engineer.
Ok, I thought I will be an engineer, but I will build robots.
But when I landed at the University Politecnico of Turin, the only robots around were industrial manipulators building cars in the production line... kind of boring.
What was I supposed to do then?
Something was going to change in 2001...

"Be fruitful, and multiply..."

I guess my colleagues were very bored the last year.

I can imagine what happened... the guy come back at home and tells the wife:"honey, I had a very terrible day. The left arm of the robot exploded, the server was hacked and boss makes my life a nightmare. I need some ... coddles".
Ok, I am just jocking! The fact is that many of them had babies in the last year or are going to have a new child in the next months.

Summarizing:
- 3 of us are fathers already.
- 3 people will have soon a baby (the second for 1 of them).

I think I am realizing a possible "killer application" for humanoid robots...

"REEM, change the diaper of the baby"

2. Up north (2001/02)

When I try to determine the beginning of the "domino effect" that changed my life, the first date that I can remember is August 2001.

That summer, I packed my luggage and I took a flight from Turin (Italy) to Goteborg (Sweden).
The years before I had been studying at Polytechnic of Turin with little enthusiasm; but in 2001/2002 I was supposed to spend a whole academic year at Chalmers, Sweden.
When I got off of the airplane I had a wonderful feeling of freedom and curiosity: what was going to happen? I was going to meet new people, speak a new language and see different places...

I will not tell you about what was for sure the best year of my life, since it has little to do with robotics.

What is relevant for this blog is that I joined the Master In Complex Adaptive Systems, an International Master Program related with dynamic systems, artificial intelligence and some robotics.
For the first time in a long time I started to have fun studying engineering and I have got more and more motivated. I realized the importance of hard work when you want to achieve a result and that lesson was going to be very useful in the future.
One of the courses of the Master was dedicated to autonomous robots; of course it was VERY basic, but it was enough to wake up my forgotten love for robotics. And the best is yet to come: our professor proposed to all of his students (about 20 people) to build a couple of small humanoid robot in few months and to participate at ROBOCUP 2002, the World Championship of Robotic Soccer...

The enemies of REEM

You must know that our hero, REEM, has to fight against some of the most powerfull villains you can find in a research lab. Memorable battles take place and, even if the good guys are fighting bravely, the enemies are not defeated.
The two nemesis of REEM are:

• The "night reprogrammer": have you ever done something that works at the end of the day and that fails the following day mysteriously?  "But... yesterday it was okay! Why does it crash now?". There is only one explanation: the "night reprogrammer". This mysterious figure enters in the lab at night, protected by darkness, and he overwrites our source code with a similar one, that usually fail without reasonable explanation.
• The "super bug": it is the major software bug, that can have catastrophic consequences. It can stay hidden for weeks, but the very same day in which the REEM team has to face an important event, the "super bug" strikes with all his power. There is no unit-test that can stop him, as it usually happens with normal bugs.

   

3. Fukuoka, Japan (spring 2002)

So, the idea was that: to design from scratch two different humanoid robots (about 40 cm and 60 cm of height), build them and make them perform something related to football in less than 4 months.
Of course, without any previous knowledge about robotics.
And then... we would all fly to Fukuoka, Japan, to participate to Robocup in the newly launched "humanoid league".

Completely crazy!!

I was supposed to write the software to make walk the robots.I must confess that I realized later that my effort to accomplish this task was poor (anyway, the hardware platform have never been really able to walk).
Our teacher, Peter Nordin, told us that he was looking for some sponsor to pay our trip to Japan, but he was having little luck.

What happened was quite expected: people worked very hard until the very last day, but the small humanoids were not able to move.
The unexpected thing is that we ACTUALLY went to Japan, even if the robot was still unfinished. No one knows where the money came from; the most believed hypothesis is that the professor paid with his own money the journey to 20 students...

Who would do such a thing? I believe very few people. Consider, as well, that this was the ONLY year in which the students of the Complex Adaptive System (my Master) tried to participate to Robocup.

The probability that something like that might happens are very low, but this event was determinant for my story and my life.

The took the flight for Japan at the end of June. It was as well the end of my academic year in Sweden and I remember the precise moment in which I realized that a chapter of my life (the best one so far) was closing and a new one was going to start soon.
Wondering about my future, I was smiling by myself, with a feeling of truly happiness...

This is Elvis, one of the two unlucky robots.

Famous quotes

There are some phrases and quotes that are stored for ever in our memory, in the Robotic Lab.
The list is quite long and I promise that very soon I will post more, but the best ones come from one of my team members: the mighty Sergio.
Next, you will read about some unforgettable quotes:

1) (Speaking with his lawyer) "I am more pissed off than a turkey before the Thanksgiving day".

2) (Speaking by telephone with the technical support of our Internet provider).
Technical support: "In few hours we will address your problem, sir".
Sergio: "Few hours ?!? It is more probable that a meteorite hits the Earth and destroys all human kind".

3) And last, his masterpiece. You should know that we had several problems with some electronic boards (called further "Icarus") that collapse the communication bus of the robot. The only solution we found was to remove more and more boards from the robot. Sergio is one the people that is supposed to take some action (no one knows which action should be taken) to solve the issue.

Esteban: "Sergio, we have still problems with the Icarus boards"
Sergio: " How many of them are still on the robot?"
Esteban: "two"
Sergio: " No, not in the gripper of the robot, I mean... on the whole robot!"
Esteban: "two..."
Sergio: " NO. I am not asking you how many of the boards are failing, I mean: how many boards are still on the robot?"
Estaben: "Sergi... two !!!"
Sergio turns in my direction and tells me: "Davide, buy for me the Frodo's cloack, I must go to Mordon and throw the Icarus board in that Volcano that destroy it all..."