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Language: en

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Every time Boston Dynamics puts out
one of their big YouTube productions,

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the world is amazed.
The robots dance. Or they do parkour.

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All of which is very impressive, but
it's under controlled conditions in a lab.

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It's not exactly a
practical, real-world use.

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So what are those robots actually
being used for in the real world?

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Inside this mountainside in western
Austria is a hydroelectric power plant.

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I would have filmed this piece-to-camera
actually down in the turbine hall, but...

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[shouting over industrial noise]
It's a bit loud in here! 

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At full capacity, 150 tons of water a second
goes down from the uphill reservoir,

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through the turbines in the cavern,
generating 350 megawatts of power.

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And it's all run remotely.
Switching this plant on and off

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is done at a control center
about half an hour's drive that way,

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where they also control
twenty other hydro plants.

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On a normal day,
no-one works here at all.

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But for safety, someone does
have to regularly drive out to all those

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twenty power plants, and check the
physical things are all as they should be.

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So you can probably see
where this is going.

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- We are using a robot to
continuously do inspection tasks,

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and therefore testing if this is plausible
in the middle of the Alps.

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Energy Robotics is putting software
on robots to make them smart.

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We are a software company
and we're not building the hardware.

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We are writing code. 

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Therefore, we ask other companies
to build the hardware for us,

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or use existing robots already. 

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We work with a lot of robot companies.
We're picking the best robot for the task. 

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- Boston Dynamics and other companies build
the actual physical robots, and provide

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a remote controller that someone can use
to directly move the bots around.

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But they also provide an interface
for computer code.

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The robot has built-in navigation
and obstacle avoidance,

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so in the same way that you can write code
to automate things

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on a regular computer, you can write code
for the robot dog's computer too.

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Your code can learn the whole site
that you're working at

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and tell the bot, OK,
find your way to this point.

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Look at this thing.
Take a picture or a temperature reading.

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And if that picture doesn't
look like it should,

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or there's something blocking
your way, let us know about it.

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The robot is not remote controlled.
It's doing that task autonomously. 

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That means we teach it a certain mission. 

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And the robot does the
repetition of the mission.

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But it'll also be, in the future, able to
do something called "click and inspect".

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That means we have a digital twin
of the environment,

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and then we're just saying
what the robot needs to inspect.

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And the robot plans a path towards the
inspection point and gets the information.

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The robot autonomously extracts
that information and reacts

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based on the results,
which means either it sends an alarm

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if it's out of the norm,
or it just collects information, then

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puts it into the report
at the end of the mission. 

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You can send robot dogs into toxic
or radioactive environments

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humans shouldn't be in. 

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But this isn't a particularly dangerous
site. They let me in, after all.

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It's just inconvenient to drive here, 

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particularly in winter, when snowstorms
might close the mountain road entirely.

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This is a place designed
for humans, though,

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which is why robots with wheels or tracks
aren't an option.

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- So it's important to have a robot which is
capable to operate in human environment,

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because all the infrastructure humans
have built has been built for humans.

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So therefore, we need the robot
to be capable of interacting

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with its environment,
meaning simply: every other situation

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like here where we need to climb
stairs, we're using a robot on legs.

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In the substation, 

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where we have flat ground, for example,
we're using robots on wheels or on tracks.

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We're developing a skill
which we'll use in oil and gas,

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where many of our robots
are actually working,

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which we call "Man Down Detector",
so that if the robot detects someone lying

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on the ground, because of whatever
incident, then the robot sounds an alarm,

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and therefore brings the troops
to help the person lying on the ground.

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- This trial will succeed or fail
based on two questions.

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First, does it work reliably? 

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And second, if so, is it cheaper overall
than sending out people,

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people, particularly when there might be
a shortage of engineers soon?

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- The goal is to support human inspection,
and in the long run to replace certain parts,

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especially those where humans need to be sent
in hazardous environments.

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In Germany, we have about
8,000 substations.

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All of those need to have inspections,

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and the number of substations is growing
due to the change to renewable energy.

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We need to have more robots on the ground,
because we have not enough

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engineers in the workforce right now,
and we need about 400,000

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more in the next ten years. 

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The robot can perform up to twelve hours
of inspections: sixty minutes

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walking around, sixty minutes charging,
so a lot of inspection every day.

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Over the next few years, 

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we're also testing assisted manipulation,
where the robot is with a human

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doing manipulation tasks
within infrastructure environments.

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In the future that might be
fully autonomous manipulation,

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but there's probably some years to go.

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- If this works and if it gets rolled out,
then the power companies

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will be saving employee time
and therefore money.

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In the same way that twenty power plants
can now be controlled from one center,

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twenty power plants could be
inspected from one center,

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 with actual human engineers

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dispatched only when there's actually
something wrong that needs to be fixed.

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And I suspect it will be a while 

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before the robots
start to take over that job as well.