2025-03-14
17 分钟For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman.
If you pay any attention to the world of robotics and spend any time watching science fiction,
you probably know
that there's a big difference between what robots can do on screen and what they're actually capable of in real life.
Today's guest is someone who's working to bridge that gap.
Dennis Hong is a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at ucla.
He's also the director of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, or Romella.
His robots range all the way from floating balloons with spindly legs to thick thighed humanoids that dominate on the soccer pitch.
He recently sat down to talk to me about these inventions and how he worked to build a custom robot for a new movie called the Electric State,
which is out today on Netflix.
Here's that conversation.
Thanks so much for coming on to chat today.
It's great to have you here.
Thanks for having me.
So I understand
that you just helped work on some robots related to Electric State and maybe based on some interviews I've seen of you,
that was kind of a full circle moment because of what got you interested in robotics.
So would you tell us more about that?
Yeah, absolutely.
When I was seven years old, when I was a kid, I watched the movie Star wars for the first time.