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AMT Tech Trends: High Steaks

Steve’s solved a steak problem. Ben shares some alternative (read: better) thanksgiving dish ideas. Benjamin then announces that MIT’s solution to a bad algorithm was to solve a differential equation ...
Nov 25, 2022

Episode 83: Steve’s solved a steak problem. Ben shares some alternative (read: better) thanksgiving dish ideas. Benjamin then announces that MIT’s solution to a bad algorithm was to solve a differential equation. Stephen shows that China put a gun on a robot dog. Ben thinks plant inspections are for walking robot dogs of the future. Steve thinks that Industrie 5.0 is coming.

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Transcript

Benjamin Moses:          Hello everyone, welcome to the Tech Trends podcast where we discuss the latest manufacturing, technology, research, and news. Today's episode is sponsored by IMTS+. I am the director of turkey, Benjamin Moses, and I'm here with-

Stephen LaMarca:         Stephen LaMarca, AMTs technology analyst.

Benjamin Moses:          Steve, Thanksgiving is upon us. How do you feel about that?

Stephen LaMarca:         I have mixed feelings. Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday because the holiday previous to Thanksgiving's Halloween and you get candy. Well, in my younger years, which I can't let go of, I've never been a fan of Thanksgiving dinners.

Benjamin Moses:          Okay.

Stephen LaMarca:         I can count on one hand how many Thanksgiving dinners I've really loved and had a great time with. Thanksgiving is unfortunate in that it's sandwiched by two great holidays. Before it comes the candy and scary stuff holiday.

Benjamin Moses:          I like your sandwich pun.

Stephen LaMarca:         Yes. This is going to be a food-heavy episode I'm telling you. And after it is Christmas.

Benjamin Moses:          Or Hanukkah or any other-

Stephen LaMarca:         Oh, sorry. You're right. The holiday season. Happy holidays. Anyway. I grew up Catholic, and Progressive Catholic I might add.

Benjamin Moses:          I don't know what that means, but good.

Stephen LaMarca:         It basically means-

Benjamin Moses:          That's okay, that's okay. It's better I don't know.

Stephen LaMarca:         Instead of this white conservative God-fearing Catholic, it's more like God just wants you to love him.

Benjamin Moses:          That's fair.

Stephen LaMarca:         Anyway. We don't need to get into that anymore. It is funny though because my dad's side of the family, his brothers, are really conservative Catholic, they're not like my mom and dad at all. One of them even had the audacity after I graduated college and was like "So Stephen, you have a degree in physics now, does that mean you renounce your faith?" And I just straight up said, "Yep."

Benjamin Moses:          That's a segue, geez.

Stephen LaMarca:         But anyway, going back to the holidays.

Benjamin Moses:          And eating.

Stephen LaMarca:         Food, man.

Benjamin Moses:          You've been on some events with Shaurabh.

Stephen LaMarca:         Hold on, before we get there yet.

Benjamin Moses:          Okay, okay.

Stephen LaMarca:         Which is a big talking point, we got to talk about that. Thanksgiving dinners, you wanted to bring up that they don't have to be traditional.

Benjamin Moses:          I was thinking about-

Stephen LaMarca:         In my past, they've all been traditional. My first good Thanksgiving was more than 10 years ago probably. My mom, she drew the short straw and she had to host Thanksgiving, and she's never been a cook or wanted to set that stuff up. She's a great cook, I love my mom's food, but she does not ... Classic Irish moms, they just don't think highly of their cooking. But she was like "You know what? We're hosting Thanksgiving this year. We've got a brand new renovated kitchen." This was more than a decade ago so it's not brand new now. "But I don't feel like doing anything so I'm going to have it catered." A couple days later she shows my dad, my sister, and I a Neiman Marcus catalog. She had Thanksgiving dinner catered from Neiman Marcus. Neiman Marcus was technically the middleman. We had the dinner catered from the Cajun Turkey Company.

Benjamin Moses:          That sounds great.

Stephen LaMarca:         And we got a Cajun deep-fried turkey with spice, and it had some awesome heat to it. It wasn't too hot, it was white people spicy. Because my conservative uncle and my granny could not handle the heat of the turkey but we were like "This is amazing. This is if we got it from Popeye's but fancier." It was the best Thanksgiving I've had yet. Well, my first good Thanksgiving. Don't get me wrong, the food's always been pretty awesome in my family at Thanksgivings, but it's just we know what to expect and it's just like to hell with the cranberry stuff I don't want that. But then ever since that Cajun Thanksgiving, I've gone to some amazing Thanksgiving and it's got better. Went to an African American Thanksgiving-

Benjamin Moses:          Oh nice.

Stephen LaMarca:         Mac and cheese is the highlight, was the highlight of that Thanksgiving, and it was the best. They were like to hell with the turkey, they were here for the mac and cheese.

Benjamin Moses:          The centerpiece.

Stephen LaMarca:         Whoever is in charge of the mac and cheese, they've got a lot riding on their shoulders because that is the centerpiece. It was amazing.

Benjamin Moses:          We've been talking about alternatives in our house because we're going to host it for the first time in our house that we moved here a couple years ago, and we're going to do lunch instead of dinner-

Stephen LaMarca:         Nice.

Benjamin Moses:          Because I want some people to have lunch and leave so they won't be lingering along too late so we'll see.

Stephen LaMarca:         That's the best way to do it.

Benjamin Moses:          That's the best way.

Stephen LaMarca:         We like the classics. We still like mashed potatoes, mac and cheese is going to be great. Deepa loves some stuffing. But we're not big fans of turkey so a couple years ago we did a chicken cook-off.

Benjamin Moses:          Nice.

Stephen LaMarca:         We bought two game hens. Deepa made hers one way-

                                    I remember when you told us about this.

Benjamin Moses:          I did it one way. It was a great, great time.

Stephen LaMarca:         Everybody had their own little Cornish game hen.

Benjamin Moses:          Exactly.

Stephen LaMarca:         They're so adorable too.

Benjamin Moses:          It's fantastic.

Stephen LaMarca:         Thanksgiving should really be about duck.

Benjamin Moses:          Duck is great.

Stephen LaMarca:         Turkey is so-

Benjamin Moses:          It's overrated. It's too big.

Stephen LaMarca:         Ben Franklin was such a troll.

Benjamin Moses:          He's trolling us now in the future.

Stephen LaMarca:         Wanting the bird of the United States to be the turkey instead of the eagle. He got his way with Thanksgiving. It should be a duck. Duck is so much better. Anyway.

Benjamin Moses:          We've been-

Stephen LaMarca:         Oh, wait a minute, you go on.

Benjamin Moses:          One more thing. We've been exploring different international cuisines also. We're thinking about doing some Thai green curry. Any type of dish that has different spices that ... Obviously, with the Indian background we're going to have some biryani, we're going to have some curries and stuff. This is normal food for us.

Stephen LaMarca:         That's okay.

Benjamin Moses:          We want something a little different so we're going to experiment this year.

Stephen LaMarca:         I'm glad you mentioned that. You know what absolutely belongs on the Thanksgiving table?

Benjamin Moses:          Biryani.

Stephen LaMarca:         Chicken 65.

Benjamin Moses:          That's true. It's good no matter how you get it. It's fantastic.

Stephen LaMarca:         Chicken 65, man.

Benjamin Moses:          Are you going to tell me about your adventures with the-

Stephen LaMarca:         Adventures with Sharib. We don't have Sharib for very much longer.

Benjamin Moses:          You're talking about here in the US or just in general?

Stephen LaMarca:         Here in the US.

Benjamin Moses:          Okay, thank goodness.

Stephen LaMarca:         Unfortunately, no. Sharib's okay, there's nothing terminal. It's just during the pandemic Sharib got deported towards the tail end of Trump's reign. He was like "Get them out of here."

Benjamin Moses:          You're not wrong.

Stephen LaMarca:         Sharib, fortunately, we've had the pleasure of having him back in the country for the past two months and we've got him until the beginning of December. One of the things that we really Americanized about Sharib was getting him to appreciate all things beef. Naturally, since he's been back here for the short period, he has made a bucket list of all of the foods he absolutely has to hit, all the restaurants that he has to hit before he goes back indefinitely. One of them was Outback Steakhouse's bloomin' onion.

Benjamin Moses:          He'd love the bloomin' onion.

Stephen LaMarca:         I mean, what's not to love?

Benjamin Moses:          It's fantastic.

Stephen LaMarca:         The bloomin' onion has this magical way of making you hate yourself after you eat it. But up until then, it's the greatest thing ever.

Benjamin Moses:          Speaking of centerpieces, they should call that Outback the bloomin' onion place.

Stephen LaMarca:         They really should. Long story short, we've since deduced. Outback, the only thing that they have going for them is the bloomin' onion.

Benjamin Moses:          Right.

Stephen LaMarca:         We go to Outback Steakhouse to get the bloomin' onion. We order it. We're both like "The bloomin' onion's heavy, we don't want that much food. Let's just get" ... We both decided, you know what? It sounds like a good idea just to get the six-ounce-center-cut sirloin-

Benjamin Moses:          I like a small steak.

Stephen LaMarca:         It's the cheapest cut, we're going to get medium rare. We each got it medium rare. It was delicious.

Benjamin Moses:          Okay, good.

Stephen LaMarca:         It was a little tough, it was a little dry, it was a little chewy but the crust on it was amazing. It cost nothing. We got out of Outback for less than $40 a person. There were no alcoholic beverages. It would've been impressive if we could have done below $40 with alcoholic beverages. And then I was telling Sharib, I was like ... Or he was like "I wish Melissa was here with us." Because she had her first conference this week, but more about that later. And Melissa actually hates Outback Steakhouse. She worked for a few years growing up at LongHorn Steakhouse and is super snobby about it. And is like "LongHorn is the proving grounds where people have to work before they can work at Capital Grille" which as we know is a fancy US-wide steakhouse chain. Capital Grille does not make anything bad. Is it the best steakhouse ever? No, but it's not far from it.

Benjamin Moses:          It's a high end steakhouse.

Stephen LaMarca:         It's a chain. The best chain in the US.

Benjamin Moses:          Okay. We'll talk about that in another episode.

Stephen LaMarca:         Sure. Anyway. She was always like "Longhorn is the proving grounds for people who want to work at Capital Grille." And I was like "Okay, whatever. BS. I'm calling BS on that." Long story short, Sharib and I decide, let's go to LongHorn Steakhouse in the next few days, get dinner there, and compare. We'll get the same thing we got minus the bloomin' onion because only Outback has that. We'll get the signature appetizer at LongHorn Steakhouse. We did this last night. We go to LongHorn Steakhouse for dinner last night, we got their Wild West shrimp which is their signature appetizer. We couldn't finish it. It was delicious, don't get me wrong, but LongHorn Steakhouse ... The steak better in every way.

Benjamin Moses:          Okay.

Stephen LaMarca:         The food was better in every way. The food at LongHorn Steakhouse we both deduced is ... It's absolutely a high-end steakhouse, same price as Outback.

Benjamin Moses:          Wow.

Stephen LaMarca:         Less than $40 per person. With the number of steakhouse that you and I have been to and Sharib, traveling, and expense through AMT, I can say LongHorn Steakhouse is just as good as most of them.

Benjamin Moses:          Wow.

Stephen LaMarca:         Not all of them.

Benjamin Moses:          Sure.

Stephen LaMarca:         I mean, the last time you and I went to a steakhouse I had A5 Wagyu.

Benjamin Moses:          Oh, yeah.

Stephen LaMarca:         Nothing's going to be as good as that. It was like is this sushi or is it steak? I have no idea. It was amazing. LongHorn Steakhouse hands down. Now I believe and I understand why Melissa says that it's just cheap Capital Grille. It was better in every way. But I can say one thing where LongHorn falls short. The customer service was trash. Our server, she was very nice and she was very accommodating but she was nearly nonexistent.

Benjamin Moses:          Sometimes you want that but-

Stephen LaMarca:         Sometimes you do, to be fair.

Benjamin Moses:          There's a balance.

Stephen LaMarca:         Because there was so much time before she came to our table, we had plenty of time to look over the menu and we Sharib and I knew exactly what we wanted to order. So when she finally showed up we ordered everything else. We ordered everything at once, everything came out at once.

Benjamin Moses:          Oh no.

Stephen LaMarca:         It was like okay-

Benjamin Moses:          That's not what you want.

Stephen LaMarca:         This is all right. Well, at least it's giving the steak time to rest which is what a lot of people screw up with. You need to let the steak rest before you cut into it.

Benjamin Moses:          If they don't do it for you.

Stephen LaMarca:         If they don't do it for you.

Benjamin Moses:          That's a fun experience.

Stephen LaMarca:         It was really fun.

Benjamin Moses:          It's good to know LongHorn is good quality.

Stephen LaMarca:         I'm sold on it.

Benjamin Moses:          Is that the place you get peanuts?

Stephen LaMarca:         No, that is Texas Roadhouse.

Benjamin Moses:          I keep getting them mixed up.

Stephen LaMarca:         I mean, at the end of the day they're almost all the same. And then LongHorn Steakhouse just steps out in front of the food.

Benjamin Moses:          It doesn't matter.

Stephen LaMarca:         Oh my God, I was blown away by the cut of meat.

Benjamin Moses:          Nice. Steve, can you tell us about today's sponsor?

Stephen LaMarca:         Today's sponsor is IMTS+, the people behind technology. The stories driving the future of manufacturing. The thought leaders and people like us creating the products, the opportunities, and solving the challenges for our industry. Explore a new digital destination designed from the manufacturing technology community where you can watch, read, learn, join, and connect. Go to imts.com.

Benjamin Moses:          Thanks, Steve.

Stephen LaMarca:         You bet.

Benjamin Moses:          I'm excited for Road Trippin' with Steve for next year.

Stephen LaMarca:         I'm really excited. Going to be in Detroit

Benjamin Moses:          In the cold.

Stephen LaMarca:         Going to be in the cold. I'm definitely going to wear some baggy jeans, some Timberlands in a Southpole jacket with a Wu-Tang Clan beanie.

Benjamin Moses:          You're in Detroit you might as well.

Stephen LaMarca:         We're going to get some Detroit-style pizza, underrated by the way.

Benjamin Moses:          Top-tier pizza.

Stephen LaMarca:         We're going to get some Mom's Spaghetti, and we're going to see a whole lot of robots, and maybe even an American car manufacturer plant.

Benjamin Moses:          Robots and food, I like it. I got two articles. The first one I have is MIT Solved a Century-Old Differential Equation to Break Liquid AI's Computational Bottleneck.

Stephen LaMarca:         I'm sorry. In the article, do they share the differential equation?

Benjamin Moses:          No, they solved it.

Stephen LaMarca:         That's not fair.

Benjamin Moses:          It's in a research paper that's linked to it.

Stephen LaMarca:         Okay.

Benjamin Moses:          I avoid the rabbit hole of links after links. It's something we could probably post. It's posted in Gadget. It's been a while since I've been on their site.

Stephen LaMarca:         It's been a while since I've solved a differential equation.

Benjamin Moses:          You and I both brother. Well, for machine learning, it's the application of an algorithm that's solving the equation over and over again to get you the answer you're looking for. It's like in a vision system, you train a program that has these type of pixels. If it doesn't then it pass-fail. On a vision system for inspection, that's how you basically train a model and your output is algorithm that you process over and over again. Instead of just processing your data set once to train your model, it's continual manipulation of the algorithm real-time basically. Not quite real-time but over and over again continuously. So instead of having the bigger loop of always go back to the data set, retrain your model, and then get your algorithm after that, they're looking at creating a liquid neural network.

Neural networks is one type of machine learning, and they're looking at a liquid style, and they're looking at models requiring time series data to operate so think of autonomous driving vehicles. And they're looking at other type of tasks like pacemakers, monitoring, weather forecasting, investing. So it's a really broad spectrum of applications for this where there's a time sensitivity to their process.

The reason it was expensive, it's very difficult computationally. The hardware required to actually process all that data is too much. The cost of running this, you're probably talking about transferring the data to a cloud and having a big set of servers running that analysis. So what they did is they simplified it by solving the equation at the neuron level. Within neural networks, they look at ... It's very similar to how a brain is mapped so they have neurons communicating.

So they're looking at how to construct and running the equation through less neurons, basically less connections, and running that faster and requiring less computational power. It's an interesting look on machine learning. Two sides of that. One, the computational power of required that's needed for machine learning. We gloss over that a lot where we assume a lot of edge devices can do it, which is fair, but when you're looking at really difficult and time-sensitive processing well, that requires a lot of power that the edge computing may not have. It's a very interesting look. And also what I'm really interested in, how confident they are about introducing new data into their liquid equation, right?

Stephen LaMarca:         Right.

Benjamin Moses:          Previously you would run the model determining a confidence level. Run some forecasting and see how confident you are. If the algorithm's constantly being updated, how do you verify your confidence level in the future? I'm really curious to see the impact on the manufacturing floor about this, about reducing the need for the computational requirements. And we're going to talk about AGVs in a little bit where that directly applies to that.

Stephen LaMarca:         Sure, sure. This is a fascinating article and this will make your brain hurt as it's already making mine hurt again for the second time. Admittedly, and I want to open with that, I was not the strongest student in differential equations. Actually, I wasn't the strongest student full stop. I failed differential equations a handful of times until I eventually passed it after I took quantum mechanics which differential equations was a prerequisite to, but I needed to apply differential equations to be able to understand them so actually taking quantum mechanics first helped me get it.

Some of the takeaways that I got from the differential equations class was that if you're doing ... Not predictions, predictions isn't the right word but simulations then that is a bad algorithm. And you implement or you incorporate or differential equations to realize the algorithm instead of simulating it. For example, a simulation of a differential equation would be employing Euler's method. You're getting close to what you're looking for but you're not getting ... After so many iterations, it's so far from ... When you watch the news to see what the weather's going to be, don't look at it past two days. After 48 hours it is a wild guess and it's entirely wrong. Differential equations helped me see that, taking that class. What I'm getting out of this article is, in the past up until now, up until IMIT finally did the work, everybody's been doing ... Everybody's been using a bad algorithm and nobody's implemented differential equations. And now by using a classic but somewhat difficult form of math, now we're getting better automation patterns out of it.

Benjamin Moses:          I think your scenario of being able to forecast longer is a very good prediction of that or use case of that. To your point, it's instead of approximation getting to an actual equation, right? I think it was really cool. We'll see the results of this.

Stephen LaMarca:         That's high-octane stuff there.

Benjamin Moses:          Thanks MIT.

Stephen LaMarca:         Thank you so much. Of course, it's MIT.

Benjamin Moses:          Steve, you tell us about AGVs.

Stephen LaMarca:         Yes.

Benjamin Moses:          You got some controversial topic here.

Stephen LaMarca:         Last time we were here-

Benjamin Moses:          Let me buckle up.

Stephen LaMarca:         Our last episode which was 47 minutes, I didn't have the chance to go into this so I'm going into it now. A month or so ago ... Actually, two months ago, Boston Dynamics came out and said, "You can't put a gun on our robot dog Spot, our quadruped AGV Spot." Sure. You can't put a gun on it.

Benjamin Moses:          Good.

Stephen LaMarca:         I know I've got his name somewhere here but it doesn't matter. Whoever said that clearly underestimated the deep pockets of firearms enthusiasts and gun tubers for that matter. Within two weeks, somebody on YouTube put a gun on a robot dog on a quadruped AGV. The same person at Boston Dynamics comes out again and says, "Please don't put guns on our robot dog spot." And I understand their intentions, they don't want to see their product ... Which for the longest time was already a little too creepy and scary and now we've more accepted Spot the quadruped AGV into our lives and I really want one now, and want to make sure Charlie's not afraid of one, and we want to even do some advertising campaigns for AMT. We've been in the talks of it with exhibitions about getting a Spot to help promote IMTS+ and whatnot. Oh, and you don't have to talk to Andra for very long to find out that it's not a good look to weaponize automation. To play devil's advocate, automation came from weaponizing it.

Benjamin Moses:          We talked about that before in the last episode about-

Stephen LaMarca:         Augmented reality came from heads-up displays which came ... Before they were put in cars they were put in fighter jets so the pilot would know where the guns were shooting. Automation I feel like started with weaponization. What do you think the AIM-9 is other than a suicide robot?

Benjamin Moses:          And taking a step back. I mean, the past couple of years there's been a lot of workers within big corporations that are very against getting into the line of defense. I think there's a lot of-

Stephen LaMarca:         I absolutely respect that.

Benjamin Moses:          I definitely respect everyone's opinion on what their product serves. If they weren't interested in being part of the defense machine I think they have the right to choose, right? It's an ongoing battle. Microsoft is deploying augmented reality glasses to the military right now and we talk about how it's making everyone nauseous. If you're working on AR glasses, would you expected that in the defense? Who knows. I think that's completely reasonable to expect a preference on not being part of that.

Stephen LaMarca:         The whole point I'm trying to make is, you can't expect something to not go in the direction of weapons because the technology came from weapons. Microprocessors a key example. I mentioned red dot sights earlier and augmented reality, but microprocessors, why do you think they wanted to make powerful small chips? To put them in guided rockets.

Benjamin Moses:          Wasn't one of the first use cases for Spot to carry equipment for the soldiers?

Stephen LaMarca:         Yeah, it was to be a mule.

Benjamin Moses:          Right, exactly.

Stephen LaMarca:         The soldier could carry weapons and stuff instead of rations and whatnot.

Benjamin Moses:          I love me a good ration. What happens next?

Stephen LaMarca:         Boston Dynamics pleads with the public, "Please don't put guns on our quadruped AGV." And I'm like "Okay, sure." Well, a couple days later China's put a gun on a quadruped AGV. And the quadruped AGV that they had probably wasn't a Spot but I can almost guarantee you that it was derived from the same patent.

Benjamin Moses:          Looks the same.

Stephen LaMarca:         It walks exactly the same. It's wearing the camouflage paint job that's probably China's military and it's got a big ole gun on it. A big ole 50 cal Hbar or something of the equivalent of a heavy Browning.

Benjamin Moses:          They put a big guy on there.

Stephen LaMarca:         They did, they did. Honestly, from seeing the gun tubers that did it, the gun tubers just put a nine-millimeter-

Benjamin Moses:          Sure. Old pistol.

Stephen LaMarca:         PCC, Pistol Caliber Carbine. A rifle that's chambered in a pistol cartridge. Those things are infamous for having little to no recoil.

Benjamin Moses:          Sure.

Stephen LaMarca:         The quadruped robot could barely handle the robot or the recoil of a nine mill.

Benjamin Moses:          Right.

Stephen LaMarca:         I'd like to see China's robot fire that 50 cal.

Benjamin Moses:          Goes flying whatever, the whole thing.

Stephen LaMarca:         Whatever that anti-material machine gun was.

Benjamin Moses:          That's going to be an interesting debate on this type of technology of the allowance of different use cases.

Stephen LaMarca:         And it's also a bit scary because it's like Boston Dynamics we know how smart you are, why haven't you ... I know your programming for recoil mitigation's going to be better than whatever China can do.

Benjamin Moses:          Right. The arms race is going to be interesting.

Stephen LaMarca:         It's both funny and really scary at the same time.

Benjamin Moses:          We'll see what Australia does. That'll be my-

Stephen LaMarca:         That sort of litmus test.

Benjamin Moses:          That's our litmus test exactly. Taking a step back. Quadruped AGVs is slowly getting into let's say the industrial space, right? Spot has been around for a hot minute but the use cases have been ... It's still developing, right? We're still trying to understand how that technology could be used in industrial space. I got an article from Metrology News, it's reporting on robotics role conference for inspection and maintenance robotics. We're thinking huge facilities, oil, and gas, massive manufacturing facilities. How do you support inspection and maintenance of a chemical facility? A bunch of years ago they were talking about augmented reality glasses where you could wear a helmet, and as the operator walked up to a dial you would know your location and what piece of equipment on. It would take digital information off that physical piece of equipment. Augmented reality isn't around anymore, let's put that on a robot quadruped AGV and just have it go around the facility and solve that problem. They're not using Spot they're using something like that. It's a different robotic.

Stephen LaMarca:         Spot's not the only quadruped AGV out there.

Benjamin Moses:          It's not, it's. You define a preset of parameters you want to inspect, it goes up and does ... It's probably visual inspection so you have to train the visual model of what to read, define some pass-fail criteria, or just drive data. And you're talking about massive facilities that are miles and miles large so having this roam around, get the data that you need, verify a pipe's not cracked, verify things are in place. I thought that was a really interesting use case and I'm really curious to see how that further propagates.

Stephen LaMarca:         That is really cool. A clever title on that article too.

Benjamin Moses:          Good job writer. The article is, Automated Plant inspections Become a Walk In the Park-

Stephen LaMarca:         Because it's literally a quadruped robot dog walking around the plant. One thing that I have seen from the YouTube videos that I've watched of people who bought quadruped AGVs ... And there's got to be a shorter term for that that I'm just-

Benjamin Moses:          We'll make up a term.

Stephen LaMarca:         Robot dog. One thing that I have seen is they don't fall over very often.

Benjamin Moses:          Correct.

Stephen LaMarca:         All of the programming and software engineering to prevent them from falling over prevents them from high siding from ... That's their primary focus and concern, the dog high sighting. What that means is, let's say the quadruped is walking around a corner to the right, is walking in a right-hand curve, the software is compensating for centripetal force of the dog falling over to the left. It may even lean a little bit to the right as it's turning to the right. All of the videos that I've seen of modern, on the market, you can go buy this today quadrupeds, whenever I see them crash they're always low siding-

Benjamin Moses:          Oh, interesting.

Stephen LaMarca:         Which is really, really interesting to me. Low siding is when the legs slip out from under the animal. The quadruped, if it's still turning to the right, it falls to the right because it's feet slip to the left out from under it. It's just an observation that I've made and I found it very interesting.

Benjamin Moses:          Right. Similar to motorcycle dynamics.

Stephen LaMarca:         Yes, exactly. Which is why I used the term high side and a low side.

Benjamin Moses:          Steve, you started us off with a controversial topic, I think you should end us with a controversial topic.

Stephen LaMarca:         Okay. I saw an article just this morning. Oops, where is it? Paving the Way for Industry 5.0 and Cobots, Instrumentation Monthly. All right. We've heard Industry 5.0 before. Only a handful of times because frankly we still haven't attained Industry 4.0 across the industry yet. And maybe in some cases, there are still people stuck on 2.0. That's neither here nor there. I want to bring up this article because this is officially the first Industry 5.0 mention and article that has popped up in my personal Google feed. Not like MTInsight, Tech Trends, I've seen it there before. But in my personal feed, I feel like when I see something there it's made the mainstream. This is the first time, in my view, Industry 5.0 has hit the mainstream and I'm really excited. I've got two key takeaways from here.

Benjamin Moses:          Sure.

Stephen LaMarca:         First, let's do the positive professional one which is I told you so. The article basically says, "Collaborative robots, cobots, are foundational in adapting Industry 5.0"-

Benjamin Moses:          Wow.

Stephen LaMarca:         "In adopting it." I've been saying that for at least the last year-

Benjamin Moses:          At least.

Stephen LaMarca:         Maybe more.

Benjamin Moses:          Sure.

Stephen LaMarca:         I've been saying that automation is foundational to the future of technology which is almost a perfect executive summary of this article but specifically cobots for Industry 5.0. I'm really excited about that. I get to say I told you so. My other takeaway is, this article, Instrumentation Monthly, is a magazine or an editorial for ... The website is instrumentation.co.uk. This is an English publication.

Benjamin Moses:          That's correct.

Stephen LaMarca:         What do they know about advanced manufacturing? As far as I'm concerned it's two blokes in a shed making stuff. Oye love, this is what they call a cobot, isn't it? It just-

Benjamin Moses:          It got you excited and let you down at the same time.

Stephen LaMarca:         Yeah. It's like here I am thinking this is a forward-thinking publication and then they hit me with oh, it's just English.

Benjamin Moses:          It's probably an American author though.

Stephen LaMarca:         They probably have one cobot over there.

Benjamin Moses:          In the whole nation. It's funny that Marcy is going to not like us for this.

Stephen LaMarca:         Do better, do better. Look at your auto industry.

Benjamin Moses:          They have money.

Stephen LaMarca:         You guys made the McLaren F1 which is ... Thank you Gordon Murray. I think he's a Scotsman.

Benjamin Moses:          That's 1000 years ago.

Stephen LaMarca:         That was the '90s, they could only make 100 of them.

Benjamin Moses:          The pinnacle of automotive.

Stephen LaMarca:         He was the pinnacle. Well, now he's making another car but it's not out yet.

Benjamin Moses:          The T50.

Stephen LaMarca:         The T-

Benjamin Moses:          T something.

Stephen LaMarca:         .50.

Benjamin Moses:          A big old fan in the back.

Stephen LaMarca:         Oh, he also has a design for the perfect sub $30,000, probably sub $40,000 now thanks to inflation, sports car that he has ... He's like "I'm not going to make this myself because it's not going to hurt my brand but I've built my brand as the pinnacle of sports car technology. I've made this affordable sports car design, and blueprint, and schematic if you will. I'm not going to make it on my own brand. And it's going to cost me too much" because it's supposed to be mass-produced. I'm English I can't mass-produce anything. He's trying to sell it to another car manufacturer, nobody's bought it.

Benjamin Moses:          Nobody's bought it.

Stephen LaMarca:         And I really hope somebody does because it's Gordon Murray.

Benjamin Moses:          Sure. That'd be awesome. Steve, this was a great episode. In the comments let me know what your alternative Thanksgiving dishes, or just email me. Don't send me a picture [inaudible 00:33:47].

Stephen LaMarca:         Any angry Brits out there?

Benjamin Moses:          They don't know how to use computers.

Stephen LaMarca:         To bad you can't-

Benjamin Moses:          They can't fire us.

Stephen LaMarca:         I'm not going to say all that. Too bad you can't celebrate Thanksgiving.

Benjamin Moses:          Where can they find more info about us?

Stephen LaMarca:         AMTonline.org/resources.

Benjamin Moses:          I kept wanting to say AMT News.

Stephen LaMarca:         AMTonline.org/resources. That's it, that's where you find us.

Benjamin Moses:          Thanks, Steve.

Stephen LaMarca:         Like, share, subscribe.

Benjamin Moses:          Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

Stephen LaMarca:         Thanks, man, you too.

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Author
Benjamin Moses
Senior Director, Technology
Recent technology News
Episode 127: Ben and Steve both have some testbed updates and conclude that having a solid in-house IT team on hand is vital for implementing new OT (operational technology) systems. The tech friends lighten things up by reflecting on their Thanksgiving.
Episode 126: Steve immediately kicks it off with a listicle regarding the ten most disruptive 3D printers in history. The tech friends then discuss augmented reality glasses. Steve also reports that Georgia Tech has a replica of the AMT testbed.
Episode 125: The testbed has a new computer, and it was built in-house! The tech friends discuss and the death of door-to-door trick-or-treating. Elissa reports on Hershey’s multi-million dollar investment in supply chain development.
Episode 124: It’s been a minute since IMTS 2024 and the last formal episode, so the Tech Friends kick things off with a lively discussion over… wait, Steve kicks things off with a testbed update! Ben talks about inspection.
Episode 123: The Tech Friends start with a lively discussion over EVs versus hybrids and battery alternatives such as capacitors, flywheels, and hydrogen. Elissa says NASA is sending gardeners to space. Ben thinks mobile robots need more computers.
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