
– Dmitriy, please,
start by telling us about yourself. Who are you – a scientist, a businessman,
or an engineer?
I’m a scientist
who wants to see the fruits of his scientific research turned into commercial
products. I don’t want to be just a businessman – the laurels of Warren Buffet
do not tempt me. On the one hand, I sincerely believe that with the help of
science one can make outstanding, progressive, and commercially profitable
creations. On the other hand, I play the role of a merchant who wants to sell
the things he creates on the market under the heading “planet Earth”.
– What’s special
about the area of robotics that you work in?
The more of these
objects, which I call robots, I construct, the more I understand that they’re
not robots. Silicon Valley, which has practically monopolized the ideology on
this concept, defines a robot as an absolutely soulless piece of metal
programmed to fit human needs. It shouldn’t possess any questionable features,
it has to impeccably serve mankind and carry out the functions assigned to it.
But when you have the task of making the objects independent, able to move
within their own logic and occasionally absolutely ignore the interests of man
– when we give this construct some sort of right to its own existence, in other
words – then it is hard to call that a robot in the conventional, stereotypical
sense. I was forced to give this phenomenon a different name – an “alive
machine.”
Naturally, living
machines are my work. In a way it is alternative robot construction. You
thought that a robot has to be an android? No! Here are robots that in no way
resemble humans. You thought that a robot has to be made of iron? No! Here are
robots made exclusively from soft materials. You thought that a robot has to be
stuffed with electronics? No! Here are robots in which mechanics takes center
stage, and where everything begins to spin and whirl due only to the movement
of wind or water. The main quality of living machines is their ability to being
moving even when only two components have been put together. And these
movements actually do give the impression that we have living mechanisms.
– Is anyone else
working on this?
My role model is
the great Dutch engineer and mathematician Theo Jansen, who makes amazing
figures that are moved by the wind. I know him – I’ve been a guest of his and
have had the honor of speaking with him. If you believe that the epitome of
engineering is the creation of objects that do not require electricity and
programming, while at the same time behaving extremely technologically and with
cybernetic expedience, even with cybernetic intelligence, then that’s exactly
what Theo does. It’s a very thorough solution to the problem of making a
machine live – a tangle of levers, rods, and tubes comes together in
coordinated movement.
However, I
understand that when viewed through the lens of current expectations this is
already too little – it’s like perfecting piston-engined aircraft in the era of
jet aviation. That’s why to me Theo Jansen is a great craftsmen and designer,
but at the same time an artist who is outmoded in his tastes. He is trying to
solve problems that he set before himself in his youth, thirty years ago, when
first professor Prigogine, then Doctor Haken revealed to the world the science
of synergetics, showing that from a series of uncoordinated systems a miracle
can arise – something completely new.
Dutch artist and
kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen creates self-propelled structures that externally
resemble the skeletons of animals. For material Theo uses plastic piping,
bottles, and other materials that come to hand. Wind sets the sculptures in
motion. The sculptures can also “breathe.” When the wind is strong enough, the
excess air pressure is stored away in special reservoirs, so that even when
it’s becalmed the structure does not stop, instead falling back on its
reservoirs. And vice versa – in dangerously high winds the construction drops
anchor.
– In this case
what is the next step in development?
The building-up of
synergy – this is exactly the type of research I carry out. For me what’s
important is a coordination of elements that makes some sort of governing
nucleus that determines the activity of the entire system. I can show this a
little more simply by showing you one of my models – a pneumatically
self-regulating pump. At its heart is a balloon connected to a compressor. If
you turn on the compressor, the balloon will expand until it just about bursts.
But this state of nearly bursting, by means of a mechanism built into the
balloon, makes the compressor turn off. The balloon deflates until it is
practically completely deflated. The condition of almost complete deflated,
though, turns the compressor back on. The balloon acts as if it “doesn’t want
to” burst and “doesn’t want to” deflate, and to this end it brings in different
gadgets that are capable of reacting to these states. So, again and again,
moving from minimum to maximum and from maximum to minimum, this balloon
becomes the heart of the mechanism, at the same time setting in motion a world
of elements that simultaneously perform an incredible number of tasks – they
turn on, shift, whirl, turn, switch places. One of the tasks I put before
myself in this model is to learn how to construct things so that each detail
had up to a hundred functions – so that it simultaneously twirled, and
scuttled, and turned, moved itself, and stopped… In the future this entire
thing will be able to unhook itself from the compressor, move around, find
another one and hook itself up to it. And this will also be behavior “with
elements of reasoning”, although initially it was born of a “desire for a
certain emptiness”: on the one hand, the desire to not expand into infinity
(burst), and on the other, to not become nothing (deflate).
And in this
structure there are no electronics at all. It’s what I call 3D mechanics, since
each element of the structure plays its own important spatial role within the
entire technological ensemble. And all of this is controlled by a certain
unseen hand. Sooner or later I will hide, or “dissolve”, this balloon within
the mechanism, and no one will even be able to figure out why the structure
moves, why it acts like a rational organism. And here’s the surprising thing –
in a living cell something similar happens. It’s also 3D mechanics, only on a
molecular level, where the driving force is provided by “molecular gears”,
twirling in an enormous number of interwoven biochemical reactions.
We’ll bring the
machine to life one step at a time, algorithm after algorithm – there are something
on the order of forty experiments of various types. Many questions go into these algorithms:
questions of utilization (death), self-preservation, self-awareness, formation
of a special mechanical sense perception (sensors), even of emotions and future
transformations (development). Of course, an entire set of construction
experiments is necessary, and it is these experiments that excite our minds
with the interesting results we might get.
You can’t exclude the element of chance – at a certain point I will have
to relate not to the reality I create, but to the reality that the machine
creates for itself. Exactly like a child
who for a time is raised by its parents, but then begins to amaze them with the
decisions it makes for itself. This, by the way, is also one of the forty
algorithms.
– Where do you get
the ideas for your designs?
I painstakingly
study the history of technology, devoting a great deal of time to it. I have an
enormous library of books on the history of technology, and not an evening
passes that I don’t read something from it. I could tell you a lot, beginning
with the automatons of Antiquity up to contemporary mechatronics. I know a
thing or two about the evolution of many types of technology (weapons,
aircraft, androids, adding machines, clock mechanisms, mechanical men and
animals) and specific devices (levers, cranes, presses, printing equipment,
steam, diesel, and electric engines), the work of brilliant masters of the past
(Hero of Alexandria, Ctesibius, Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci), and all sorts
of clever things they made, like trap labyrinths with secret doors. I am
constantly systematizing this wide spectrum of things, getting down to the very
roots – what, when, for what purpose and how it appeared, with research into dates
and names, into the interrelations between these masters, the instruments and
techniques they used. It’s in these areas that ideas shine out.
History repeats
itself. I can point out that the type of mechanics that I work with has been
used more than once – beginning with Archimedes, Hero of Alexandria, and a
series of Arabic and Chinese inventors. There are a large number of ancient
mechanisms so complicated that we can’t reproduce them today, and if we can,
then only for very large sums of money. For example, a piano-playing automaton,
consisting of more than 2,500 ingeniously assembled mechanical components and
created in the seventeenth century by Henri and Pierre Jaquet-Droz, can today
only be duplicated by two companies. They would nearly three years and 1.5 to 2
million dollars on the production of this delight.
The prototypes for
the automaton used in Martin Scorcese’s film Hugo were the automatons of the
watchmakers Henri and Pierre Jaquet-Droz. The most complicated – the
Calligrapher – consists of 6,000 parts. Using a selection of forty letters, it
can write out a text encoded on a codex, choosing letters one after another.
The boy uses a goose feather which he periodically dips in an inkwell, then
shakes so as to avoid inkblots. The automaton’s eyes follow the text, and its
head turns toward the inkwell when it dips the feather in it. Although the
Calligrapher was created in 1772, it is still in working condition.
Before the
nineteenth century the creation of mechanical “toys” was very advanced, and but
was crowded out by the efforts of Faraday, Davy, Maxwell, Tesla, Edison.
Mechanics went over into the fields of the arms industry, the internal
combustion engine, electrical energy and engineering tools.
An attempt to
revive the situation was made by the first generation of cyberneticists – they
created a grand revolution in the rethinking of models of life. But yet more
children of progress – this time rocket science, microelectronics, and digital
technology – once again drew all the attention on themselves. The work begun by
the mechanists of the past was never finished, even though the potential is
enormous. For this reason this work is both a subject of study and a source of
new ideas.
– And why are you
doing all of this?
I understand that
I could just run my own business – the commercial assembly and sale of 3D
printers; I could just make money while amazing things are happening in science
and technology. And later, sitting in front of the television, I would be
excited about how this bright new epoch has arrived, that I’m living in a
golden era. It’s an interesting prospect, a pleasant one, but it would mean
that I have absolutely nothing to do with it – that I don’t make any person
effort to become a partaker in those incredible things that are going on around
me. And how could I do that when I have ideas, the opportunity to challenge
preconceptions and attempt to propose alternative options that are already
before us?
What I am working
on, and what our entire laboratory is ultimately striving towards, is the
creation of a parallel mechanical civilization that can evolve, that possesses
a fate all its own, one not at all related to the fate that arose from the
primordial soup of organic substances, as it’s described in Oparin’s theory. My
team doesn’t have the luxury of those billion years that nature had to work
with, but we have an “accelerator” called “reason” that has been given to her.
We try to take full advantage of reason so that we can make a desperate attempt
to “pump up” our pieces of metal and initiate evolutionary processes of
self-development in mechanical systems; turn on the growth areas, so that right
before our very eyes the machines began to make themselves, and even remake
each other into conceivable and inconceivable models that transform, develop,
compete with one another for certain resources and all the while fear death,
although admittedly not death in the moral-psychological sense that we humans
are used to. We have yet to find an interpretation of the concept of “death” on
a mechanical level.
Anticipating what
is probably your next question, I’ll say right away: I am categorically opposed
to taking upon oneself the role of a Supreme Creator. I am a man of deep faith.
I believe that the Maker united the many hearts of my ancestors so that
eventually I too would appear on this earth. And created a mass of variations
so that I would become the way I am, and so I would think the way I do. I don’t even consider myself the inventor of
these devices – I look for, derive, and give structure to what already exists.
Kurchatov, after all, didn’t create the atom, but he was able to unleash the
power hidden inside it.
– How do you put
together a team to solve problems like these?
I formed the team
over a period of two years in terms of “the collective intelligence of
interrelation and mutual support.” With this team everything gets done quickly,
everything is coordinated and done in order. There is a set of rules for the
creative mechanist. There are no stupid workers, and everyone’s in his own
place and knows what he needs to do. They keep their minds on the job. Each
person has his own specialization: research, modeling, mock-up, assembly,
debugging, testing, checking, introduction of parallel processes... Center stage
are two people – the technical moderator, who manages the process as a whole,
has a good feel for the production process, keeps track of the time spent
making the next model and answers for the final result of the process, and the
coordinator – the person who quickly gets in contact, sets up additional
cooperative ties, who when the need arises contacts, writes, calls, negotiates,
corrects the sequence of cooperation – in general, holds things together.
The team of the project "Living machines"
When new employees
come to me, I throw them into the assembly of some complicated unit right away,
but in a way that they don’t mess things up, and after an hour or two I already
know what will come out of them. It becomes completely clear who has a
technical vein, who has the marks of an inventor, and who doesn’t have either. By
the way, there is an angle of our work tied to the humanities – technical
journalism, which takes the form of keeping a blog.
The surprising thing is that big-shot specialists come to us and
can’t handle simple tasks, even though they are able to do a lot of things.
Only Bauman Institute graduates have never disappointed me – they’re competent
to an unbelievably high level. If you give them a task, sometimes they’ll say:
“All right, that’s impossible, of course, but we’ll come up with a way of doing
it.” And they do! And at times like that I really get excited –
I feel that these are the people I can move mountains with. My only caveat is
that I’m talking about people of my generation (the ‘80s). Young people these
days aren’t quite as capable.
– How much more time is needed to completely realize your concept,
and where are those key points through which your developments can be
capitalized?
I would like the “symphony of parallel mechanical life” to be
written in the next 10 years, since I long to see the fruits of my labor in my
lifetime. In general I like to compare my work with film production, and, as a
person who has “shot the movie”, I want to take a seat in the cinema myself and
look at my finished product. At the same time I’m a realist and very well
understand that you can’t sell this grandiose mechanical civilization offhand.
The public is merciless; it has its own well-formed stereotypes and everyday
preferences which have broken more than a few innovators. For that reason we
have to make this happen by means of a constantly-developing series, like a TV
series, dividing it into seasons and showing each episode at a
strictly-determined time that is convenient to the market. An episode is a
production line of five or six units serving as a source of income, which will
then be reinvested into the most interesting thing – what the viewer will see
next. And well, to be honest, I don’t have the money right now to go start on
the high-rise Institute of Mechanical Civilization.
I will begin my first season this year. It will be a series of toy
construction sets with clever and diverting mechanics. Using these sets, it
will be possible to assemble relatively simple devices that you can put on a
table to liven it up. For example, different types of nightlights that swivel,
blink, and follow movement; mechanical
flowers that react to human activity; different kinds of breathing, moving,
snorting creatures that are interesting to observe… It’s a small segment of
that fathomless and rapidly growing sphere that’s called “smart house” or
“smart office.” I think that in the future attaching all kinds of entertaining
devices to the smart house platform will become the norm.
– What niche market are you focusing on? Toy construction sets for children?
While making the first episode of my film, I’m trying to stay
within the realm of fun and useful devices that the customer can assemble
himself. My consumer is a person who needs to enliven – in the literal sense of
that word – the environment in which he lives and works.
As for children, today’s child has more preferences in high
technology than even the most advanced adult. But the spectrum of preferences
of children today is very selective. When I show some incredible gadget to
preschool-age children, it doesn’t really get them interested – but then you
have a lot of kids from ten to fifteen who get indescribably excited and want
it all for themselves. That’s why for me teenagers, without a doubt, are the
guides in the market.
On the whole progress always needed and always needs good
promotion: if you take part in
exhibitions, organize showrooms, shoot interesting videos and put them on
YouTube, then the group of interested parties, without a doubt, will form.
– How are you preparing to organize production, and on what scale
do you hope to plan production?
Organizing production is probably what I’m able to do better than
anything else. In my life there were many projects that required me to solve
systems organization issues. Machinery, people, internal ergonomics, internal
logistics, the manufacturing cycle with its timetable, rhythms, schedule,
flowcharts with time assignments, bookkeeping – it’s a world of its own. And
it’s my inheritance – my father managed production, my grandfather managed production.
Even my great-grandfather managed production. From the age of 5 I was with them
at the factory because there was nowhere else to put me.
I learned a lot from the Chinese, and I’m still learning. Since
2010 I’ve gotten rid of all my false stereotypes and false knowledge from
textbooks about how a company should be organized. I forgot everything and went
to work at a factory – the Chinese and I rented a few machine shops, and from
the inside I saw how they work and organize things.
Now, thanks to my knowledge, contacts, and agreements in China, I
can put any test model into serial production fairly quickly. Approximately
half a year is all I need to launch serial production of an item. We will turn
out from 2,000 to 10,000 units – if we have the corresponding financing, of
course. Five or six items is enough for me – that’s my current organizational
resource, or the limit to my personal maneuverability, you might say. Without a
group of assistants I can’t do more. For things to take off, it’s necessary to
put out a collection of 6-10 types of toy construction sets; otherwise no
market will take me.
– Aren’t you afraid that the Chinese will copy your developments
and fill the market with their own product – especially seeing as how you plan
to organize production on their territory?
I’m not afraid. Of course, they could put together their own toy
construction set, but they wouldn’t understand what step to take next. A
construction set is only one little square in a comprehensive picture that is
the result of lengthy, painstaking research work. Over the course of each
season we will unveil a few of those algorithms I talked about earlier, and
that will enable us to always be ahead of our imitators.
– How do you plan to stay afloat until production is set up?
With a business that I’ve been working on for a year now – the sale of electronic devices, and of specialized component parts on the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) market in the sphere of machine tools with CNC (Computer Numerical Control). Right now I have something on the order of 70 clients who need component parts for 3D printers, milling machines, lathes, plate bending-and-rolling machines, laser metalcutters with CNC, all sorts of controllers, electronics. Many people know that I can get any hard-to-find part for machinery. Rack gear, cogged pulley, cogged belt – by all means, flange bearings, ball-and-screw rails, slide rails – no problem, a stepper motor of any size and driver’s for it – that’s easy. I make money on this, which I then put towards my research on the creation of a civilization of living machines that is parallel to human civilization.
Warning: Undefined array key "text2" in /var/www/u0429487/data/www/erazvitie.org/tmp/smarty/templates_c/389db9f609aaecfa57f836c65bc9333ab3b0e7f1_0.file.article.tpl.php on line 89
Warning: Undefined array key "text3" in /var/www/u0429487/data/www/erazvitie.org/tmp/smarty/templates_c/389db9f609aaecfa57f836c65bc9333ab3b0e7f1_0.file.article.tpl.php on line 91
Warning: Undefined array key "text4" in /var/www/u0429487/data/www/erazvitie.org/tmp/smarty/templates_c/389db9f609aaecfa57f836c65bc9333ab3b0e7f1_0.file.article.tpl.php on line 93
Warning: Undefined array key "text5" in /var/www/u0429487/data/www/erazvitie.org/tmp/smarty/templates_c/389db9f609aaecfa57f836c65bc9333ab3b0e7f1_0.file.article.tpl.php on line 95