The other day, a group of kids suddenly burst into the coffee shop where I was sitting, working on an article. As the peace was immediately disturbed by their presence, I had to pause my writing for a moment.
The kids brought their drinks to the table next to mine and sat down. Feeling a bit annoyed, I started to sneak some peeks at my neighbours. There were two girls and three boys, who, judging by their looks, were not older than 18. ‘Come on, kids. It’s only Thursday afternoon. Isn’t it too early for you to be hanging around?’ I muttered to myself. Although I wasn’t that into school either when I was their age, I at least didn’t skip my classes.
After a while, one of the girls started up her laptop and called to the others to look at the screen. Vaguely I could see it was an excel sheet. Taking a big sip of her frappuccino, the girl announced to the group: ‘Hey guys, check out our profit for this quarter’. Profit? Suddenly I got became very intrigued to know what exactly this was all about. And that’s when my journalist’s instinct kicked in, as my hearing sharpened in order to catch as much of their conversation as possible. It turned out that these kids were running an online shop for camping equipment. Moreover, they liked to refer to each other as the department of marketing, ordering, distribution, finance and customer service, although I’m pretty sure for a ‘company’ of this scale, those were most likely all one-person departments, manned by those sitting at the table next to mine. But never mind the actual size of their company, it turned out this kiddy business was generating monthly earnings of 20,000 euros. And on the day in question, they were having their shareholders’ meeting in the coffeeshop.
Not only did such a realisation make my earlier muttering judgement seem so ridiculous and embarrassing, but also it occurred to me that my life was rather pale compared to these kids. But how can it not be? We live in a world with so many kids founding their own companies before 20, giving a stadium-sized concert at age 15 or sailing around the world alone at age 14. I bet if I told my grandma these stories, she would say ‘this crazy world is upside down’. Regardless of what others think of this phenomenon, I admire these kids’ bravery and spirit to create miracles. And I’m glad to see this spirit is spreading out to influence more of their peers. It could be true that very soon most of these kids will get to see the other side of this story – hardship, failure, troubles other kids are spared from and so on. It’s the side that is hardly told in the media, simply because it doesn’t sound that appealing. But so what? If these things are inevitable in our lives, then these pioneering kids are at least a few steps ahead of the rest of us. We always say ‘you’re never too old to follow your dreams’, but perhaps nowadays these kids are also proving to us that you’re never too young to get them underway.
Lei Li, from Shanghai, China, is recent MSc graduate in science communication.
She can be contacted at: LeiLivanShanghai@gmail.com
It runs, tumbles and regains its equilibrium. Whether the terrain is sandy, grassland, strewn with rocks or, as is the case in the laboratory of the Delft Center for Systems and Control, scattered with obstacles like pipes, Dr Gabriel Lopes’ legged robot goes on. “The biggest invention of mankind may have been the wheel,” says the robotics researcher. “Yet if something goes wrong and the ground is full of obstacles, then you need to go back to nature and see how animals use legs. For rescue operations you need legs.”
About ten years ago Lopes, in collaboration with four other North American universities, started working on a six-legged robot inspired by a cockroach at the University of Michigan. The robot was quite successful, as Lopes demonstrates by showing videos in which the robot mountain climbs (and tumbles off big rocks) and runs over grids full of big holes. “I spent lots of time during my PhD research repairing the robot,” Lopes laughs.
At TU Delft, where Lopes has worked for two years and is now an assistant professor, the researcher wants to take the robot a step further. “We’ve worked on the mathematics to control the synchronization of the legs. Now that we understand the mathematics, we can use them to change the gaits – the way the robot moves its limbs,” he says, while giving a command to the robot with his iPad. Suddenly the robot starts running instead of walking.
Ultimately Lopes’ robot must be able to switch gaits autonomously. He’s working on an algorithm that allows the robot to measure the power it exerts to maintain a certain speed on a certain terrain with a certain gait. “The robot will try different parameters and decide which is best – just like a horse does to choose the most energetically efficient type of locomotion. Did you know a horse knows more then ten different gaits like, walk, trot and gallop?”
The idea is also to use the robot, which is programmed with a programme familiar to many students – Matlab – for educational purposes. In Michigan this was a great success, with students practicing their programming skills by holding competitions in which the robot had to dance.
Video of the walking robot:
http://bit.ly/hj7c4j
Video of the dancing robot:
http://bit.ly/ewLkIP
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