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MILES O'BRIEN: You never know where you're going to find inspiration.
For Mechanical Engineer Dennis Hong, it was there on the silver screen.
DENNIS HONG: When I was seven years old, I watched Star Wars
for the--for--for the very first time. It just completely blew my mind that,
you know, all of the robots, and spaceships.
MILES O'BRIEN: The force has been with him ever since. And today,
his lab at Virginia Tech, where Hong plies his trade,
is filled with robots that would fit right into a Star Wars sequel.
DENNIS HONG: From humanoid robots, rolling, climbing, wheel-leg hybrid robots...
MILES O'BRIEN: With support from the National Science Foundation, Hong and his team
are creating Star Wars inspired robots that are acrobats. RAPHaEL is a relatively
inexpensive robotic hand. It uses compressed air to move and could
one day help improve prosthetics. This bot, nicknamed CLIMBeR, can scale
steep cliffs, and is rugged enough to handle the terrain on Mars.
IMPASS has wheels and spokes that protrude so it can walk and roll.
DENNIS HONG: The--the application could be uh, search and rescue mission or
scientific exploration.
MILES O'BRIEN: HyDRAS snakes its way up dangerous scaffolding so humans
don't have to.
DENNIS HONG: Another upcoming project is a firefighting robot.
So think of a fire hose, the hose itself is a robot. It's a robot snake.
So, it slithers, it pops up like a cobra, and it can fight fire for us.
MILES O'BRIEN: Hong and his team are also building an assortment of
humanoid robots. Some are even learning to play soccer.
DENNIS HONG: Yay. (Crowd applause)
One of the projects is called the Blind Driver Challenge.
We developed the very first car that-- in the world, that can be driven by the blind.
MILES O'BRIEN: Many of these award-winning robot designs originate from Hongs dreams.
He jots them down in the middle of the night.
DENNIS HONG: I see these weird colorful circles, and blocks, and lines just floating
in my head. And somehow they just assemble and form this type of weird type of
different robotic mechanisms. And I just like, oh, this is so cool. And just wake up.
MILES O'BRIEN: Hong is making his dreams come true. Not long ago in a galaxy far,
far away, but right here and now. Life, imitating art.
For Science Nation, I'm Miles O'Brien.