Let me share with you today an original discovery. But I want to tell it to you the way it really happened -- not the way I present it in a scientific meeting, or the way you'd read it in a scientific paper. It's a story about beyond biomimetics, to something I'm calling biomutualism. I define that as an association between biology and another discipline, where each discipline reciprocally advances the other, but where the collective discoveries that emerge are beyond any single field. Now, in terms of biomimetics, as human technologies take on more of the characteristics of nature, nature becomes a much more useful teacher. Engineering can be inspired by biology by using its principles and analogies when they're advantageous, but then integrating that with the best human engineering, ultimately to make something actually better than nature.
Dopustite da danas podijelim s vama originalno otkriće. Ali želim vam ga ispričati onako kako se zapravo dogodilo, a ne na način kako ga prikazujem na znanstvenim sastancima ili kako biste pročitali u znanstvenim novinama. To je priča koja nadilazi biomimetiku u nešto što zovem biomutalizam. To definiram kao udruživanje biologije i jedne druge discipline, gdje svaka disciplina recipročno unapređuje drugu, ali zajednička otkrića koja nastaju nadilaze bilo koje polje. Sad, u slučaju biomimetike, kako ljudska tehnologija preuzima karakteristike prirode, priroda postaje jako koristan učitelj. Inženjeri mogu biti nadahnuti biologijom koristeći njezine principe i analogije koje imaju prednosti. A zatim integrirati to s najboljim ljudskim inženjerstvom i na kraju se dobije nešto zapravo bolje od prirode.
Now, being a biologist, I was very curious about this. These are gecko toes. And we wondered how they use these bizarre toes to climb up a wall so quickly. We discovered it. And what we found was that they have leaf-like structures on their toes, with millions of tiny hairs that look like a rug, and each of those hairs has the worst case of split-ends possible: about 100 to 1000 split ends that are nano-size. And the individual has 2 billion of these nano-size split ends. They don't stick by Velcro or suction or glue. They actually stick by intermolecular forces alone, van der Waals forces. And I'm really pleased to report to you today that the first synthetic self-cleaning, dry adhesive has been made. From the simplest version in nature, one branch, my engineering collaborator, Ron Fearing, at Berkeley, had made the first synthetic version. And so has my other incredible collaborator, Mark Cutkosky, at Stanford -- he made much larger hairs than the gecko, but used the same general principles.
Kako sam ja biolog, zanimao sam se za to. Ovo su gekonovi prsti. Pitali smo se kako koriste ove bizarne prste da se penju zidom tako brzo. I otkrili smo. Ono što smo otkrili jest da na prstima imaju strukture poput listova s milijunima malih dlačica koje izgledaju kao krpa. Svaka od tih dlaka ima jako ispucan vrh s oko 100 do 1.000 završetaka koje su nano veličine. Znači, jedinka ima oko 2 milijarde završetaka nano veličine. Ne lijepe se kao Velcro ili vakuum ili ljepilo. Zapravo se lijepe pomoću samih intermolekularnih sila, van der Waalsovih sila. I drago mi je što vam danas mogu reći da je napravljen prvi sintetički adheziv koji se sam čisti. Uz pomoć najjednostavnije verzije iz prirode, jedne grane, moj inženjerski suradnik Ron Fearing s Berkeleja napravio je prvu sintetičku verziju. A, isto tako, i moj drugi suradnik Mark Cutkosky sa Standforda. Napravio je mnogo veće dlake od gekonovih, ali je koristio iste opće principe.
And here is its first test. (Laughter) That's Kellar Autumn, my former Ph.D. student, professor now at Lewis and Clark, literally giving his first-born child up for this test. (Laughter)
I ovdje je prvi test. (Smijeh) Ovo je Kellar Autumn, moj bivši student, sada profesor na Lewisu i Clarku; doslovno daje svoje prvorođeno dijete za test. (Smiijeh)
More recently, this happened.
A nedavno se ovo dogodilo.
Man: This the first time someone has actually climbed with it.
Čovjek: Ovo je prvi put da se netko zapravo popeo s time.
Narrator: Lynn Verinsky, a professional climber, who appeared to be brimming with confidence.
Narator: Lynn Verinsky, profesionalna penjačica, koja izgleda kao da puca od samopouzdanja.
Lynn Verinsky: Honestly, it's going to be perfectly safe. It will be perfectly safe.
Lynn Verinsky: Iskreno, bit će savršeno sigurno, bit će savršeno sigurno.
Man: How do you know?
Čovjek: Kako znate?
Lynn Verinsky: Because of liability insurance. (Laughter)
Lynn Verinsky: Zbog obaveznog osiguranja.
Narrator: With a mattress below and attached to a safety rope, Lynn began her 60-foot ascent. Lynn made it to the top in a perfect pairing of Hollywood and science.
Narator: S madracem ispod i povezana sigurnosnim užetom, Lynn je počela svoje 18-metarsko penjanje. Lynn se popela do vrha spojivši Hollywood i znanost.
Man: So you're the first human being to officially emulate a gecko.
Čovjek: Znači, vi ste prva osoba koja je službeno oponašala gekona.
Lynn Verinsky: Ha! Wow. And what a privilege that has been.
Lynn Verinsky: Ha! Vau. To je lijepa privilegija.
Robert Full: That's what she did on rough surfaces. But she actually used these on smooth surfaces -- two of them -- to climb up, and pull herself up. And you can try this in the lobby, and look at the gecko-inspired material. Now the problem with the robots doing this is that they can't get unstuck, with the material. This is the gecko's solution. They actually peel their toes away from the surface, at high rates, as they run up the wall.
Robert Full: To je ona napravila na neravnim površinama. Ali ona se zapravo koristila ovime na glatkim površinama, njima dvjema, kako bi se popela i vukla se gore. Ovo možete probati u predvorju i pogledati materijale nadahnute gekonom. Problem kod robota koji ovo rade jest taj što se ne mogu odlijepiti od materijala. Ovo je gekonovo rješenje. Oni doslovno ogule svoje prste s površine, jako brzo, dok trče uz zid.
Well I'm really excited today to show you the newest version of a robot, Stickybot, using a new hierarchical dry adhesive. Here is the actual robot. And here is what it does. And if you look, you can see that it uses the toe peeling, just like the gecko does. If we can show some of the video, you can see it climbing up the wall. (Applause) There it is. And now it can go on other surfaces because of the new adhesive that the Stanford group was able to do in designing this incredible robot. (Applause)
Stvarno sam uzbuđen danas jer ću vam pokazati najnoviju verziju robota, Stickybota, koji koristi novi suhi adheziv. On je pravi robot. A ovo je ono što on radi. Ako pogledate, vidjet ćete da guli prste isto kao i gekon. Ako pogledamo dio videa, vidjet ćete kako se penje uz zid. (Pljesak) Evo ga. A sad može ići i na druge podloge zbog novog adheziva koji je grupa iz Standforda napravila dok je dizajnirala ovog izvrsnog robota. (Pljesak)
Oh. One thing I want to point out is, look at Stickybot. You see something on it. It's not just to look like a gecko. It has a tail. And just when you think you've figured out nature, this kind of thing happens. The engineers told us, for the climbing robots, that, if they don't have a tail, they fall off the wall. So what they did was they asked us an important question. They said, "Well, it kind of looks like a tail." Even though we put a passive bar there. "Do animals use their tails when they climb up walls?" What they were doing was returning the favor, by giving us a hypothesis to test, in biology, that we wouldn't have thought of.
Oh. Jedna stvar koju želim istaknuti jest: pogledajte Stickybota. Vidjet ćete nešto na njemu. Nije samo zato da izgleda kao gekon. Ima rep. I baš kada pomislite da ste shvatili prirodu, nešto se ovakvo pojavi. Inženjeri su nam rekli da će roboti, ako nemaju rep, otpasti sa zida. Ono što su učinili jest da su nas pitali jedno važno pitanje. Rekli su: „Pa recimo da izgleda kao rep“. To nam je izgledalo nebitno. „Koriste li životinje njihov rep dok se penju uz zidove?“ Ono što su radili je da su nam uzvraćali uslugu dajući nam hipotezu za provjeru koje se u biologiji nikad ne bismo dosjetili.
So of course, in reality, we were then panicked, being the biologists, and we should know this already. We said, "Well, what do tails do?" Well we know that tails store fat, for example. We know that you can grab onto things with them. And perhaps it is most well known that they provide static balance. (Laughter) It can also act as a counterbalance. So watch this kangaroo. See that tail? That's incredible! Marc Raibert built a Uniroo hopping robot. And it was unstable without its tail. Now mostly tails limit maneuverability, like this human inside this dinosaur suit. (Laughter) My colleagues actually went on to test this limitation, by increasing the moment of inertia of a student, so they had a tail, and running them through and obstacle course, and found a decrement in performance, like you'd predict. (Laughter) But of course, this is a passive tail. And you can also have active tails.
I, naravno, u stvarnosti smo paničarili, biolozi smo i trebali smo to već znati. Upitali smo: „Što rade repovi?“ Dobro znamo da se u repove sprema mast, na primjer. Znamo da je moguće hvatati se na stvari s njime. I možda najpoznatije jest to da služe za postizanje ravnoteže. (Smijeh) Može se koristiti i protiv ravnoteže. Pogledajte ovog klokana. Vidite taj rep? Ovo je sjajno! Marc Railbert napravio je Uniroo skačućeg robota. Bio je nestabilan bez repa. A većina repova ograničavaju pokretljivost. Kao ovaj čovjek u kostimu dinosaura. (Smijeh) Moje kolege stvarno su ispitale to ograničavanje povećavajući inerciju kod studenata, imali su rep, trčali su kroz prepreke i pokazivali smanjenu sposobnost u izvedbi toga. Kao što biste i predvidjeli. (Smijeh) Ali, naravno, ovo je pasivan rep. A postoji i aktivan rep.
And when I went back to research this, I realized that one of the great TED moments in the past, from Nathan, we've talked about an active tail.
Kada sam se vratio da to istražim, shvatio sam da smo u jednom od velikih TED trenutaka u prošlosti, od Nathana, pričali o aktivnu repu.
Video: Myhrvold thinks tail-cracking dinosaurs were interested in love, not war.
Video: Myhrvold misli da su dinosauri koji koriste rep bili za ljubav, a ne rat.
Robert Full: He talked about the tail being a whip for communication. It can also be used in defense. Pretty powerful. So we then went back and looked at the animal. And we ran it up a surface. But this time what we did is we put a slippery patch that you see in yellow there. And watch on the right what the animal is doing with its tail when it slips. This is slowed down 10 times. So here is normal speed. And watch it now slip, and see what it does with its tail. It has an active tail that functions as a fifth leg, and it contributes to stability. If you make it slip a huge amount, this is what we discovered. This is incredible. The engineers had a really good idea.
Robert Full: Govorio je o repu koji su koristili kao bič za komunikaciju. Može se također koristiti i u obrani. Poprilično je jak. Zatim smo se vratili i istražili životinju. I ponovno smo ju stavili da se penje po površini. Ovaj put smo stavili skliski dio koji vidite označen žutom bojom. I gledajte sad desno što životinja radi s repom kada se oklizne. Ovo je usporeno 10 puta. Ovo je normalna brzina. I gledajte sad kako se poskliznula i vidite što radi s repom. Ima aktivan rep koji funkcionira kao peta noga i doprinosi stabilnosti. A posklizne li se jako, ovo smo otkrili. Ovo je izvanredno. Inženjeri su dobili stvarno dobru ideju.
And then of course we wondered, okay, they have an active tail, but let's picture them. They're climbing up a wall, or a tree. And they get to the top and let's say there's some leaves there. And what would happen if they climbed on the underside of that leaf, and there was some wind, or we shook it? And we did that experiment, that you see here. (Applause) And this is what we discovered. Now that's real time. You can't see anything. But there it is slowed down.
I naravno da smo se zapitali, dobro, imaju aktivan rep, ali hajdemo ih zamisliti. Penju se uz zid ili drvo. I popeli su se na vrh i recimo da je neki list tamo. I što će se dogoditi ako se popnu na donju stranu tog lista i počne puhati vjetar ili ga mi prodrmamo? Napravili smo taj eksperiment, koji vidite ovdje. (Pljesak) Otkrili smo sljedeće: ovo je normalno pušteno, ne možete ništa vidjeti. Ali evo ga usporeno.
What we discovered was the world's fastest air-righting response. For those of you who remember your physics, that's a zero-angular-momentum righting response. But it's like a cat. You know, cats falling. Cats do this. They twist their bodies. But geckos do it better. And they do it with their tail. So they do it with this active tail as they swing around. And then they always land in the sort of superman skydiving posture. Okay, now we wondered, if we were right, we should be able to test this in a physical model, in a robot.
Ono što smo otkrili jest najbrži odgovor zračnog ispravljanja. Za one koji se sjećaju fizike, to je odgovor ispravljanja na 0 stupnjeva u trenu. To je poput mačaka. Znate, kada mačke padaju, čine to. Izokrenu svoje tijelo. Ali gekoni to rade bolje. I to rade sa svojim repom. To rade sa svojim aktivnim repom dok mašu uokolo. I uvijek slete na nekakav supermenski način. OK, sad smo se pitali, ako smo u pravu, moći ćemo to testirati na fizičkom modelu, na robotu.
So for TED we actually built a robot, over there, a prototype, with the tail. And we're going to attempt the first air-righting response in a tail, with a robot. If we could have the lights on it. Okay, there it goes. And show the video. There it is. And it works just like it does in the animal. So all you need is a swing of the tail to right yourself. (Applause)
Pa smo zapravo za TED napravili robota, ovdje, prototip s repom. I pokušat ćemo sada prvi odgovor zračnog ispravljanja s repom, na robotu. Ako možemo dobiti svjetlo ovdje. Dobro, evo ga. I pokažite video. Eto ga. I radi upravo kao i kod životinja. Znači, sve što trebate jest mahati repom kako biste se ispravili. (Pljesak)
Now, of course, we were normally frightened because the animal has no gliding adaptations, so we thought, "Oh that's okay. We'll put it in a vertical wind tunnel. We'll blow the air up, we'll give it a landing target, a tree trunk, just outside the plexi-glass enclosure, and see what it does. (Laughter) So we did. And here is what it does. So the wind is coming from the bottom. This is slowed down 10 times. It does an equilibrium glide. Highly controlled. This is sort of incredible. But actually it's quite beautiful, when you take a picture of it. And it's better than that, it -- just in the slide -- maneuvers in mid-air. And the way it does it, is it takes its tail and it swings it one way to yaw left, and it swings its other way to yaw right. So we can maneuver this way. And then -- we had to film this several times to believe this -- it also does this. Watch this. It oscillates its tail up and down like a dolphin. It can actually swim through the air. But watch its front legs. Can you see what they are doing? What does that mean for the origin of flapping flight? Maybe it's evolved from coming down from trees, and trying to control a glide. Stay tuned for that. (Laughter)
Sad, naravno, normalno da smo se zabrinuli zato što životinja nema adaptaciju na klizanje pa smo mislili: „Oh, to je ok. Stavit ćemo je u vertikalnu zračnu cijev. Pustit ćemo zrak gore, stavit ćemo cilj za slijetanje, nekakvo deblo, točno izvan ograde od pleksiglassa i vidjeti što će se dogoditi“. (Smijeh) To smo i učinili. I ovo se dogodilo: Vjetar je puhao od dolje. Ovo je usporeno 10 puta. Dobili smo izjednačeno klizanje. Dobro kontrolirano. Ovo je poprilično izvanredno. Ali zapravo je jako lijepo kada to slikate. Čak je i bolje od toga, to u trenutku klizanja manevrira u zraku. A način na koji to čini jest da maše repom u jednu stranu, da skrene lijevo i u drugu stranu da skrene desno. Tamo i mi možemo manevrirati. I -- morali smo ovo snimiti nekoliko puta kako bismo povjerovali -- čini i ovo. Gledajte ovo. Pomiče rep gore dolje kao dupin. Zapravo, može plivati kroz zrak. Ali gledajte njegove prednje noge. Vidite li što radi? Što ovo znači za podrijetlo kliznog letenja? Možda je evoluirao od spuštanja s drveta i pokušava kontrolirati klizanje. Ostanite i dalje s nama da saznate. (Smijeh)
So then we wondered, "Can they actually maneuver with this?" So there is the landing target. Could they steer towards it with these capabilities? Here it is in the wind tunnel. And it certainly looks like it. You can see it even better from down on top. Watch the animal. Definitely moving towards the landing target. Watch the whip of its tail as it does it. Look at that. It's unbelievable.
Zatim smo se pitali: „Mogu li zapravo manevrirati s ovim?“ Ovo je meta za slijetanje. Mogu li se spustiti prema njoj pomoću onih sposobnosti? Evo ga u zračnom tunelu. I poprilično sliči manevriranju. Možete ga bolje vidjeti odozdo prema gore. Gledajte životinju. Sigurno se kreće prema meti za slijetanje. Gledajte pokrete njezina repa dok ide. Gledajte. Nevjerojatno.
So now we were really confused, because there are no reports of it gliding. So we went, "Oh my god, we have to go to the field, and see if it actually does this." Completely opposite of the way you'd see it on a nature film, of course. We wondered, "Do they actually glide in nature?" Well we went to the forests of Singapore and Southeast Asia. And the next video you see is the first time we've showed this.
Sada smo poprilično zbunjeni, budući da nema zabilješki kako on kliže. Počeli smo pričati: „O, moj Bože, moramo otići van i vidjeti da li to zapravo rade“. Posve različito od načina koje ste vidjeli u filmovima o prirodi, naravno. Pitali smo se: „Kližu li zapravo u prirodi?“ Otišli smo u šume Singapura i jugoistočne Azije. Sljedeći video koji vidite prvi put prikazujemo.
This is the actual video -- not staged, a real research video -- of animal gliding down. There is a red trajectory line. Look at the end to see the animal. But then as it gets closer to the tree, look at the close-up. And see if you can see it land. So there it comes down. There is a gecko at the end of that trajectory line. You see it there? There? Watch it come down. Now watch up there and you can see the landing. Did you see it hit? It actually uses its tail too, just like we saw in the lab.
Ovo je stvaran video, nije napravljen, pravi istraživački video životinje koja kliže dolje -- ovo je crvena linija puta. Pogledajte kraj da vidite životinju. Ali, kako se približava drvetu, gledate ju približeno. I vidite, ako možete, kako je sletjela. Evo silazi. Gekon je na kraju linije puta. Vidite li ga? Ovdje? Gledajte kako silazi. A sad gledajte gore i vidjet ćete kako se spušta. Jeste li vidjeli udarac? Zapravo koristi rep i za to. Kao što smo i vidjeli u laboratoriju.
So now we can continue this mutualism by suggesting that they can make an active tail. And here is the first active tail, in the robot, made by Boston Dynamics. So to conclude, I think we need to build biomutualisms, like I showed, that will increase the pace of basic discovery in their application. To do this though, we need to redesign education in a major way, to balance depth with interdisciplinary communication, and explicitly train people how to contribute to, and benefit from other disciplines. And of course you need the organisms and the environment to do it. That is, whether you care about security, search and rescue or health, we must preserve nature's designs, otherwise these secrets will be lost forever. And from what I heard from our new president, I'm very optimistic. Thank you. (Applause)
Sad možemo nastaviti taj mutualizam predlaganjem da se može napraviti aktivni rep. Evo ga, prvi aktivni rep, na robotu, napravljen u Boston Dynamicsu. Da zaključimo, mislim da trebamo napraviti biomutalizam kao što sam i pokazao, tako da povećamo brzinu osnovnih otkrića u njihovoj primjeni. Kako bismo to postigli, trebamo naveliko prepraviti obrazovanje, treba uravnotežiti dubinu s interdisciplinarnom komunikacijom. I posebno naučiti ljude kako da doprinesu, a i imaju koristi od drugih disciplina. A, naravno, za to trebate organizam i okoliš. Zato, bilo da brinete o sigurnosti, istraživanju i izvorima ili zdravlju, moramo očuvati dizajne prirode. U protivnom će tajne biti izgubljene zauvijek. I, kako sam čuo od našeg predsjednika, poprilično sam optimističan. Hvala. (Pljesak)