The Winter of the Robots (10 page)

“There’s only one problem.” He pushed the notebook back at me.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know how to build it.”

We jumped on a city bus after school and went to see Peter.

The University of Minnesota had a mix of old-fashioned-looking buildings made of brick and crazy-looking modern ones with copper-plated exteriors. Peter worked in one of the modern ones. We walked through a misshapen atrium, down a slanted hallway, up a half flight of steps, and down another hallway. Peter’s office door was open. A bushy-haired teenager was talking to him. He barely looked old enough to be in college. Maybe he was some kind of prodigy. Recurrent neural networks this, dynamic temporal behavior that.

“What are they on about?” I whispered.

“Robots that can learn,” said Oliver.

Peter looked up. “Oh, hey. Come in, both of you.” We did. I muttered hello, feeling sheepish for interrupting their talk.

“Oliver, this is Rolf Strauss,” said Peter. “He’s one of my new graduate students. He won this year’s Elijah Baley fellowship.” Rolf nodded politely at us. “And this is Oliver Newton Jr. and his buddy Jim,” Peter added. Rolf’s eyes widened.

“Your dad’s work was incredible,” he told Oliver. “It was a big loss to the scientific community when he died.”

“It was a big loss to my family, too,” said Oliver. That sucked all of the warmth out of the room for a moment.

“Rolf, tell Oliver about your research,” Peter suggested. “He’s interested in robots. He’ll love it.”

Rolf opened his mouth and closed it again. “I don’t know how to explain adaptive robotics to a layman.”

“It’s good practice,” said Peter. “Besides, Oliver … both of these guys are more than regular laymen.”

“OK, I’ll try.” Rolf found the only blank corner of the board and wrote:

“What’s this?” he asked.

“An upside-down A,” I ventured.

“What about this?” He erased it and wrote:

I looked to Oliver, but he obviously wasn’t playing. He was scrutinizing the equations on the other half of the board. “A G, also upside-down,” I said.

“OK, this,” he said. He erased the second letter and wrote:

“An upside-down letter M,” I guessed.

“Not a W?”

“Well, the first two were upside-down, so I figured …”

“Exactly.” He pointed the marker at me. “You saw me write two upside-down letters, and you started reading upside down. You adapted to the situation. It’s hard to teach computers how to do that.” He put the marker down. “Sure,
you can teach them to shape-match inverted letters if you’re expecting it, but if you
weren’t
expecting it, the robot won’t figure it out. A problem that’s easy for a six-year-old to solve can stump the world’s best robot if it wasn’t programmed to solve it.”

I looked at the letters, thought about a robot brain trying to make sense of the writing. “Does this apply to robot battles?”

“Of course,” he said. “Especially in real military applications. It’s essential to have robots function in unknown environments, and that’s what my work is all about.”

“Making robots do things they aren’t programmed to do,” Oliver added.

“Even better,” said Rolf. “Making robots that can do things the programmer didn’t think of. Robots that can even change their own program if the situation requires it.”

“Great, Rolf,” said Peter. “Very clear and succinct.”

“Thanks. I’ll find those journal articles.” He put down the marker and headed out.

“That young man is brilliant,” said Peter.

Oliver looked glum. Rolf probably made him feel the same way Oliver made
me
feel, but Peter didn’t notice. “So, what can I do for you?”

“How would you build this?” Oliver showed my drawing to Peter.

“A collapsible robot! Interesting design,” said Peter. “Why eight legs? It doesn’t have a structural advantage over six legs.”

“Just because,” I said. Because it was an octopus, was why.

“Are these jointed segments, or do they telescope?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“That’s why we wanted your opinion,” Oliver added. “The legs have to be strong, but very flexible. I don’t know how to do it.”

“You could use elastomeric polymers,” said Peter, “but you won’t find them at the hobby shop.”

“Oh yeah. I read about those on the robot forums,” said Oliver. “Can you get some?” I had a feeling it was what Oliver had been gunning for all along, but he’d wanted Peter to suggest it.

“Heck, I already have some,” said Peter. “Let’s go to the lab.”

We went through a side door into a large room. Three tables were strewn with machine parts and gadgets. It was a robot maker’s heaven. Peter rummaged around in a cupboard until he found a box, took it out, and handed us each a white plastic rod.

“This is a robot part?” I asked. It looked like a cross between a gummy worm and a bendy soda straw. I ran my finger along the length of it, feeling a long row of rings connected by webbing.

“Technically, it
is
a robot,” said Peter. “It can function all by itself.”

“Cool.”

“How does it work?” Oliver peered through the pinhole at the end of his.

“You insert a single-pin connector into either end. The rings are multipurpose: touch sensors and actuators.”

“Wow,” I exclaimed. Peter glanced at me, surprised that I knew what he was talking about.

“Can we solder them onto a bigger machine?” Oliver asked. “And how do you program them?”

“You’d need a special conductive epoxy to attach them. I have some you can use. I also have a manual that has all the code you need to know. I’ll email you a PDF.”

“Thanks,” I told him. “This is really cool of you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “It’s great to see kids excited about science.”

“Why would Peter be so nice to us?” I asked Oliver on the bus ride home.

“He’s a nice guy.”

“Yeah, but this is above and beyond.”

“Ah, these were just freebies for him. People give him beta stuff all the time. They’re hoping he’ll write it up for a journal and give them free buzz. It’s a trade-off.”

“I guess. But there’s something else.” I told him about the cameras, and how Peter covered for me. “Why would he do that?”

“Well,” he said, “he might have sensed that your dad was a hothead and thought he was saving your behind.”

“He did, sort of.” Why would he
sense
that, though? “You told him about my dad, didn’t you?”

“A long time ago,” he admitted. “We were talking about stuff.”

“So, he felt sorry for me?”

“He doesn’t pity you,” said Oliver. “He relates. He sympathizes. Anyway, don’t worry about it. Peter is loaded. His professor salary is a fraction of what he makes. He has all those patents he split with my dad, plus a bunch more. He could easily quit his job and retire, but he really likes teaching.”

“I still plan to pay him back,” I said. I wanted to put the whole camera thing behind me, and I couldn’t as long as I owed someone.

“Good luck with that,” he said.

“I have an idea,” I said. “But I need you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I mean, I need you to do nothing. Let me create and program this robot all by myself. You can supervise, but I have to build it.”

“How come?”

“Because I want to use the same robot for something else.” I told him about the contest at the mall, and the thousand-dollar prize. “It has to be
my
robot, though. Otherwise I’m just letting you bail me out, the way Peter bailed me out.” And the way Sergei
tried
to bail me out.

“OK. You can do it all. I’ll just coach you. I think you can make a robot that beats Dmitri’s robot. But you’re going to be facing some pretty tough competitors at the mall.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“You’ll be going up against kids who have been doing this for years, and are at the top of their game, and smarter than you to begin with.”

I laughed. “Doesn’t hurt to try.”

“I mean me,” he said. “I was already planning to enter.”

The next day I got off the bus a few stops early and headed toward West Bank Road. I walked past the Laundromat and the flashing kangaroo, turning in to the parking lot of Webber Automotive.

“Is Sergei around?” I asked the guy at the desk.

“He’s under a car right now,” he said. “What do you need? I’m the owner, so if it’s anything to do with a car, you can tell me.”

“It’s personal.”

“Well, you can leave a note.” He shoved a yellow legal pad at me, flicked a finger against one of the pens in the plastic pot on the counter.

“Is it all right if I wait?” I didn’t want to trust a stranger with an envelope full of cash.

“If you want, but donuts and coffee are for customers only.” He pointed out a few stale-looking pastries and a pot of coffee by the door that I hadn’t noticed.

“No problem.” I settled down in one of the red plastic chairs bolted to the floor. I dug through my backpack for the robot book, which I’d been reading in bits and pieces for the past couple of weeks. It was starting to make sense.

The owner grunted and disappeared into the garage. A moment later the door jingled. An old man came in and helped himself to a cup of coffee. He stank of sweat and cigarettes. There’s no nice way to say it: he reeked. He put one donut in his pocket and grabbed another, then sat down next to me.

“Heya,” he said. His voice was rough, and he barely spoke above a whisper. “Robots, huh?”

“Yeah. I’m trying to make one,” I said.

“Hope it doesn’t turn on you,” he said as offhandedly as if we were talking about raising pit bulls.

“Ha.”

“You think I’m kidding?” He leaned forward in his chair. “You know, they used to make robots right down the road there.”

“Yeah. That was a long time ago.”

He whispered right in my ear, suffocating me with stale donut breath. “A few of them are still around.”

The owner returned from the garage, saw the old man, and rolled his eyes. “Look, Ted, we told you. This isn’t AA. You can’t just sit in here drinking our coffee and telling people your problems.”

“It’s four o’clock,” said the old guy. “The Russian guy said I could come at the end of the day.”

“Sergei doesn’t run the place. I do.”

“He said you just throw out the leftovers anyway.”

“Bah, take what you want and get out of here,” said the owner.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Ted took the last two donuts and refilled his mug, draining the pot. “This coffee is cold, you know.”

“That’s because we made it ten hours ago.”

Sergei came through the door from the garage, wiping his hand on a towel.

“How’s your brother?” Ted asked Sergei.

“He’s fine.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Yeah, thanks for dropping by every day to ask,” said Sergei.

“The coffee’s cold,” Ted said again, jingling the door as he left.

Sergei came and sat next to me.

“Jim. What’s up?”

“I don’t need this after all.” I took the envelope out of my jacket pocket.

“Come on, man.” He pushed it back at me. “Don’t go waving envelopes of cash around. I’m lucky Chuck didn’t see that.” His boss was going through a pile of papers and paying no attention to us.