Benjie's Humanoid Olympics: Part II

I guess the first ones were too easy!

Nearly all my initial challenges were completed in the first three months, which was about a year and three months faster than I expected. That’s is super exciting because it means that robotics is moving really fast, but it also means that we need harder challenges. And so it is time for me, once again, to don my silver suit and throw down a new gauntlet.

Eggs:

Eggs are delicious, ubiquitous and break dramatically when misused. I know eggs are famously expensive in recent memory, but isn’t that what venture money is for?

Bronze: Catch a Thrown Egg

No task so far has required the solution to be dynamic, but this clearly does. To do this you have to be fast. (Egg must be tossed from at least 3 feet away).

Silver: Cook and plate a sunny-side up egg

This is a very long horizon task and sliding an egg out of a pan onto a plate without breaking it is something I can only do two out of three times. I do prefer very runny yolks, so no cheating by firming the yolk.

Gold: Separate the Yolk

This task is challenging for many humans. You must use the shell to separate the white¹ and yolk into different bowls.

More Tool Use:

Bronze: Clean Ketchup

We had several commenters suggest that the cleaning tasks were more performative (wave the sponge around) rather than actually effective. So here is one: clean a large ketchup spill off a countertop with a sponge. There should be no ketchup residue on the counter when finished.

Silver: Hammer and Nail

Another dynamic task, and one that requires a very strong tool grasp as well as some speed. You must use a standard hammer (no nail gun) and the head of the nail should be flush with the wood when finished.

Gold: Yo-Yo

Wind up a standard yo-yo (already a pretty challenging task) and then do a single yo-yo throw. Another dynamic task that uses the structure of a hand (the yo-yo rolls off the hand with a wrist flick to get extra rotation.)

Skills in the Bedroom:

No, not that way. This is a family friendly blog.

Bronze: Make a Bed

This requires both reach and a surprising amount of strength as well as being a manipulation task that really only works if you can also move around the room. It’s also fiddly, but you only make the bed as well as I did (which my wife will tell you is not very well). Mandatory: top² and bottom sheets, comforter, decorative pillows. Decorative blanket thing at the foot of the bed is bonus points.

Silver: Fitted Sheet onto a Bed

This requires more strength & precision than the make-a-bed version. Plus you have to deal with the problem that, no matter which corner you start with, it is the wrong one.³

Gold: Duvet Cover

The grand-daddy of challenges. This was first proposed to me in 2018 by my co-worker Daniel Lam as the ultimate manipulation challenge. This task is hard for robots and also for people. I almost didn’t include it just because I didn’t want to do it. Note, that because you are allowed to be 10x slower than human you have 46 minutes to succeed at this. I’m fine with multiple robots working together as long as each is a general purpose mobile manipulator.

Finer Fingertip Challenges:

Bronze: Opening a Granola Bar

My wife teaches preschool and I asked her what fine motor skills the kids need help with and she promptly said: “opening snack packaging”. I feel like where we are with robots is the dexterity of a three year old with the patience of a computer. There are a lot of things you can accomplish with that but plenty of things that are still hard.

Silver: Turn to Page 67 in a Paperback That You Are Holding

Another task that is very easy for humans I’ve never seen a robot do. I like that it combines physical (turn the pages) and semantic (read the page numbers). I think this might not be crazy difficult, but I also feel less confident in my guesses than I used to.⁴

Gold: Sort a Poker Hand

The top five cards of the deck is stacked with a royal flush, but in a random order. You must deal out 5 cards, pick them up and sort them while holding them in way that could keep them secret from an opponent, then lay them down in order 10-Jack-Queen-King-Ace.

Full Body:

Bronze: Carry a Coffee Table Through a Door with a Human

Suggested by Leila Takayama, this task is both full body and tricky human-robot interaction. The challenge is to work with a human to bring the coffee table through a door and place it in a living room. The human gets to walk forward, which means that the robot has to deal with opening the door while holding the table. Also my wife is a good sport.

Silver: Take Out the Trash

A long horizon, full body task. The robot must pull a bag out of a trashcan, take it through a door, down 2-3 steps (or a ramp) through some kind of gate, place it into a trash tote, and pull the trash tote to the curb. (Handle-side-toward the curb, people).

Gold: Get into a Car

If you need to take your robot somewhere you don’t want to have to heave it around yourself. It should get into the car and buckle itself up for safety.

Winning:

As before, winners, get a medal and a write up. Entries should email bmholson+olympics@gmail.com with a link to an no-cuts video⁵.

If you want to see real robots succeed at all these challenges you should subscribe. And if you want a medal of your own you should get on it! We have seen that the competition is fierce!

And remember that we still have unclaimed from round one: “Silver Medal: Entering a lever-handle self-closing push door” “Gold Medal: Hang a men’s dress-shirt” “Gold Medal: Peel an orange” (without using a tool) and the version of “Gold Medal: Use a key” where the key is dropped into one hand/gripper/end-effector and inserted into the door without using the other hand.

One of these poorly made objects could be yours…

1. The white of an egg is called the albumen. #KnowledgeIsPower

2. Apparently Millenials killed the top sheet, but I’m a traditionalist.

3. This is the second take of this because in my first take I managed to get the wrong corner to start twice in a row which was too embarrassing, even for a guy who posts videos of himself in a silver body suit.

4. This page number chosen to make my nine-year-old son happy.

5. Make robot companies post non-sped-up videos challenge: level impossible, so I’m removing that requirement.