Podcast: Tree-Climbing and Reef-Restoring Robots

In this episode, we explore two cutting-edge environmental robots developed by ETH Zurich students: MONKEE, a tree-climbing robot for canopy research, and ReefRanger, an autonomous underwater robot that feeds and monitors corals. Discover how these versatile machines are helping protect forests and restore coral reefs by collecting data and nurturing fragile ecosystems

This podcast is sponsored by Mouser Electronics. 

Episode Notes

(3:39) - Robots that can climb trees or restore coral reefs

This episode was brought to you by Mouser, our favorite place to get electronics parts for any project, whether it be a hobby at home or a prototype for work. Click HERE to learn more about the critical role that robots will play to feed the projected 9.1 BILLION people on earth in 2050!

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Transcript

Okay, so fun fact, almost six years ago, Daniel and I were involved in student projects in our undergrad that kind of brought us together and got us involved with Wevolver. So, it sparked a lot of interesting things in our lives. And we've both been advocates for empowering students to do cool things because we were able to do cool things because we were empowered. So, you're gonna get a lot of excitement out of today's episode where we talk about three student projects out of ETH Zurich, projects that these students took from absolute scratch, an idea to completion. And they found funding for it. They did the design, testing, everything. So, if that's exciting to you, or if you're a ex-student like us, then buckle up and let's get into it.  

What's up friends, this is The Next Byte Podcast where one gentleman and one scholar explore the secret sauce behind cool tech and make it easy to understand.

Farbod: All right friends, as you heard today, we're talking about helpful robotics. But before we jump into today's episode, let's talk about our sponsor. And that's going to be Mouser Electronics. So, if you've been rocking with us for over the last four years, you know that Mouser is one of our favorite sponsors and there's a good reason for that. It's because they're aligned with our mission, which is taking interesting tech, well, tech news, I guess, from both industry and academia and sharing it in a way that resonates with the average person. And we're going to be linking one to the show notes today. It's an article by them about robotics for a cleaner and greener future where they're discussing how the Food and Agriculture Organization from the UN is estimating that by 2050, we're going to have to feed 9.1 billion people. And that's not going to be an easy feat, right? Like we're already struggling to feed the population of the earth. And the only way that we can accomplish this is by leveraging technology to make the best use of our resources and to automate tasks that frankly people don't want to do, right? They break this down into these chunks that are really easy to digest. go over how we have a limited amount of land and our response to that has been these incredible vertical farms that are highly automated and very resource efficient. This honestly kind of brought me back to the episode we did about Dyson and their strawberry farm. Daniel, do you remember that?

Daniel: Yeah. Yeah.

Farbod: One of my favorite episodes, kind of out of left field.

Daniel: We like James Dyson. So that definitely helped, but it was very awesome to see like him employing technology, innovative versions of technology at every turn to try and vertically integrate an entire farm into something that's like a tech enabled ecosystem. And that's kind of what will be needed here. If we are going to need to feed 9.1 billion people in the next 15 years or so.

Farbod: Absolutely. So yeah, I mean, it's got a bunch of tidbits of information like that, they talk about in robotics for monitoring livestock and crops, different farming technologies. And basically, the summary is how robotics and IOT is gonna change how we approach farming so that we can adequately deliver for our growing population. So definitely check it out. It's a good little primer for today's topic, which again is all about robotics and how they can help people. So, with that out of the way, let's segue into it. We're gonna fly all the way over to ETH Zurich. And it's not really one thing that we're talking about today. It's actually three different projects that come from a ETH Zurich focus projects. Now the focus project is incredible, honestly. It's empowering students to go from nothing like having to come up with their own idea to designing it, to finding sponsors to support their project, to delivering and testing and everything else. Basically, showing them what it takes to take an idea in the real world and really making it a reality. Daniel and I benefited greatly from student projects like this when we were doing our undergrad. And I remember during both of our presentations, I think two years apart, we were talking about how much we want people to not underestimate what students are capable of. And these three groups, which are just a small subset of what this focus or this range of focus projects has to offer, are such a testament to that.

Daniel: For sure.

Farbod: I don't know, do you want to talk more about how much we love student projects before I leave?

Daniel: Well, I will say like a good fun full circle ending for us here. I think your senior design projects, how we first got in contact with Wevolver, right?

Farbod: Yes, you're right. I was using Wevolver to research robotic designs because they had like a whole glossary of it.

Daniel: So obviously we love our partnership with Wevolver. We launched the podcast together. We've been working with them closely for the last four years. An awesome partner with us in launching and continuing to grow this podcast. Just an interesting full circle story for us here, but yeah, to iterate some of the same stuff. Students working on cool technologies, cool projects, like there are lots of startups that end up becoming real as a result of these ideas. There are lots of like industry sponsors who get awesome new technology that's invented by the students who are working on these types of projects. Just because they don't have a ton of experience, don't count students out. And for the same thing here, we've got to take a look at these three projects that these students worked on. think there's a lot of awesome potential applications, obviously in the verticals that they're tending to apply them for, that the problems they're trying to solve, but there's often a lot of value in cross pollinating tech as well. So, if you're an engineer working in the robotics realm or could potentially use robotics, pay attention because there's a potential here to use some new technology developed by these ETH Zurich students in your workplace.

Farbod: Absolutely. I can't believe I forgot that I use Wevolver for my senior design project until you brought it up.

Daniel: Yeah. That's how we became friends and the rest is history.

Farbod: Insane. Nice little bit of the Next Byte lore here for the listener.  

Daniel: That was the first bite.

Farbod: That was the first bite. What was I saying? The projects. Yeah. Let's get back to the projects. Okay. So, we've got three projects we're talking about today, we got MONKEE, ReefRanger, and Argos. So, MONKEE, which very, very nice name for the application that they were going after.  The students were motivated by how difficult it is to actually navigate up on a tree, like to have an autonomous system that can climb up a tree. And that's important because the higher we get, the better understanding we can have about tree cannabis and it's easier to deploy sensors like carbon sensors and to just understand the ecosystem as a whole. So, we have traditional robotics, like, what are the ones they use for corrosion that can climb up like outside of a tanker straight up? You know what I'm talking about?

Daniel: Yeah.

Farbod: Like gecko robotics makes those, I think they use like magnets or something.

Daniel: Yeah.

Farbod: So those, those are really good at traversing like without any obstacles in the way, but obviously trees aren't like that. Do you have obstacles in forms of branches, leaves, et cetera, et cetera, which makes it incredibly difficult to get around. And then you have drones like quadcopters, which are great for aerial view, but they can't get real nice in between the branches and whatnot.

Daniel: Trees are probably the most famous nemesis of quadcopter drones, now that we think about it.

Farbod: Exactly.

Daniel: At least for hobbyists, you try to stay as far away from the trees as you can, because you know once you hit a tree, the thing's going down.

Farbod: Governments spend all this money on trying to have a way to deter drones and all you really need is a bunch of trees. So, that's…

Daniel: Get back to our roots, plant some trees.

Farbod: Wow. Roots and trees.

Daniel: 30 years we'll have a forest that protects us.

Farbod: Yeah, we should pitch that to the White House. I'm sure they appreciate it.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly.

Farbod: But anyways, these folks were like, why don't we just get back to basics? Let's look at monkeys. They're good at climbing trees. So, inspired by monkeys, they came up with this robot that has two arms and these three adhesive points. And honestly, it kind of looks like a sloth. It doesn't even look like a monkey to me. It just looks like a lazy sloth slowly making its way up a tree, but it does it well. So, kudos to them for an innovative design and one that really, really works at what seems like an affordable price point. They didn't really list that out on the article, but just doing some quick back of the map and math from what I remember of the actuators that we were using back in the day, six years ago now. It seems like something you can put together with off the shelf components. So not too expensive.

Daniel: I know it's awesome. I was reading a little bit more about the way that each of the mechanical adhesion points work because they were like, you could create soft robotics, you could try and use suction cups, you need, especially when you're attaching into trees, trees have all different types of bark. The branches have different types of diameters, changes in curvature, grooves, bumps, much more. Their solution was super simple, which is like, again, let's go back to the basics here. How are you going to attach something into wood? Like if I was just supposed to attach something to a tree in general, I would use some screws.

Farbod: Yeah. Just screw it.

Daniel: They just use screws attached to actuators as their way of connecting to the tree. So that's why it moves slow like a sloth because it needs to take some time to like screw in. But what's awesome is that they only do, I think it's up to seven millimeters of screwing depth. So, they're not like damaging the tree, but what they are doing is being able to hold with high torque, like grab on with these three different attachment points, one on each hand, and then one of the body of the robot. And it also has contact sensors to make sure that the screw is like completely in contact with the bark, but it doesn't damage the tree. Doesn't go too deep, but it's also strong enough to be able to hold this robot up. think, I think that was probably my favorite part of the entire innovation here is like, they're not going super complex and spending a lot more money and a lot more complexity on stuff. They're actually going a lot more simple and they actually designed to the arms with some bio-inspired design from the gibbon monkey, which are famous for having really, really long arms. That's it's able to reach for branches that are really far away. So, they're like inspired by monkey arms, inspired by the fundamental way that we attach things into wood, which is screws. They're able to create this like monkey like robot that is really high stability. It actually doesn't weigh that much. Like you said, it's actually probably pretty cheap and then it can navigate different obstacles. It can navigate through an overhang and it can allow these monkeys to advance monkeys as in the robot, not monkeys, the animal. It allows these robots to like advance pretty far into the tree canopy and can study, probably could study monkeys. But also study like the entire ecosystem up there where it's not really accessible by other robots today.

Farbod: I'm so happy you brought up the screw because I almost forgot. But like when I was reading it, the mental image I saw, it brought me back to the days where my senior design partner, Jack and I were like in Home Depot, like literally looking at screws for our robot that we put together, the first iteration using plywood and PVC tubes to show our sponsors that we actually weren't capable of making the thing. And I don't know, again, it speaks to the resourcefulness of students that others might scoff at an industry. And it's awesome to see.

Daniel: And they say, is the mother of invention. The more constraints you have, the more necessity there is for you to come up with creative ways to solve problems. And it looks like that's what they've done here.

Farbod: And we love it. So, shout out to the MONKEE team. We're excited about what you guys are doing. We're going bananas. Yeah.

Daniel: Yeah, we are. All right. Let's take this underwater. Talk about ReefRanger. Another one of these robots they're working on. Kind of looks like a, somewhere between a cross between a hot air balloon and a jellyfish. But it's meant to feed coral and check in on coral reef health underwater. Has cameras, has a smart software to be able to identify where coral is and then is able to slowly and gently swim through the ocean so that it's able to feed coral, not damage it. It's the potentially going to be the MVP in restoring the coral reef health, which we know is a big deal for the entire ecosystem.

Farbod: Did you ever watch WALL-E?

Daniel: Yeah, I did.

Farbod: Okay. So, it reminds me of EVE. Just like this. You know, this clean looking white robot with not a lot of design elements going on, but it's mission is to protect life or seek it out. So, when I looked at it, was like, ah, EVE.

Daniel: Oh, that's awesome. That's a much better analogy than me calling it a hybrid hot air balloon jellyfish.

Farbod: I just had to throw it out there, man. But yeah, it's super cool. You have, I didn't know this, that the main way to support and restore the coral reefs is by just growing corals, like I guess offsite, almost like a farm, and then bringing them back and nurturing the coral reef itself. So, you now have this drone that's like going out and making sure that these corals are doing fine and giving them nutrients and probiotics. Like it's, you know, babysitting them.

Daniel: Oh, and that's kind of how you have to facilitate coral growth is you can't just like, I don't know, pour fertilizer on it and expect it to grow more quickly. It's more delicate than that. You have to actually just create an environment in which it's likely that coral thrives. So, by providing the coral with nutrients and probiotics, you can create an environment that is susceptible for coral to grow. And then slowly but surely the coral starts to recover and grow.

Farbod: Look at this guy, coral expert over here. This guy coral reefs.

Daniel: You know, I know my reefs.

Farbod: I don't. So, it's a good thing you're here. Moving on. We got Argos. Argos is weirdly enough, the most interesting of the three, in my opinion. The reason I say weirdly enough is because it's probably the simplest, but I don't know. They basically decided to make a highly smart, next-gen lab mice welfare system. Like making sure that we're able to monitor them and get the data that we need for whatever the researchers and the scientists are doing. But at the same time, making sure that the mice are actually doing well. Like monitoring how much water they're drinking, what their activity's like, if they're resting, et cetera, et cetera. And they did this all in collaboration, not just with like the engineering department, but with the ethics groups. And I think I saw a mention of a psych department.

Daniel: And it was veterinary medicine as well.

Farbod: There you go. Yeah. Vet medicine. So, this was like a pretty involved endeavor with a novel and a wonderful initiative to make sure that the little animals that are giving us so much value and insight are taken care of to the best of our abilities.

Daniel: Well, and I think there's like, this is a hot topic sometimes in the world of like science ethics is like, should we be subjecting mice or other animals to like all these different hardships as a means of getting to the end, which is like in particular drug development is one that comes to mind. It's like, should we give lab rats poor treatment on our way to developing drugs that could save a lot of lives. I think generally people would say that the trade-off is still a positive ROI, but no one likes to hear that like these lab mice or lab rats would be treated pretty poorly. So, what they've done is like take current animal welfare standards and then try and create an automated system that ensures that each of these laboratory mice, their lifestyle meets current animal welfare standards so that it's, they're not actually mistreating these animals, but then they also have added a bunch of instrumentation to help comply with all the different monitoring requirements that you might need for one of these experiments. So, by using technology, they've enabled the mice to be treated more ethically, but then also to increase the fidelity of the data that you're getting through these experiments. I think this is one of my favorite things in the podcast. We'd classify this one as a textbook win-win.

Farbod: I completely agree with you. And I don't know, it's just, the reason it's my favorite is because it's refreshing to see students caring about something like that. Like we live in a world where, I don't know, there's so many flashy technologies that you can go after, but the fact that a group of undergrad students targeted something that might not be as exciting, but really brings together the world of technology with medicine and targets a, like you were saying, ethical hot topic. That's very exciting to me.

Daniel: So, it's may not be the sexiest of the three, like MONKEE and then ReefRanger are probably both sexier from a tech perspective. Like, oh, I made a robot that can climb up into mountains or climb up in the trees, or I made a robot that can drone through the ocean and find coral reef. But I bet Argos is the most likely to be implemented first in the real world.

Farbod: It's a fair point.

Daniel: I would love for all three to make it into the real world. Don't get me wrong here, but I think that there's an inherent practicality to the way that they built that they've increased the ethic, increased how ethical the treatment of these laboratory mice is, but then also making sure that extra data is available to researchers. I would be surprised if ETH Zurich doesn't start using this in all of their, you know, their laboratory settings starting this year.

Farbod: And everyone knows by now how much we love things that go outside of, guess, go outside of one lab and maybe make it into other labs or people's homes. And with that folks, that here it is, the three samples of what students can do when empowered. And, quick recap. We got three student projects from ETH Zurich. All took it from stage one, which is barely an idea to complete final product. And they did it by getting their own funding, doing their own design, doing their own testing, the whole lot. So, we got project one MONKEE, which is a robot that can climb trees to better understand the tree canopies and deploy sensors and do studies. We got ReefRanger, which is an autonomous robot that can go underwater and support the restoration of the coral reefs. And then we have Argos, which is an automated environment for monitoring laboratory mice, but at the same time, making sure that they're being taken care of and that their welfare is all nice and good. So that's, that's it. That's the pod.

As always, you can find these and other interesting & impactful engineering articles on Wevolver.com.

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The Next Byte: We're two engineers on a mission to simplify complex science & technology, making it easy to understand. In each episode of our show, we dive into world-changing tech (such as AI, robotics, 3D printing, IoT, & much more), all while keeping it entertaining & engaging along the way.