Solo builder goes viral with demon-horned quadruped robot designed for chainsaw work in disaster zones

Speaker 1: Our next folks. Guest I think we have to issue sort of like a warning to the viewer. The next guest is building something truly horrific. So avert your eyes if you are a scaredy cat because our next guest has built something terrifying. Bo Gaston, welcome to show. How are you doing?

Speaker 7: Great. How about you guys? We're doing well.

Speaker 1: Talk talk to us about what you're building. Tell us about the journey, the goal, the mission. I want to get into the aesthetics, everything, but also the applications.

Speaker 7: Yeah. Sure. So the full timeline, very high level. Started about six years ago. Paper comes out at MIT where a guy and Pat made this quasi direct drive actuator Mhmm. Quite cheap. I think it's about $700. These are kind of like the building block of these humanoid robots, and a large reason that you're starting to see a lot of these pop up that he he open sourced the design as well. So I'd seen back then, it kinda looked like it was gonna become possible to build humanoids a few years in the future that are not, like, only affordable to to a huge lab. Right? So around 2022, I start to take on this design that you see in in the background. What I wanted to do with it was really make a robot first for myself. And what what what I would like to do with the robot is, you know, not do the dishes or fold my laundry. Was just You want this thing to do the dishes? No. No. He's saying he doesn't care about a robot that will do the Oh, okay. Yeah. That seems like he wants software update. Sure. Sure. I wouldn't try that quite yet. Okay. My kinda thesis is it's gonna be more useful to have something that's stronger than you at first, and maybe you could sacrifice some precision and intelligence. Right? Sure. Sure. And, yeah, running a chainsaw, I get that people have thought like, wow, this is crazy to give a robot a chainsaw. It's, you know, a bit scary. But, I mean, what's really scary is operating a chainsaw as a human. Yeah. I kinda looked at that, you know, which is something I'm well familiar with living out here in the woods. So my kinda thought is this is a good tool to start with. I mean, running a saw is the most dangerous job in The US. It's a 130 per 100,000 workers per year. It's 30 times more dangerous than the next most dangerous job. Wow. And, yeah, I I mean, you could imagine not only is the chainsaw dangerous as a tool, but what trees are you cutting down? The ones that are damaged near power lines, ones that are next to a fire break in a wildfire. So it's just a preposterous

Speaker 2: kind of situation. So looking at what Yeah. The form yeah. The the use case makes total sense. Yeah. Mhmm. I'm curious to get into a couple questions. We should start with Sure. I think what everyone's wondering is why make it look like, you know, a demon from from Hades. Yeah. Especially I got you. Some of these like disaster use cases, you know, I was thinking I've been in situations where I've never been like really really really close to a a But I've been close enough where the sun is gets a little bit, you know, blocked and it's dark and a little hazy and if I saw one of these things kinda walking out of the smoke, I'd be a little freaked out. And I think a lot of people might feel that way. But yeah, so talk through the decision making on making it look demonic. Then and then I really wanna understand like the actual functionality of the form, which we can get to.

Speaker 7: Yeah. Sure. So I will say yeah. The the rescue stuff also was kind of propagated by the the virality a little bit. That's definitely I was not aiming to pick you up out of a burning building, you know, like a hero in a movie. Though I would point out if that did happen, like, you know, if someone's saving you, I I'm not gonna probably be too picky and Yeah. Don't look like GIF sentar in the mouth. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You you just don't do it. Yeah. But, you know, it's interesting with the anthropomorphic stuff on humanoid robots. Like, I think it's actually really disarming, and people kinda aren't understanding what's really going on under the skin, which you can see a little bit here. Yeah. I don't know. Like, have you guys ever used a drill press? Yeah. Okay. So you kinda know they're dangerous, and, you know, the workpiece could fly out of it, and they got a lot of torque. So imagine if someone hooked 20 drill presses up series parallel altogether and then used basically some arcane knowledge of machine learning to make it balance and walk, this is pretty much what a humanoid robot actually is. Right? That that's around the same power that you're seeing on on leg actuators on That's most humanoids today.

Speaker 2: So the video is going crazy. Where yeah. Where you're going is basically like a humanoid itself looks tame, but in reality, it's potentially incredibly dangerous

Speaker 1: to be around it's because better to let people know. You're putting, like, caution tape on it effectively A 100%. Telling the user, hey, this thing has a chainsaw. It's gonna be doing work in a dangerous environment. You should be triggered to say, hey, I gotta step back because this is serious business.

Speaker 7: Exactly. Like, yeah, I don't know if you guys have ever been on a big work site or in a factory. And first time you go in there, maybe you're kinda putting your back to the wall and, like, you're a little overwhelmed. And Yeah. That's kind of the right attitude to take when you're Interesting. Around something that can knock your head off. So from my perspective, I made one in gray as well and you could kind of imagine it actually kinda looks like, you know, a little bit like a gray goat, you know. You might wanna go vet it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. This is So do you do you think that you think you'll end end up redesigning it? Because if you wanna just show that at least at least like the head. Because if you wanna just show that it's dangerous, you could just have it, you know, maybe a speaker or a light that says like, you know, stay Caution tape or, you know, hazard lot of way to do it besides the horns, even though clearly clearly it sounds like you just wanted to make this. Sounds like you live in the woods. Sounds like you want a few of Yeah. These patrolling around your

Speaker 7: I I mean, I think the other thing about humanoid robots, like, we all kinda know that they're not purely, like, a perfect productivity maximizer device. Right? Like like, they they have to be emotive and cool, and we've wanted them for eighty years or something and been dreaming of this stuff. And I'd say kinda like a car. Like, no one buys a car because it's the perfect, like, mobility blob with no personality that, you know, is exactly as safe as you want. Yeah. Maybe a few people do, but, you know, humanoid robots like cars. The ones that people really like have to have their own personality a little bit. So I think trying to redesign it to be like, okay. Maybe the optimal safety would be to have a giant yellow siren on the top. But, yeah, it's just not as exciting. So we gotta keep it interesting. Right?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I get it. And I'm sure there's I'm sure there's people out there that wanna cut down some trees that genuinely would prefer this form factor than something more tame. Talk about for the types of environments that you're imagining the robot in, why four legs is better than one. I can imagine just weight. One leg? Sorry. Two. Two. Two. One leg is really tough. One leg. One leg.

Speaker 1: The

Speaker 2: pirate robot is the next. Yeah. No. Four legs versus two legs. I imagine if you wanna be able to actually manipulate, like, something like a saw, you wanna be able to Unstable. Having the stability Yeah. But also the terrain. Yeah. You wanna be on wheels? Seen and and and I think there's been enough videos now of the robot dogs kind of running around crazier terrain that show that, yeah, four legs is superior than two to to two. I'm I'm all in on centaurs. Let's hear it, though. Alright. Yeah. I mean, bipeds are tough. You have to move the center of gravity up for the whole bot, right, because you're putting the pack up in the human chest or I have it in the horse body. Mhmm. You're

Speaker 7: getting actuators closer to the ground because their ankles are actuated. So if you think about walking around in the forest, you're putting electronics really close to the ground. And Mhmm. You know, if you have a linear actuator than a moving shaft, like, right on the ground, whereas this thing, you know, the closest actuator is is nearly three three feet off the ground the way I'm driving the knee. It's easier, you know, I I'm not a this is not a huge project. I think another kind of misconception from the viral explosions, like, for some huge stealth startup that's popping up and these things are gonna go knocking door to door. But, no, this is more of a passion project. So doing a biped today is is really tough. You you're not gonna see all but, you know, the best people doing even then I'll point out, there's, of course, a lot of curation for what you see with pipettes from from anyone. I think everyone kinda knows that. They're pretty tough to to get stable. And I think another question is why not do tracks or wheels? That's pretty tough in robotics too, because if you're trying to keep all four wheels on the ground, like not like these the ones you see out of China that are wheels and a dog, but just wheels, you know, then you're gonna have to have some suspension, which is kind of the enemy of robotics is having these unknown spring forces and stuff like that. And tracks are just really heavy and really actually not all that stable for the size that they are. If you think about a little tracked square driving around the forest, if you're on hard packed ground, it's actually could still be a little tippy. So, yeah, four legs works pretty well. Yeah. Have you gotten any death threats

Speaker 2: since the viral moment? Seems like the wrong person to threaten. He's got a robot army at his disposal. I imagine some people might might think now is the right moment before you have, you know, a 100 of these on your property. Yeah. I

Speaker 7: guess, though, the few people that were offended by the design are are Christians so that, you know Oh, sure. Peaceful people. So, you know, fortunately, I've had, you know, people say I should stop or Mhmm. You know, that it's someone sent me an email today that said my company is now owned by God who will save me and stuff like that. But no. Nothing too crazy. The more surprising reach outs have been police departments. Oh. That is what I wouldn't have thought would have happened.

Speaker 1: But you know, to partner

Speaker 7: with you or arrest you? Yeah. To ask if it, you know, could be used for for public safeties. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No. I do That that if you've ever been in an at an event where a bunch of police

Speaker 2: cavalrymen

Speaker 1: and Horses. Yeah. And then there's just like People just dissipate. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's something about being around a large horse where, like, it just doesn't I gonna say the Oh, okay. That that gets I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah. I I just think for for riot control, the the the horse is just like it won't quite it's not like you're gonna get hit by a car, but there's a natural human reaction sort of just moving out of the way. The chat wants to know about the Pogo humanoid.

Speaker 2: A humanoid. There is one.

Speaker 7: Is one. Yeah. There's at least one. Okay. Look yeah. If you search scarier

Speaker 2: format where the robot can jump 30 feet in the air and it's just Mogo stick. It's a psycho clown on it.

Speaker 1: Well, talk to me about controlling this thing. I imagine you're not doing full autonomous control, heavy teleoperation. But what am I because you have multiple cameras. So are you looking at a a screen with multiple camera feeds and then controlling with, like, an Xbox controller? What is the process? And then I imagine that as you go forward towards controlling a chainsaw,

Speaker 7: that's a little bit harder to control with a Xbox controller. So will you have gloves, VR? How are you thinking about that? I got a solution for Okay. Let's see it. Let's see if we could see. No one's seen this chainsaw, so I guess you you guys could ask. There we go. Yeah. Do it on your show, but Thank you. There we go. Okay. So this chainsaw is two degree of freedom, you know, kinda like a let's see if I could line it up a little better. You can kinda see what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta go this way. My thing's mirrored. Yeah. But, yeah, it's something I thought about. So, yes, it's think about like this. Like, you have you can split robotics into moving around and doing something with the end effector. Yep. And the the good thing about a quadruped is, you know, you could kinda park it, and then the hips have enough mobility where you could kinda control it almost like it's a excavator if if you ever been in one of those. So Okay. It's a little bit more intuitive to do than trying to do something, like, dynamically, like you see, you know, people with VR goggles and Yep. Gloves to control a humanoid that has hands or a biped and all that. That's, again, like, way way outside what I'm able to accomplish. So you could think about it more like you're driving a big car that keeps its hips square to the ground, and then the top half kinda acts more like it's an excavator

Speaker 2: Yeah. Where you're kinda controlling it on two plane. Do you think there's more of a consumer market for robotic horses? Because a lot of a lot of people out there that love horses, but horses are quite expensive to maintain. And I imagine if you made a robotic horse that you could control with an Xbox controller

Speaker 7: and sit on it, there would be some some consumer market for it. Like a riding one? There was a demo that came out of Japan, I think. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that they're on the the cutting edge of making that sort of thing. But yeah. I don't know. Would you buy one?

Speaker 2: I think I would I think I would potentially get one for Oh, yeah? For my daughter. Yeah.

Speaker 7: Oh, not to, like, commute in?

Speaker 2: The the robo horse commuter galloping to work, if you could get it up to, like, 40 miles an hour would be would be quite appealing to me. But maybe maybe more just for fun use case early on. So something to consider. You need to make the head a lot a lot prettier though, I think.

Speaker 7: Catch Like an angler fish head, you're thinking? I'm thinking more like a normal horse.

Speaker 3: Oh, okay. I haven't thought about that.

Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and breaking it down for us. Good luck with wherever this project goes. We'd love to stay in touch with as things us updated.

Speaker 2: I will say when John showed me the website, I said this is clearly somebody just messing around that vibe coded a site. I love that it's a real thing. It's amazing to see.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's gonna be amazing to see where this goes. Congratulations and thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon.