English subtitles for clip: File:Erik Demaine, the genius that plays for a living-VPRO-The Mind of the Universe.ogv

1
00:00:04,38 --> 00:00:15,49
Right. Yeah well origami has a surprisingly rich mathematics and geometry to it.

2
00:00:16,78 --> 00:00:23,07
It's I originally got interested in origami because it just posed a lot of interesting mathematical questions you have

3
00:00:23,07 --> 00:00:27,64
this sheet of material and you have very simple rules you can't stretch it and you can't tear it

4
00:00:27,64 --> 00:00:35,65
and what can you do just by a reconfiguration just by folding and so it's very kind of a simple set up

5
00:00:35,65 --> 00:00:41,85
but the answers turn out to be surprisingly complicated and you need to use a lot of powerful geometry

6
00:00:41,85 --> 00:00:48,56
and algorithms to figure out what you can fault in many senses of you can really fold anything out of a sheet of paper

7
00:00:48,56 --> 00:00:52,42
and you can prove that mathematically. And that's sort of where we got started.

8
00:00:52,64 --> 00:00:53,52
It's very exciting

9
00:00:54,31 --> 00:01:00,82
and finding more interesting ways to make structure the fold between different shapes also has a lot of practical

10
00:01:00,82 --> 00:01:03,23
applications in science and medicine

11
00:01:03,23 --> 00:01:10,92
and engineering where you want to build some kind of structure that can change transform it shape from one thing to

12
00:01:10,92 --> 00:01:16,63
another so maybe you want to fold it down to some small size for storage or transportation.

13
00:01:17,00 --> 00:01:19,92
Like if you want to put something inside the body.

14
00:01:20,01 --> 00:01:25,18
Maybe you need to transport through small blood vessels and so you need to make it very compact

15
00:01:25,18 --> 00:01:27,18
or you want to deploy something into space.

16
00:01:27,3 --> 00:01:32,52
You want to fold it small so it fits inside your space shuttle and then going to unfold it when it gets there.

17
00:01:34,53 --> 00:01:40,16
I think it's even more exciting is you imagine like buildings or gadgets

18
00:01:40,16 --> 00:01:44,71
or things that can transform from one shape to another and serve different functions depending on what you need.

19
00:01:44,89 --> 00:01:51,11
Maybe your house a room in your house can transform from a kitchen to a bedroom and this kind of thing.

20
00:01:53,22 --> 00:02:00,53
One of a couple of the areas that we were exploring are things like printing. Now to robots.

21
00:02:00,85 --> 00:02:09,08
So there are a lot of rapid prototyping machines that are designed to make flat sheets of material.

22
00:02:09,1 --> 00:02:11,01
And how can you use them to make three D.

23
00:02:11,01 --> 00:02:12,27
Robots and other structures

24
00:02:13,7 --> 00:02:18,92
and folding is a good way to do that you can transform your two dimensional sheets into some cool three D.

25
00:02:18,92 --> 00:02:26,57
Structures so we one of our goals in this printable robot project is to make robots that can for like ten

26
00:02:26,57 --> 00:02:31,86
or twenty dollars of materials you can cut them and make them within a couple of hours.

27
00:02:32,01 --> 00:02:37,42
So everyone can make their own robot and customize their robot to do whatever they want.

28
00:02:37,43 --> 00:02:46,24
Another fun application is in making nano scale structures so we have out of the whole computer chip fabrication

29
00:02:46,24 --> 00:02:52,94
technology we have really good ways to pattern two dimensional surfaces at with nano scale features like nanometer

30
00:02:52,94 --> 00:02:59,9
resolution. But we're not so good at making three D. Structures at that scale and so folding offers another way.

31
00:02:59,95 --> 00:03:11,05
That's more in process and experimental but. An exciting possibility for folding is for you something that is.

32
00:03:11,07 --> 00:03:18,92
What makes your position as a professor sort of roses. Yeah.

33
00:03:19,23 --> 00:03:25,15
Yes I know lots of different players interested in different aspects of folding maybe more practical side I'm more on

34
00:03:25,15 --> 00:03:28,77
the theoretical side and developing new mathematics

35
00:03:28,77 --> 00:03:38,58
and tools to show to help those sort of kind of underlying technology for people to build on to make useful things.

36
00:03:39,62 --> 00:03:45,79
So we especially like to prove what we call universe ality results where we say in this kind of regime of origami

37
00:03:45,79 --> 00:03:47,2
design or folding design.

38
00:03:47,39 --> 00:03:51,27
You can make anything you want and we give you a computer algorithm to do that

39
00:03:51,27 --> 00:03:56,71
and so you can come in with your specifications like oh I'd like something that looks like this and it

40
00:03:56,71 --> 00:04:00,58
and the algorithm will give you how to fold exam. Actually that thing.

41
00:04:02,32 --> 00:04:09,56
And you know we get very general results they're not always the most practical because often we don't take into

42
00:04:09,56 --> 00:04:14,46
consideration things like the thickness of the material or other kind of structural issues

43
00:04:14,46 --> 00:04:21,02
and something we're trying to get to but by kind of simplifying looking at the core geometry we can get very general

44
00:04:21,02 --> 00:04:33,88
and powerful results and then that those can be adapted to more practical scenarios where you are going for something.

45
00:04:34,89 --> 00:04:38,27
You would think that there's a limitation but I don't know every year it.

46
00:04:38,3 --> 00:04:44,2
I'm amazed at what origami artists come up with there's new people with new ideas

47
00:04:44,2 --> 00:04:47,68
and it seems like almost limitless possibilities

48
00:04:48,57 --> 00:04:54,29
and especially if you start with a large enough sheet of paper you can really fold really really complicated things

49
00:04:55,5 --> 00:04:58,1
and there's still aspects we don't understand.

50
00:04:58,13 --> 00:05:05,54
For example area we look at a lot is curved crease folding so most are Grammies made with straight creases curved

51
00:05:05,54 --> 00:05:12,08
creases are a lot harder to understand and analyze and we're starting to make progress on the mathematics

52
00:05:12,08 --> 00:05:16,95
but there's still a lot we don't know we don't have any good design algorithms to say Oh I'd like to fold something

53
00:05:16,95 --> 00:05:19,97
that looks like this. Here's the curve creases you need to do that.

54
00:05:20,12 --> 00:05:26,18
So instead we've been experimenting a lot with just playing around trying different curve crease patterns

55
00:05:26,18 --> 00:05:30,39
and see what they produce and trying to be able to model that mathematically.

56
00:05:30,81 --> 00:05:32,99
And that led my father

57
00:05:32,99 --> 00:05:40,43
and I into the sculptural side of paper folding so most of the sculpture we made is make is around curved crease

58
00:05:40,43 --> 00:05:46,26
folding initially we're just experimenting trying to figure out what's possible and what what can be done

59
00:05:46,26 --> 00:05:53,27
but we kept making all these beautiful forms and so I started to embrace that as a purely sculptural.

60
00:05:53,33 --> 00:05:55,92
Endeavor as well but there's a lot of back and forth.

61
00:05:56,04 --> 00:05:59,26
I think that will do something sculpture really that will inspire new mathematics.

62
00:06:00,00 --> 00:06:04,18
We discuss we understand something better about curved creases mathematically that inspires new sculpture

63
00:06:04,18 --> 00:06:10,65
and so it's a lot of fun to go back and forth between the two cards right between art and science I think in general.

64
00:06:12,21 --> 00:06:16,9
That's a big appeal to why people like to explore origami

65
00:06:16,9 --> 00:06:24,58
and mathematics together because you have this sort of scientific purpose maybe an engineering application

66
00:06:24,58 --> 00:06:30,64
or the beauty of the mathematics but then one of the applications is also to make sculpture.

67
00:06:32,00 --> 00:06:37,68
So it's really exciting to see these kinds of collaboration is a lot of engineering teams are bringing on origami

68
00:06:37,68 --> 00:06:45,75
artists at to help design new folding structures so artists have a lot of practical experience of how to make

69
00:06:45,75 --> 00:06:51,51
interesting folding structures and then they know the the literature which is a lot of people folding stuff

70
00:06:52,7 --> 00:07:03,1
and then that can inspire and inform new scientific discoveries. So your work your age. These are.

71
00:07:03,49 --> 00:07:08,63
Yeah that's where we like to live is right on the edge of knowledge where we we have a lot of tools

72
00:07:08,63 --> 00:07:10,91
but there's still something we don't understand.

73
00:07:10,92 --> 00:07:16,38
And so we try to push push that frontier of what's what's known on the scientific side

74
00:07:16,38 --> 00:07:24,49
and we use sculpture to kind of help explore that area more tentatively we can we can often make things that we don't

75
00:07:24,49 --> 00:07:25,69
yet fully understand.

76
00:07:25,71 --> 00:07:31,95
And so that lets us go a little beyond the frontier and sort of explore what's out there and see what's possible

77
00:07:31,95 --> 00:07:32,69
and then.

78
00:07:33,12 --> 00:07:40,7
Hopefully eventually understand that part mathematically where you where your science part formed you well what was it

79
00:07:40,7 --> 00:07:49,99
like for you just what was there. Yeah well in general we're looking at unsolved problems.

80
00:07:50,14 --> 00:07:59,31
I mean part of some sense one of the hardest parts is to figure out what the right question is. So you might want.

81
00:07:59,36 --> 00:07:59,69
There.

82
00:08:00,00 --> 00:08:04,36
Two types of questions about folding structures one is I give you a structure

83
00:08:04,36 --> 00:08:10,84
and I want to understand its properties and sort of analyze what it does how good it is what it folds into

84
00:08:10,84 --> 00:08:17,82
and the other side is the design side so you have some more high level specification of what you'd like to fold

85
00:08:17,82 --> 00:08:24,94
and then you want to automate the design of a structure that folds with those parameters designs maybe the more

86
00:08:24,94 --> 00:08:25,64
exciting side

87
00:08:25,64 --> 00:08:34,4
and there's many different ways you might formulate what you want to fold sort of the classic origami design problem is

88
00:08:34,4 --> 00:08:39,4
is shaped design. I say I give you a three dimensional shape. I want to fold that thing.

89
00:08:40,31 --> 00:08:41,74
What's a good way to fold that thing.

90
00:08:41,77 --> 00:08:47,48
And we're still we're still finding good algorithms for that we have some general procedures that work

91
00:08:47,48 --> 00:08:54,44
but they may not be so efficient as one of the standard measures of efficiency is if I have a square of a particular

92
00:08:54,44 --> 00:09:00,16
size material. How large of a version of that shape can I fold.

93
00:09:00,17 --> 00:09:05,55
I don't want to fold a really tiny thing because that means I'm kind of wasting a lot of my material five a big square

94
00:09:05,55 --> 00:09:10,06
filled with little microscopic things not very efficient material usage.

95
00:09:10,39 --> 00:09:14,27
So how can we optimize that scale factor we still don't know the best way to do that.

96
00:09:15,39 --> 00:09:18,28
There's a sense in which we can't know exactly how good we can do that

97
00:09:18,28 --> 00:09:20,12
but we can hope to approximate the best solution.

98
00:09:21,63 --> 00:09:25,32
So that's something we're still actively working on for example our current.

99
00:09:25,66 --> 00:09:31,61
Favorite technique is called organizer and it's it's also free software

100
00:09:31,61 --> 00:09:37,39
and it's an algorithm we've been analyzing over the last several years to give an arbitrary three D.

101
00:09:37,39 --> 00:09:41,38
Shape that gives you a way to fold exactly that shape.

102
00:09:43,03 --> 00:09:45,7
It seems to be a good method but we don't know it's the best method

103
00:09:45,7 --> 00:09:52,31
and then there are many other questions based on other types of goals you might want like maybe you want to have a

104
00:09:52,31 --> 00:09:54,28
folding structure that can make two different shapes.

105
00:09:54,36 --> 00:09:59,83
We don't know much at all about that question or you want to make a folding that actually.

106
00:10:00,00 --> 00:10:02,64
Works with really thick material because you're making out of sheet metal

107
00:10:02,64 --> 00:10:07,54
or you want to make a practical mechanical structure.

108
00:10:07,56 --> 00:10:10,37
We're still understanding that we've made some progress on

109
00:10:10,37 --> 00:10:18,18
but there's still a lot of questions we don't know the best way to deal with with these kinds of practical issues

110
00:10:18,18 --> 00:10:23,23
and so that as becoming really relevant these days because a lot of people are trying to build these structures

111
00:10:23,23 --> 00:10:27,67
and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't like to understand that threshold then

112
00:10:28,42 --> 00:10:31,63
and ideally automatically design structures that always work really well in practice.

113
00:10:42,29 --> 00:10:46,19
Yeah I mean I think we like to build objects and we.

114
00:10:46,25 --> 00:10:51,78
And it's even cooler when those objects can change shape so almost anywhere you imagine a gadget of some sort.

115
00:10:51,83 --> 00:10:58,3
I think folding could offer some interesting perspectives on on reconfigure ability.

116
00:10:59,04 --> 00:11:08,87
C one one area we haven't talked about is protein folding which is a kind of origami it's a little bit different

117
00:11:09,73 --> 00:11:15,04
but it's kind of essential to how just understanding how life works and also potentially drug design.

118
00:11:16,2 --> 00:11:22,59
So every living thing that we know of in this world is built up out of lots of little proteins kind of making life

119
00:11:22,59 --> 00:11:28,78
happen and proteins are centrally one dimensional pieces of paper that quite a lot into complicated three D.

120
00:11:28,78 --> 00:11:29,78
Structures in that three D.

121
00:11:29,78 --> 00:11:33,68
Structure kind of determines how it interacts with other proteins and what what its function is.

122
00:11:34,32 --> 00:11:41,59
And we don't really understand that process of folding kind of a one dimensional strip of paper into these three D.

123
00:11:41,59 --> 00:11:47,48
Structures how nature does it how we could do it how we could design proteins that fold into geometries that we want to

124
00:11:47,48 --> 00:11:51,46
like combat. You can imagine some disease comes along new disease.

125
00:11:51,61 --> 00:11:57,28
You could design a protein to fight specifically that disease but we don't know how to design.

126
00:11:58,04 --> 00:11:59,71
Proteins that folded the way we want to.

127
00:12:00,00 --> 00:12:06,94
And so we're trying to understand how proteins fold in order to sort of just understand how biology is functioning

128
00:12:06,94 --> 00:12:12,06
but also so that we can kind of control it in useful ways to kill viruses and things like that.

129
00:12:12,28 --> 00:12:15,83
So that's that's an exciting but difficult interaction.

130
00:12:17,28 --> 00:12:24,56
I would really like a sort of universal programmable gadget you know like we have lots of gadgets where you can

131
00:12:24,56 --> 00:12:29,65
download software updates like your smartphone you can download software updates and it does new things

132
00:12:30,63 --> 00:12:34,49
but we don't yet have a gadget where we can download new shapes

133
00:12:34,49 --> 00:12:43,33
or new geometries you can imagine a kind of universal gadget that can take on any shape I mean it has to preserve mass

134
00:12:43,33 --> 00:12:49,83
that you could imagine it unfolding and becoming a large thing at folding into a more compact.

135
00:12:50,2 --> 00:12:56,09
Structure changing shape maybe it's a chair or one one moment and it becomes a bicycle the next moment

136
00:12:56,09 --> 00:12:59,28
or I mean anything in principle is possible.

137
00:12:59,34 --> 00:13:01,95
It's we need to figure out what the practical regimes are

138
00:13:01,95 --> 00:13:06,89
but instead of having a separate gadget that does different functions

139
00:13:06,89 --> 00:13:12,46
or separate separate furniture that does different things you could imagine having fewer objects that are more

140
00:13:12,46 --> 00:13:17,37
reconfigurable so that that excites me like I really like gadgets.

141
00:13:17,39 --> 00:13:25,46
But I can have a gadget that can do more different things or be more customizable I think that's really exciting.

142
00:13:26,79 --> 00:13:28,92
I owe a lot of people in the field.

143
00:13:28,92 --> 00:13:32,58
Got into folding because they've been folding since they were kids and doing origami

144
00:13:32,58 --> 00:13:34,38
and then they learn about mathematics

145
00:13:34,38 --> 00:13:42,11
and think oh oh maybe we should combine these two I came from the other side so I was a beginning graduate student at

146
00:13:42,11 --> 00:13:48,84
University of Waterloo and I was just curious. I was looking for interesting problems to solve.

147
00:13:49,18 --> 00:13:59,45
I knew that I really like geometry and algorithms and. My father remembered an old.

148
00:14:00,00 --> 00:14:01,68
Unsolved problems that he had read about

149
00:14:01,68 --> 00:14:09,26
when he years ago from a column by Martin Gardner who used to write for Scientific American about mathematical games

150
00:14:10,08 --> 00:14:18,43
and it's a problem that comes from the magic community and the concept is you take a piece of paper you fold it flat

151
00:14:18,43 --> 00:14:22,22
and make one complete straight cut and then unfold the pieces

152
00:14:22,22 --> 00:14:29,04
and magicians like Houdini could produce a five pointed star lots of different simple shapes

153
00:14:29,75 --> 00:14:35,17
and Martin Gardner I was wondering you know what are the limits can you make anything by this process

154
00:14:35,17 --> 00:14:36,06
or what can you do

155
00:14:36,81 --> 00:14:44,19
and so that's the problem we started working on like OK I've got geometry in algorithms now seems like a cool unsolved

156
00:14:44,19 --> 00:14:48,95
problem to work on and it turned out to be fairly challenging took us a year or two to solve

157
00:14:50,05 --> 00:14:55,03
but it also was very exciting that we got our first universality result

158
00:14:55,03 --> 00:14:59,38
and we showed that you can make any poly gun any sheet metal straight sides

159
00:14:59,38 --> 00:15:06,01
or actually you can make several shapes all at once. Just by a one straight cut after folding. So those very exciting.

160
00:15:07,25 --> 00:15:09,64
It's fun problem motivated by magic.

161
00:15:09,81 --> 00:15:16,67
It turns out to have some practical applications also there are some designs for airbag folding collapsing airbags flat

162
00:15:16,67 --> 00:15:22,24
that are based on the same kind of algorithm that we didn't intend that at the time

163
00:15:23,42 --> 00:15:27,61
and it really got us excited about this world of folding where it seems to have very rich

164
00:15:27,61 --> 00:15:31,53
and complicated mathematics but also those kind of fun and visual

165
00:15:31,53 --> 00:15:37,94
and you can you can demonstrate these things you know you can fold a piece of paper make a kite and make a swan

166
00:15:37,94 --> 00:15:45,9
or whatever shape you want to so it has an attendee ability that everyone can kind of appreciate even if they're not a

167
00:15:45,9 --> 00:15:48,68
mathematician you can say hey look we solved this magic problem that's cool.

168
00:15:50,06 --> 00:16:07,99
You know something for you where it was well before right. Well. Yeah it's going to start.

169
00:16:08,89 --> 00:16:11,99
I guess my father became a single parent when I was two years old

170
00:16:13,00 --> 00:16:20,12
and so we've been close for a long time especially from when I was ages seven to eleven

171
00:16:20,12 --> 00:16:25,32
and we started traveling together and visited many different places.

172
00:16:25,57 --> 00:16:29,8
Mostly east coast of United States and just traveling for fun.

173
00:16:29,99 --> 00:16:34,24
There was no particular reason other than seeing different cultures within the United States

174
00:16:34,24 --> 00:16:42,46
and exploring which was really fun and throughout that time my dad treated me as a peer. So we would.

175
00:16:42,77 --> 00:16:48,87
Jointly decide where we're going to go next to how long to stay in a place some places we'd stay just for a few days

176
00:16:48,87 --> 00:16:55,39
other places we'd stay for years and that was a really fun and bonding experience for us.

177
00:16:55,47 --> 00:16:57,79
Growing up and also because we're traveling a lot.

178
00:16:58,07 --> 00:17:02,74
We try to at home school and home school turned out to work really well for us.

179
00:17:04,37 --> 00:17:09,45
I would spend only like an hour a day doing sort of the breadth of regular school

180
00:17:09,45 --> 00:17:13,5
and so that I have many other hours during the day to explore things

181
00:17:13,5 --> 00:17:17,93
and very quickly for me exploring was computer programming.

182
00:17:17,97 --> 00:17:24,43
I got really excited about that essentially how to video games I played a lot of video games I was curious how they

183
00:17:24,43 --> 00:17:27,77
were made and my dad knew a little bit about computer programming to get us started

184
00:17:27,77 --> 00:17:30,31
and then we'd go to the library to learn more.

185
00:17:30,42 --> 00:17:37,05
This was all before the Internet and so I was sort of racially learning about computer programming

186
00:17:37,05 --> 00:17:41,19
and having a lot of fun there and then when school got out I would go and play with kids and things like that.

187
00:17:42,55 --> 00:17:48,47
So that was a really great time for me growing up and I went very fast in the computer science

188
00:17:48,47 --> 00:17:59,69
and eventually mathematics side of things right. So right. Yeah I asked over that when I was.

189
00:18:00,00 --> 00:18:07,35
Five or so and six years old my dad and I had our first collaboration we like to say with the Eric

190
00:18:07,35 --> 00:18:08,46
and dad puzzle company.

191
00:18:08,71 --> 00:18:16,72
So I helped design wire take apart puzzles and my dad would make them bending wire

192
00:18:17,5 --> 00:18:23,99
and then we sold to twenty stores across Canada and we split the income fifty fifty and it was a lot of fun.

193
00:18:25,22 --> 00:18:32,19
That was definitely the beginning of my interest in puzzles which is still to this day something I had like a lot

194
00:18:33,37 --> 00:18:37,17
and probably also the beginning of my interest in mathematics and geometry

195
00:18:37,17 --> 00:18:47,93
and things like that although that came much later as we were twelve. Yes yes. So after we ended this travel.

196
00:18:48,98 --> 00:18:54,18
I wanted to learn more about computing in computer science I learned was a thing

197
00:18:54,18 --> 00:18:56,14
and you have to go to university to learn about it.

198
00:18:56,19 --> 00:19:02,01
So there was some complication but I started undergraduate at twelve

199
00:19:02,83 --> 00:19:08,75
and took lots of classes because I at that age you can really soak in a lot of material and so I ended up finishing

200
00:19:08,75 --> 00:19:14,32
when I was fourteen and then went to graduate school and got a master's and Ph D.

201
00:19:15,12 --> 00:19:31,39
By the time I was twenty and then went on the job market and became a professor here at MIT. You're right. Yes.

202
00:19:32,06 --> 00:19:39,01
Yeah it's really. We really value. Having fun and enjoying the work that we do.

203
00:19:39,85 --> 00:19:46,74
There's a very there's essentially no line between the work that we do and the things we do for pleasure.

204
00:19:46,95 --> 00:19:54,47
So it's all mixed together just with different kinds of outcomes maybe becomes a math paper maybe it becomes a

205
00:19:54,47 --> 00:19:59,37
sculpture maybe it's there's no outcome we're just doing it for fun but.

206
00:20:00,00 --> 00:20:06,13
It's all for fun and the philosophy is that if we do work that we enjoy

207
00:20:06,13 --> 00:20:13,04
and find pleasurable then we'll do it very well excel at it and that has been a useful guiding principle

208
00:20:15,18 --> 00:20:19,79
and I would encourage everyone to do the same it's definitely it may seem risky at times

209
00:20:19,79 --> 00:20:25,9
and certainly there was a worry that the work that we do is to recreational like you know we're studying the

210
00:20:25,9 --> 00:20:31,68
mathematics of a magic trick how could that be useful for anything but it turned out to be unexpectedly.

211
00:20:33,29 --> 00:20:40,09
But I think a lot of specially in mathematics there are just a lot of basic questions that are very curious

212
00:20:40,09 --> 00:20:41,44
and you want to know the answer to

213
00:20:42,26 --> 00:20:47,43
and if they're basic enough the sort of very simple set up like paper folding is a very simple set up a very few rules

214
00:20:47,43 --> 00:20:54,26
about what's what you're allowed to do and yet it's very complicated to understand it's a nice context for.

215
00:20:55,03 --> 00:21:01,08
I think basic research tends to become useful eventually even though you may not see the applications ahead of time

216
00:21:01,08 --> 00:21:07,31
and so mathematicians tend to be attracted to like very simple questions that have complicated answers.

217
00:21:07,62 --> 00:21:12,73
Those tend to be also useful questions to answer always but if you solve enough of them.

218
00:21:12,83 --> 00:21:17,08
Many of them will become practical and so even though you do it for fun.

219
00:21:17,22 --> 00:21:24,74
It tends to have useful applications as well so that you might be worried by a lack of applications

220
00:21:24,74 --> 00:21:34,97
but turns out to be OK. It's for real life. It's really sweet.

221
00:21:35,15 --> 00:21:41,81
I mean we have pretty much ideal set ups where we can work on what we enjoy and get paid for it

222
00:21:41,81 --> 00:21:46,77
and have fun doing it and have all the resources to do it. We're very lucky.

223
00:21:52,47 --> 00:21:54,52
Yes So the glass blowing interest comes from.

224
00:21:55,73 --> 00:21:59,78
My dad's background which is more on the visual arts side so before I was born.

225
00:22:00,00 --> 00:22:04,26
In the late sixty's early seventy's he had the first glass studio in Canada.

226
00:22:04,31 --> 00:22:06,01
It's called the father of Canadian glass

227
00:22:07,59 --> 00:22:15,19
and so he had to have a studio made lots of glass work it was it was the early days in the studio movement of glass

228
00:22:15,19 --> 00:22:16,89
blowing in North America

229
00:22:16,89 --> 00:22:23,66
and so he was experimenting exploring what's possible trying different recipes to make glasses and glass colors

230
00:22:23,66 --> 00:22:28,98
and things and then he didn't blow glass for many years until

231
00:22:30,19 --> 00:22:35,37
and I never really saw him blood last until we came to MIT fifteen years ago

232
00:22:35,37 --> 00:22:44,06
and we discovered he'd MIT has a glass blowing studio called The Glass lab and so my dad got curious to try

233
00:22:44,06 --> 00:22:45,24
and glass flying again.

234
00:22:45,5 --> 00:22:52,83
And so he started teaching there became one of the instructors and started blowing glass again

235
00:22:52,83 --> 00:22:58,7
and I got to see him blow glass and watched him make things and it's so beautiful and amazing to watch

236
00:22:58,7 --> 00:23:05,68
and then eventually like maybe maybe I should try clasp like that said Yeah you know you should at least see what it's

237
00:23:05,68 --> 00:23:07,69
like but be careful. It's addictive.

238
00:23:07,79 --> 00:23:22,92
So I quickly got into a glass blowing and now we blow glass together and make things together and it's a lot of fun.

239
00:23:22,94 --> 00:23:28,5
It's a little more difficult because there's a lot of physics going on with glass blowing which is not exactly my forte

240
00:23:28,5 --> 00:23:35,85
but we're always looking for interesting math and connections between mathematics and glassblowing and we've found.

241
00:23:36,36 --> 00:23:40,6
We've found some interesting books there I think there's still a lot more to be explored.

242
00:23:40,67 --> 00:23:46,85
I would love to have algorithms to automatically design interesting because this sort of operations you can do are

243
00:23:46,85 --> 00:23:49,83
glassed in glass blowing a very simple. You know you can.

244
00:23:50,82 --> 00:23:56,16
You're turning your piece you can swing it around you can play with sort of gravity in this way you can heat different

245
00:23:56,16 --> 00:23:59,93
parts and cool other parts and that totally changes the shape that you produce.

246
00:24:00,25 --> 00:24:05,18
But it's a very complicated relationship and so it's hard to model all of that mathematically.

247
00:24:06,27 --> 00:24:12,51
But we've found some interesting regimes where it's simple enough that it's mostly geometric what's going on

248
00:24:13,6 --> 00:24:18,4
and so we can use computers to help design new patterns in glass.

249
00:24:18,54 --> 00:24:24,75
So we have some free software called virtual glass that we've been developing where you can design what are called

250
00:24:24,75 --> 00:24:27,1
Glass came patterns very simple.

251
00:24:29,22 --> 00:24:35,93
Conceptually simple but hard to visualize where you set up some essentially straight lines of color and glass

252
00:24:35,93 --> 00:24:36,78
and then twist them.

253
00:24:36,85 --> 00:24:45,55
And so you get some really cool twisty patterns they've been used in glass flying for for centuries. But.

254
00:24:45,57 --> 00:24:49,64
Pretty much everyone who makes glass cane follows one of standard set of patterns

255
00:24:50,51 --> 00:24:56,11
and so we were curious whether there were more patterns for Glass can that were possible in the software lets you

256
00:24:56,11 --> 00:25:00,19
explore those patterns and lets you try new things and sometimes you try a new thing

257
00:25:00,19 --> 00:25:02,15
and it looks kind of like an old thing.

258
00:25:02,2 --> 00:25:06,82
So it's not really interesting but other times you try a new pattern and it looks amazing in the software

259
00:25:06,82 --> 00:25:08,16
and that tells you here.

260
00:25:08,22 --> 00:25:13,53
This is something we should spend the time to actually learn how to make in real life software doesn't tell you exactly

261
00:25:13,53 --> 00:25:19,79
how to make it but it gives you a kind of schematic and then you have to do the glass blowing hard work

262
00:25:19,79 --> 00:25:26,21
but at least you know that the thing you're trying to make is really beautiful and so it's worth working towards.

263
00:25:26,46 --> 00:25:33,78
So you can rapidly try lots of different designs and software to find the one you want and then go physically make it.

264
00:25:33,79 --> 00:25:37,12
So it's really hard.

265
00:25:38,03 --> 00:25:44,76
Yeah I think it's I mean I think in general working on the boundary between two different fields you find interesting

266
00:25:44,76 --> 00:25:45,74
areas that.

267
00:25:46,33 --> 00:25:51,35
People tend to specialize in just one area and so they miss the things that the boundaries

268
00:25:52,09 --> 00:25:54,8
and so we've had a lot of fun exploring these boundaries

269
00:25:54,8 --> 00:25:59,39
and I think it comes partly from our different backgrounds my dad with the art background me with the more math

270
00:25:59,39 --> 00:26:06,03
and science. Background and we're always talking to each other and so we see we see the connections.

271
00:26:06,98 --> 00:26:12,78
When I started graduate school I was doing this sort of more theoretical mathematical work my dad's side

272
00:26:12,78 --> 00:26:14,4
and saying looks. That's interesting.

273
00:26:14,73 --> 00:26:16,96
This kind of creativity you're going through

274
00:26:16,96 --> 00:26:23,77
and solving unsolved mathematical problems is very much like the kind of thing that I go through in designing new

275
00:26:23,77 --> 00:26:26,4
sculptures or thinking about new art to build

276
00:26:27,19 --> 00:26:33,88
and so we started working together then he got he I taught him to become a mathematician.

277
00:26:33,9 --> 00:26:37,91
And he taught me to become an artist and so now we work on both together

278
00:26:37,91 --> 00:26:44,41
and it's really it's a lot of fun for us to collaborate in that way but also leads to really interesting questions

279
00:26:44,41 --> 00:26:50,36
and inspirations where instead of just thinking OK the math is the serious stuff

280
00:26:50,36 --> 00:26:55,84
and everything else is just you know side project we think of everything is like main projects

281
00:26:55,84 --> 00:27:15,44
and they inspire each other in ways that we couldn't predict. So I'm just working for years. We're definitely.

282
00:27:15,93 --> 00:27:20,28
Yeah I mean you could say frontiers of science and art maybe.

283
00:27:20,3 --> 00:27:26,95
Or that interplay but you know we're always as scientists we're always excited about the unknown

284
00:27:26,95 --> 00:27:33,77
and I mean that's as soon as we understand something fully it becomes almost boring

285
00:27:33,77 --> 00:27:37,79
and we want to move on to the next thing I mean we write down what we know and publish it

286
00:27:37,79 --> 00:27:40,9
and share it with the world so they can build on top of it

287
00:27:40,9 --> 00:27:48,67
but then we're always excited about the next question which we don't understand that's that's really what drives us is

288
00:27:48,67 --> 00:27:56,42
the price that we don't quite understand or like that seems a little strange. And we're curious about and.

289
00:27:57,58 --> 00:28:18,65
Yeah that's that's where we explore next. You know years at. Wells you might. Yeah it's a good question.

290
00:28:18,71 --> 00:28:25,1
I think in the in the folding regime. I work in many different areas but in the folding world.

291
00:28:26,79 --> 00:28:34,8
I think the biggest challenges right now are taking the nice mathematical geometric design algorithms that we have

292
00:28:34,8 --> 00:28:37,71
and adapting them to to real world materials.

293
00:28:38,03 --> 00:28:44,33
So we're starting to look at how does the thickness of the material affects what we can fold.

294
00:28:44,55 --> 00:28:49,99
How does the rigidity of material affect what we can fold off and you're making things out of plates and hinges.

295
00:28:50,36 --> 00:28:55,01
So you can really only fold at the creases whereas on paper it's more flexible.

296
00:28:55,03 --> 00:29:02,13
Between the creases So this is a world called rigid origami still trying to understand how to design within that space

297
00:29:02,13 --> 00:29:05,72
but it's very practical and exciting and for us it's nice

298
00:29:05,72 --> 00:29:09,31
and challenging because we don't know that's what that's what we don't know how to do

299
00:29:09,31 --> 00:29:14,69
and so that's where we're attracted So I think in the next couple of years we'll make a lot of progress in that kind of

300
00:29:14,69 --> 00:29:19,58
trying to take the rich and very general mathematics and adapting it

301
00:29:19,58 --> 00:29:29,57
or how to deal with the parameters of real world materials where you know other areas where you

302
00:29:29,57 --> 00:29:45,08
or where you're working well yeah I see there are a lot of so I mean like the traditional origami set up is you have a

303
00:29:45,08 --> 00:29:51,51
square paper and all you can do is fold and it's really interesting to see what you can do just by folding

304
00:29:52,86 --> 00:29:59,93
but there are a lot of practical setups like in our printable robots project where it's.

305
00:30:00,00 --> 00:30:06,61
Also find to cut the material I mean why not. It's folding is very powerful it's a good way to go from two to three D.

306
00:30:06,61 --> 00:30:12,11
but We don't have to start from a square of material probably we're starting from some kind of rectangle of sheet

307
00:30:12,11 --> 00:30:16,87
material and why not also cut it in two dimensions before you fold

308
00:30:17,68 --> 00:30:24,99
and that's exciting because it can lead to much more efficient foldings potentially use all of the material now

309
00:30:24,99 --> 00:30:30,34
and you can make structures you couldn't make just by folding or you can you can make them much more efficiently

310
00:30:30,34 --> 00:30:36,87
and in different ways it's also a little it's tricky from a mathematical perspective because now we have so much more

311
00:30:36,87 --> 00:30:42,00
freedom we can cut and fold in some sense it's more freedom than we know what to do with

312
00:30:42,00 --> 00:30:48,12
and so that's that's kind of a new direction of folding where we also are cutting because why not.

313
00:30:48,27 --> 00:30:49,59
It's a practical thing you can do

314
00:30:51,11 --> 00:30:56,06
and maybe there are some settings where you want to add lots of cut some settings where you want to add fewer cuts we

315
00:30:56,06 --> 00:31:01,26
don't know the right balance between us and I think that's a new frontier we're still exploring

316
00:31:01,26 --> 00:31:07,96
and trying to understand but potentially leads to much better ways of folding structures.

317
00:31:07,98 --> 00:31:33,09
And going back to your you're very free for. Case don't have this space. If you go.

318
00:31:35,51 --> 00:31:37,96
I think it played a big role I mean it's hard to know exactly

319
00:31:38,68 --> 00:31:47,69
but I think growing up with so much free time unstructured time where I could just explore what interested me really

320
00:31:47,7 --> 00:31:56,94
gave me a big edge. Instead of sort of wasting time which a lot of schools do just filling that time.

321
00:31:56,99 --> 00:32:00,58
So as a kind of child care. It's set up.

322
00:32:01,58 --> 00:32:07,04
There's social aspects which are good too but a lot of time I feel like is wasted in school

323
00:32:07,04 --> 00:32:13,51
and so having the home school opened up this window where I could explore what interested me and

324
00:32:13,51 --> 00:32:18,98
and really dive in deeply and that let me go far ahead in the computer science world

325
00:32:18,98 --> 00:32:25,12
and I think in general could let students go really far ahead in the thing that excites them the most you still have to

326
00:32:25,12 --> 00:32:31,8
add in the breadth and socialize with other kids and so on but really

327
00:32:31,81 --> 00:32:39,82
and then going to university at a young age I think really gave me another edge whereas you can learn so much at a

328
00:32:39,82 --> 00:32:41,69
young age and so when you get to university.

329
00:32:41,69 --> 00:32:45,45
Suddenly there's really interesting things you're learning and it's really exciting

330
00:32:45,45 --> 00:32:48,92
and I still remember the things that I learned back then.

331
00:32:50,3 --> 00:32:57,77
So that's really powerful as a way to to get started and I think a lot of people could do it.

332
00:32:58,7 --> 00:33:01,36
There's also a more general sense of.

333
00:33:02,2 --> 00:33:10,07
Because we were improvising if we want a long travelling around we would talk to our neighbors learn about what they

334
00:33:10,07 --> 00:33:14,45
knew about and if they knew some interesting topic they would teach me and teach my dad.

335
00:33:15,57 --> 00:33:17,9
So I learned different aspects about the magic that way.

336
00:33:17,94 --> 00:33:20,32
I learned different kinds of cooking that way

337
00:33:21,58 --> 00:33:28,27
and that was a fun way to say it to appreciate different people of different backgrounds

338
00:33:28,27 --> 00:33:33,91
and different knowledge sets and I think in directly that influenced me

339
00:33:33,91 --> 00:33:37,71
and my dad to think a lot about collaboration

340
00:33:38,4 --> 00:33:43,18
and in current day we we collaborate with a lot of different mathematicians

341
00:33:43,18 --> 00:33:47,2
and different papers I've written papers I think over four hundred people at this point

342
00:33:48,63 --> 00:33:54,37
and on the art side we're also looking for collaborators interesting ways to combine different ideas from different

343
00:33:54,37 --> 00:33:59,93
minds we collaborate a lot with each other. Of course but also looking for outside inspiration. I thing.

344
00:34:00,00 --> 00:34:06,45
When you combine multiple people together you can really you can solve problems that could not be solved individually

345
00:34:07,33 --> 00:34:12,97
on the mathematical side this is because there's just so many areas of mathematics. You can't really know all of them.

346
00:34:13,63 --> 00:34:19,42
But some problems require lots of different tools to solve and so you can either go

347
00:34:19,42 --> 00:34:21,12
and learn about that tool it takes a long time

348
00:34:21,12 --> 00:34:24,04
or you could just collaborate with the person who ARE THE knows the tool

349
00:34:24,8 --> 00:34:29,06
and they can solve that piece of the problem really. Well you can solve your piece you combine the right people.

350
00:34:29,21 --> 00:34:31,01
You can solve big problems relatively easily

351
00:34:32,19 --> 00:34:39,18
and on the art side you get inspiration things that no one person could make because they have the creative voice from

352
00:34:39,18 --> 00:34:47,38
multiple people you have to be willing to let go of your own ego to do this and I think that probably for my dad

353
00:34:47,38 --> 00:34:52,71
and I came from this period where we're just kind of exploring together and being open to the people that we meet

354
00:34:52,71 --> 00:35:04,65
and learning from them. Not that I know of. And it's an interesting challenge to try to model.

355
00:35:06,13 --> 00:35:10,63
Fun or humor or surprise. Mathematically I've heard.

356
00:35:10,72 --> 00:35:19,85
I know I have some friends who are trying to answer that question but I don't know of one sort of I usually go by.

357
00:35:21,8 --> 00:35:36,6
You know it when you see it kind of definition. So it was like. Each Other. Large I see here.

358
00:35:37,89 --> 00:35:47,58
Yeah it's certainly a fascinating topic to think sort of at a high level of like mathematics for example has a kind of

359
00:35:48,9 --> 00:35:55,93
a branch mathematical logic where tries to understand where we try to understand mathematically what mathematics is

360
00:35:55,93 --> 00:36:00,94
and why it works or when it works when it doesn't work. But.

361
00:36:01,47 --> 00:36:07,19
Of course the mathematics we practice in real life is a kind of a social dynamic you know do you believe

362
00:36:08,23 --> 00:36:10,88
but someone claims they have a proof written down there

363
00:36:10,88 --> 00:36:16,28
but to really check the proof you have to check it very carefully and it's humans are perfect

364
00:36:16,28 --> 00:36:20,72
and so it's there's a social dynamic to the.

365
00:36:20,74 --> 00:36:27,09
The body of research we we create and in some ways it makes it more fascinating

366
00:36:27,09 --> 00:36:31,14
and colorful that that kind of mind share of what we know

367
00:36:31,14 --> 00:36:35,86
or what we think we know is always kind of changing usually we're adding things we think are true

368
00:36:36,69 --> 00:36:37,65
or that we claim are true.

369
00:36:37,73 --> 00:36:42,54
Sometimes we take them back away we look at an old theorem and people have been building on

370
00:36:42,54 --> 00:36:45,03
and realize oh actually that proof is wrong

371
00:36:45,03 --> 00:36:51,53
and then there's this flurry of activity trying to fix the proof make a new proof so that the results that are built on

372
00:36:51,53 --> 00:36:56,13
it are the result may still be true but sometimes we need to find a new way to prove it.

373
00:36:56,2 --> 00:37:02,81
Sometimes the results and being false. That's that's more. It's occasionally scary but it's exciting.

374
00:37:04,85 --> 00:37:09,04
Always trying to discover new things but also make sure they're really correct.

375
00:37:09,75 --> 00:37:17,99
And definitely to me one of the appeals of mathematics is that you there is at least a sense of real truth of ultimate

376
00:37:17,99 --> 00:37:21,27
truth that in principle if you're doing it correctly

377
00:37:22,3 --> 00:37:25,44
and you prove something you really know that it is without a doubt true.

378
00:37:25,71 --> 00:37:30,99
There's no other area where you can be as certain but still even then

379
00:37:30,99 --> 00:37:36,88
or stuff like quite certain because humans make mistakes all the time. Yeah.

380
00:37:37,07 --> 00:37:43,92
So I mean certainly we can see a lot that we can kind of build up lots of evidence that something is true by

381
00:37:45,07 --> 00:37:50,34
constructing lots of examples and sculpture and and more practical engineering structures and so on

382
00:37:50,34 --> 00:37:59,37
but to know that it's always true is a little bit different to know that it's usually true. This start.

383
00:38:01,27 --> 00:38:03,28
Well you're right.

384
00:38:09,00 --> 00:38:11,45
You have puzzles of remained an active interest

385
00:38:11,45 --> 00:38:18,63
and in some sense all the mathematics we do is a kind of puzzle we have some set up of like what you're allowed to do

386
00:38:18,63 --> 00:38:22,57
say with paper folding are some other simple mathematical structure

387
00:38:22,57 --> 00:38:27,51
and the puzzle is you know what's possible what can you make these are kind of met a puzzle set sense

388
00:38:28,54 --> 00:38:35,56
but even puzzles themselves like the kind of board game puzzles you get or the like sliding blocks

389
00:38:35,56 --> 00:38:39,26
or these kinds of things are actually really interesting to study mathematically as well.

390
00:38:39,28 --> 00:38:46,96
And so my dad and I and many collaborators like to explore the mathematics of games and puzzles

391
00:38:47,73 --> 00:38:52,47
and we do it for video games like we studied Tetris and Super Mario Brothers

392
00:38:52,47 --> 00:38:57,54
and other Nintendo games that I grew up playing now I can study them mathematically

393
00:38:57,54 --> 00:39:03,87
and the sorts of things that we prove are that it's really hard to play these games perfectly.

394
00:39:03,89 --> 00:39:09,22
So if you if I give you a level of Super Mario Brothers and say can you get from start to finish.

395
00:39:09,43 --> 00:39:13,13
That's actually computationally difficult problem

396
00:39:13,14 --> 00:39:17,96
and you can prove that solving that problem is really hard for a computer to do

397
00:39:18,95 --> 00:39:22,49
and my philosophy is that humans are essentially a kind of computer

398
00:39:22,49 --> 00:39:27,91
and so that tells you that it's also really hard for humans to play these games perfectly

399
00:39:27,91 --> 00:39:31,41
or to solve these puzzles to play a Tetris game optimally

400
00:39:31,41 --> 00:39:37,36
or to slide blocks around to get one block out of the box all these problems are really really hard

401
00:39:37,36 --> 00:39:40,83
and I think it helps explain for humans.

402
00:39:40,88 --> 00:39:46,19
Why we enjoy them because humans like a challenge things should be challenging but not too difficult

403
00:39:47,38 --> 00:39:50,04
and proving these problems are computationally difficult.

404
00:39:50,15 --> 00:39:51,99
They're still solvable given enough time

405
00:39:51,99 --> 00:39:58,42
but in general you need an amount of time that grows exponentially with the size of the puzzle and so.

406
00:40:00,00 --> 00:40:05,95
It means it's beyond a certain size it really becomes intractable and even in a small size it's a challenge

407
00:40:05,95 --> 00:40:06,9
but still feasible.

408
00:40:07,17 --> 00:40:13,67
I think that's why it's fun to have this kind of mathematical justification for why we like playing games

409
00:40:13,67 --> 00:40:20,82
and puzzles and it's also a fun way to explore puzzles and games that I grew up with or know or love

410
00:40:20,82 --> 00:40:27,22
and be able to study studying them from a mathematical perspective lets me essentially play the game

411
00:40:27,22 --> 00:40:29,99
but in a more interesting way in some ways.

412
00:40:30,07 --> 00:40:38,05
Usually we have to design new levels new puzzles within a design space in order to show that.

413
00:40:38,16 --> 00:40:44,02
Oh we can build like logic gates and we can essentially build a computer within this game or puzzle.

414
00:40:44,55 --> 00:40:50,11
And that's how you show that it's hard for a computer to play because computers are not it's really hard for a computer

415
00:40:50,11 --> 00:40:51,55
to simulate a computer sexually.

416
00:40:53,08 --> 00:40:54,49
That's sort of the hardest thing that they can do

417
00:40:55,31 --> 00:41:03,6
and so we get to have fun by playing became by designing new levels and so on.

418
00:41:03,72 --> 00:41:09,1
In order to prove these kind of interesting mathematical results that actually this game is really challenging.

419
00:41:09,11 --> 00:41:14,55
And difficult.

420
00:41:15,54 --> 00:41:22,6
So it's a bit of both Certainly I also just like playing games playing board games playing video games

421
00:41:22,6 --> 00:41:31,62
and that's a lot of fun. Just as. Mediums to explore human experience I guess.

422
00:41:32,82 --> 00:41:39,47
And I like the the role playing aspects I like the having fun with friends aspect

423
00:41:39,47 --> 00:41:42,16
or exploring a world that's I mean these days.

424
00:41:42,22 --> 00:41:46,19
Video games tell really powerful stories and so it becomes a new medium for storytelling.

425
00:41:47,15 --> 00:41:54,59
So lots of more personal and just sort of fun aspects like that as I would be as a as a kid playing again.

426
00:41:54,68 --> 00:41:59,44
And there's definitely a lot of nostalgia playing even playing old games as.

427
00:42:00,00 --> 00:42:07,15
New Again they still hold up as being very exciting. But there's always even when I'm playing just for fun.

428
00:42:07,58 --> 00:42:13,68
There's always in the back of my mind thinking I wonder if we can set this up as a clean mathematical problem

429
00:42:13,68 --> 00:42:15,87
and analyze the complexity of this game

430
00:42:17,21 --> 00:42:24,24
and some games are more amenable to this kind of mathematical analysis some of them require some adaptation to be a lot

431
00:42:24,24 --> 00:42:29,17
of games have a lot of different elements it's really complicated mathematics is really good at getting at the core of

432
00:42:29,17 --> 00:42:32,8
a problem. So it's a lot better when you have set up a simplified version.

433
00:42:33,13 --> 00:42:40,17
Maybe you say oh let's just focus in on this one particular aspect of the game which if that's harder than the whole

434
00:42:40,17 --> 00:42:45,24
thing is of course also even harder and so you can kind of isolate out the different parts

435
00:42:45,24 --> 00:42:52,01
and tease out an interesting mathematical problem out of a real game or puzzle and then analyze that. So I mean.

436
00:42:52,52 --> 00:42:56,32
It's it all fits together so as I'm playing a game. I'm always thinking about.

437
00:42:56,51 --> 00:43:00,84
I wonder what I can tease out of this game and as I'm playing and having fun.

438
00:43:01,08 --> 00:43:05,13
I'm also trying to think about that that mathematical formulation so.

439
00:43:05,41 --> 00:43:17,6
It's good because then you get inspiration for new problems to solve just by having fun all day so.

440
00:43:17,61 --> 00:43:19,16
Yeah I should get one.

441
00:43:19,31 --> 00:43:28,35
But we made these wire take apart puzzles so each It's multiple pieces each piece is just made out of a piece of metal

442
00:43:28,35 --> 00:43:36,28
wire that my dad would bend with pliers into shape and so one shade might be trouble clef

443
00:43:36,28 --> 00:43:44,05
or some some recognizable shape or house I remember designing that one and then there be other pieces attached to it.

444
00:43:44,06 --> 00:43:45,09
Everything's made out of wire.

445
00:43:45,16 --> 00:43:52,62
Maybe some metal rings also and so these pieces appear to be interlocked and the challenge is to separate them.

446
00:43:52,63 --> 00:43:59,86
And so while they look interlock there's actually some complicated procedure for pulling one piece at a.

447
00:44:00,00 --> 00:44:04,6
Yeah there and you've solved the puzzle of that you have to put it back in and give it to someone else to solve.

448
00:44:04,72 --> 00:44:13,16
So these are challenging the kind of a mix of geometry and apology in their design and.

449
00:44:14,28 --> 00:44:16,67
Yeah there are a lot of fun you can be quite hard.

450
00:44:17,56 --> 00:44:27,00
Some of them require hundreds of moves to solve some of them are easy if you know how but yeah.

451
00:44:27,2 --> 00:44:33,61
So I think that the challenge of a human playing video games comes from different elements

452
00:44:34,34 --> 00:44:39,83
and some parts are easy for computers to solve and other parts we sure are difficult for a computer to solve.

453
00:44:39,89 --> 00:44:48,32
So if you imagine like solving a level of Super Mario Brothers there's there's kind of the physics of like the physical

454
00:44:48,32 --> 00:44:51,73
aspect of pushing the buttons at the right time either pressing them really quickly

455
00:44:51,73 --> 00:44:55,18
or exactly the right moment just before you fall off the ledge you jump

456
00:44:55,18 --> 00:44:59,03
and land in the right place that sort of thing that computers are actually really good at doing

457
00:44:59,03 --> 00:45:08,65
and there are people who exploit that in the tool assisted plays plays of games where they use computers to like slow

458
00:45:08,65 --> 00:45:10,04
everything down and.

459
00:45:10,52 --> 00:45:16,3
Time exactly the right moment to make a jump and things like that the computers can do some aspects really well

460
00:45:16,3 --> 00:45:19,87
but there's kind of a there's a broader medal level in solving a puzzle

461
00:45:19,87 --> 00:45:26,26
or solving a level in a video game where you need to plan out I should do this thing first

462
00:45:26,26 --> 00:45:28,79
and then I'll go do this thing there's a time limit

463
00:45:28,79 --> 00:45:34,79
and so it's really sensitive to how I should plan out the overall execution of the level executing it may be hard for

464
00:45:34,79 --> 00:45:41,01
human easy for a computer but the planning part for a sufficiently complicated game is usually really difficult

465
00:45:41,95 --> 00:45:46,41
and you can prove that that's computationally challenging now real world levels

466
00:45:46,41 --> 00:45:51,37
and puzzles are usually designed to be right at the edge where you have to try several different options

467
00:45:51,37 --> 00:45:55,23
but it's not impossible but in some sense

468
00:45:55,23 --> 00:45:59,67
and that challenge comes out of this broader setting if you have a really large.

469
00:46:00,00 --> 00:46:05,46
Well you can encode really hard problem inside that that puzzle and solving it.

470
00:46:05,56 --> 00:46:08,61
You can show us how hard even for a computer to play.

471
00:46:09,72 --> 00:46:16,96
So another example is like Tetris you have Tetris The usual the practical challenge is that you have this time limit.

472
00:46:16,99 --> 00:46:21,85
You know the pieces falling you have to decide where to put it really fast computers are good at doing things really

473
00:46:21,85 --> 00:46:25,17
fast but deciding where to put is actually really hard

474
00:46:26,00 --> 00:46:31,86
and you can you can show that sort of long term planning of where you should put your pieces so that you won't run out

475
00:46:31,86 --> 00:46:33,21
of space in your Tetris board.

476
00:46:33,38 --> 00:46:40,21
That's actually competition intractable also so it's interesting I think real world games you have this interesting

477
00:46:40,21 --> 00:46:45,43
mixture of making it hard for a human by giving time limits or physical execution can be challenging

478
00:46:45,43 --> 00:46:49,35
and then you have this mastery aspect which very appealing to gamers.

479
00:46:50,5 --> 00:46:53,91
But then usually there's this underlying computational difficulty that.

480
00:46:53,99 --> 00:47:15,79
So you're solving this hard problem under time constraints that it's exciting for people. It's research for your site.

481
00:47:16,66 --> 00:47:21,2
There definitely are some consequences I have a lot of games

482
00:47:21,21 --> 00:47:26,75
or in some sense a like video games are often an abstraction of a real world problem.

483
00:47:26,77 --> 00:47:29,15
Typical example is motion planning.

484
00:47:29,34 --> 00:47:32,17
So you're either you have a bunch of robots

485
00:47:32,17 --> 00:47:38,5
or you're a bunch of people trying to execute some goal you have a lot of objects you want to rearrange them into a

486
00:47:38,5 --> 00:47:39,16
particular pattern

487
00:47:39,16 --> 00:47:44,24
or maybe you're in a warehouse moving products around the every every product has a place it needs to go.

488
00:47:44,39 --> 00:47:47,72
What's the optimal way for moving all these parts around.

489
00:47:48,07 --> 00:47:55,54
That's those kinds of problems end up in a lot of video games also usually in a somewhat abstracted simplified form.

490
00:47:55,56 --> 00:47:59,83
So proving those problems are hard shows also that.

491
00:48:00,00 --> 00:48:04,27
These kinds of more real world problems are difficult as well maybe you can

492
00:48:04,27 --> 00:48:11,48
or it helps you maybe try to isolate what are the what is special about the real world instances maybe your warehouse

493
00:48:11,48 --> 00:48:14,36
is mostly two dimensional because you don't stack lots of things

494
00:48:14,36 --> 00:48:22,33
or what are the it's speciality is of the real world instance that make them easier than the videogame So there's

495
00:48:22,33 --> 00:48:24,07
definitely that kind of interplay

496
00:48:25,21 --> 00:48:31,65
but I think a lot of people study the Myself included study the complexities of these games

497
00:48:31,65 --> 00:48:35,47
and puzzles because it's fun and it's kind of a recreational pursuit.

498
00:48:35,61 --> 00:48:42,33
So it's a little bit less serious than some areas of mathematics computer science but still we enjoy it

499
00:48:42,33 --> 00:48:43,46
and it's kind of a fun.

500
00:48:43,57 --> 00:48:50,85
I use it a lot as a way to get students excited about research because most people come in with their own background of

501
00:48:50,85 --> 00:48:53,5
like what are fun games and puzzles that they grew up playing

502
00:48:54,41 --> 00:48:59,17
and those inspired new mathematical problems either directly about those games

503
00:48:59,17 --> 00:49:01,21
or about sort of the underlying principles

504
00:49:02,02 --> 00:49:09,61
and these kinds of hardness personally call them to show these games are competition intractable are a nice way to get

505
00:49:09,61 --> 00:49:15,09
started in research because you get to play with the game you get to use the expertise you have from having grown up

506
00:49:15,09 --> 00:49:15,73
playing this game.

507
00:49:15,9 --> 00:49:17,69
You probably spent way too many hours playing them

508
00:49:17,69 --> 00:49:21,69
and that expertise is actually really helpful for solving the underlying math problem

509
00:49:21,69 --> 00:49:26,99
and it can get people excited about. Oh this is this is computer science research I want to do more of this.

510
00:49:28,35 --> 00:49:35,86
There's also the I think the broad appeal of you know there's some mathematical results that are hard for.

511
00:49:36,23 --> 00:49:37,94
The general public to appreciate.

512
00:49:38,01 --> 00:49:43,86
But you analyze a game or a puzzle that everyone has played or big segment the population is played

513
00:49:43,86 --> 00:49:46,97
and they can appreciate like oh yeah I remember that being really hard.

514
00:49:46,99 --> 00:49:48,77
Oh you can prove that mathematically Oh that's interesting.

515
00:49:49,14 --> 00:49:55,08
I wonder how they do that and that can inspire people to enter the field or at least get a curiosity or

516
00:49:55,08 --> 00:49:59,7
and learn about fields that they're not necessarily working in and appreciate that.

517
00:50:00,00 --> 00:50:06,22
There's interesting things you can do about problems I happen to care about because most people like games

518
00:50:06,98 --> 00:50:21,91
and so this isn't a nice kind of broad appeal connection where our years ten years.

519
00:50:21,92 --> 00:50:30,33
It's hard to know exactly where my research will take me I definitely like MIT as a base because it's I mean there are

520
00:50:30,33 --> 00:50:34,33
mazing students here amazing people doing all sorts of great and crazy things

521
00:50:34,33 --> 00:50:40,17
and just a lot of flexibility to essentially do what we want and explore whatever we find interesting.

522
00:50:40,5 --> 00:50:49,08
So what will be most interesting to us in ten years is hard to guess but this definitely is a nice.

523
00:50:49,1 --> 00:50:54,24
Powerful base to do it from so different enjoying my time here.