Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to hummingbird drone

You should be nice

to nerds.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say,

if you don't already have a nerd in your life,

you should get one.

I'm just saying.

Scientists and engineers

change the world.

I'd like to tell you

about a magical place called DARPA

where scientists and engineers

defy the impossible

and refuse to fear failure.

Now these two ideas

are connected more than you may realize,

because when you remove the fear of failure,

impossible things

suddenly become possible.

If you want to know how,

ask yourself this question:

What would you attempt to do

if you knew you could not fail?

If you really ask yourself

this question,

you can't help but feel uncomfortable.

I feel a little uncomfortable.

Because when you ask it,

you begin to understand

how the fear of failure constrains you,

how it keeps us

from attempting great things,

and life gets dull,

amazing things stop happening.

Sure, good things happen,

but amazing things

stop happening.

Now I should be clear,

I'm not encouraging failure,

I'm discouraging

fear of failure.

Because it's not failure itself

that constrains us.

The path to truly new,

never-been-done-before things

always has failure along the way.

We're tested.

And in part, that testing feels an appropriate part

of achieving something great.

Clemenceau said,

"Life gets interesting when we fail,

because it's a sign

that we've surpassed ourselves."

In 1895,

Lord Kelvin declared

that heavier-than-air flying machines

were impossible.

In October of 1903,

the prevailing opinion

of expert aerodynamicists

was that maybe in 10 million years

we could build an aircraft that would fly.

And two months later on December 17th,

Orville Wright powered the first airplane

across a beach in North Carolina.

The flight lasted 12 seconds

and covered 120 feet.

That was 1903.

One year later,

the next declarations of impossibilities began.

Ferdinand Foch, a French army general

credited with having one of the most original and subtle minds

in the French army,

said, "Airplanes are interesting toys,

but of no military value."

40 years later,

aero experts coined the term transonic.

They debated, should it have one S or two?

You see, they were having trouble in this flight regime,

and it wasn't at all clear

that we could fly faster than the speed of sound.

In 1947,

there was no wind tunnel data

beyond Mach 0.85.

And yet,

on Tuesday, October 14th, 1947,

Chuck Yeager climbed into the cockpit

of his Bell X-1

and he flew

towards an unknown possibility,

and in so doing,

he became the first pilot

to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Six of eight Atlas rockets

blew up on the pad.

After 11 complete mission failures,

we got our first images from space.

And on that first flight

we got more data

than in all U-2 missions combined.

It took a lot of failures

to get there.

Since we took to the sky,

we have wanted to fly

faster and farther.

And to do so,

we've had to believe in impossible things.

And we've had to refuse

to fear failure.

That's still true today.

Today, we don't talk about flying transonically,

or even supersonically,

we talk about flying hypersonically --

not Mach 2 or Mach 3, Mach 20.

At Mach 20,

we can fly from New York to Long Beach

in 11 minutes and 20 seconds.

At that speed,

the surface of the airfoil

is the temperature of molten steel --

3,500 degrees Fahrenheit --

like a blast furnace.

We are essentially burning the airfoil

as we fly it.

And we are flying it,

or trying to.

DARPA's hypersonic test vehicle

is the fastest maneuvering aircraft

ever built.

It's boosted to near-space

atop a Minotaur IV rocket.

Now the Minotaur IV has too much impulse,

so we have to bleed it off

by flying the rocket

at an 89 degree angle of attack

for portions of the trajectory.

That's an unnatural act

for a rocket.

The third stage has a camera.

We call it rocketcam.

And it's pointed

at the hypersonic glider.

This is the actual rocketcam footage

from flight one.

Now to conceal the shape, we changed the aspect ratio a little bit.

But this is what it looks like

from the third stage of the rocket

looking at the unmanned glider

as it heads into the atmosphere

back towards Earth.

We've flown twice.

In the first flight,

no aerodynamic control of the vehicle.

But we collected more hypersonic flight data

than in 30 years

of ground-based testing combined.

And in the second flight,

three minutes of fully-controlled,

aerodynamic flight

at Mach 20.

We must fly again,

because amazing, never-been-done-before things

require that you fly.

You can't learn to fly at Mach 20

unless you fly.

And while there's no substitute for speed,

maneuverability is a very close second.

If a Mach 20 glider takes 11 minutes and 20 seconds

to get from New York to Long Beach,

a hummingbird would take,

well, days.

You see, hummingbirds are not hypersonic,

but they are maneuverable.

In fact, the hummingbird is the only bird

that can fly backwards.

It can fly up, down,

forwards, backwards,

even upside-down.

And so if we wanted to fly in this room

or places where humans can't go,

we'd need an aircraft

small enough and maneuverable enough

to do so.

This is a hummingbird drone.

It can fly in all directions,

even backwards.

It can hover and rotate.

This prototype aircraft

is equipped with a video camera.

It weighs less than one AA battery.

It does not eat nectar.

In 2008,

it flew for a whopping 20 seconds,

a year later, two minutes,

then six,

eventually 11.

Many prototypes crashed -- many.

But there's no way

to learn to fly like a hummingbird

unless you fly.

(Applause)

It's beautiful, isn't it.

Wow.

It's great.

Matt is the first ever hummingbird pilot.

(Applause)

Failure is part of creating

new and amazing things.

We cannot both fear failure

and make amazing new things --

like a robot

with the stability of a dog on rough terrain,

or maybe even ice;

a robot that can run like a cheetah,

or climb stairs like a human

with the occasional clumsiness of a human.

Or perhaps, Spider Man

will one day be Gecko Man.

A gecko can support

its entire body weight

with one toe.

One square millimeter of a gecko's footpad

has 14,000 hair-like structures

called setae.

They are used to help it grip to surfaces

using intermolecular forces.

Today we can manufacture structures

that mimic the hairs of a gecko's foot.

The result,

a four-by-four-inch

artificial nano-gecko adhesive.

can support a static load

of 660 pounds.

That's enough to stick

six 42-inch plasma TV's to your wall,

no nails.

So much for Velcro, right?

And it's not just passive structures,

it's entire machines.

This is a spider mite.

It's one millimeter long,

but it looks like Godzilla

next to these micromachines.

In the world of Godzilla spider mites,

we can make millions of mirrors,

each one-fifth the diameter

of a human hair,

moving at hundreds of thousands of times per second

to make large screen displays,

so that we can watch movies like "Godzilla"

in high-def.

And if we can build machines

at that scale,

what about Eiffel Tower-like trusses

at the microscale?

Today we are making metals

that are lighter than Styrofoam,

so light

they can sit atop a dandelion puff

and be blown away

with a wisp of air --

so light

that you can make a car that two people can lift,

but so strong

that it has the crash-worthiness of an SUV.

From the smallest wisp of air

to the powerful forces of nature's storms.

There are 44 lightning strikes per second

around the globe.

Each lightning bolt heats the air

to 44,000 degrees Fahrenheit --

hotter than the surface of the Sun.

What if we could use

these electromagnetic pulses

as beacons,

beacons in a moving network

of powerful transmitters?

Experiments suggest

that lightning could be the next GPS.

Electrical pulses form the thoughts in our brains.

Using a grid the size of your thumb,

with 32 electrodes

on the surface of his brain,

Tim uses his thoughts

to control an advanced prosthetic arm.

And his thoughts

made him reach for Katie.

This is the first time

a human has controlled a robot

with thought alone.

And it is the first time

that Tim has held Katie's hand

in seven years.

That moment mattered

to Tim and Katie,

and this green goo

may someday matter to you.

This green goo

is perhaps the vaccine that could save your life.

It was made in tobacco plants.

Tobacco plants

can make millions of doses of vaccine

in weeks instead of months,

and it might just be

the first healthy use of tobacco ever.

And if it seems far-fetched

that tobacco plants could make people healthy,

what about gamers that could solve problems

that experts can't solve?

Last September,

the gamers of Foldit

solved the three-dimensional structure

of the retroviral protease

that contributes to AIDS in rhesus monkeys.

Now understanding this structure

is very important for developing treatments.

For 15 years,

it was unsolved

in the scientific community.

The gamers of Foldit

solved it in 15 days.

Now they were able to do so

by working together.

They were able to work together

because they're connected by the Internet.

And others, also connected to the Internet,

used it as an instrument of democracy.

And together

they changed the fate of their nation.

The Internet is home to two billion people,

or 30 percent of the world's population.

It allows us to contribute

and to be heard

as individuals.

It allows us to amplify

our voices and our power

as a group.

But it too had humble beginnings.

In 1969, the internet was but a dream,

a few sketches on a piece of paper.

And then on October 29th,

the first packet-switched message was sent

from UCLA to SRI.

The first two letters of the word "Login,"

that's all that made it through --

an L and an O --

and then a buffer overflow crashed the system.

(Laughter)

Two letters,

an L and an O,

now a worldwide force.

So who are these scientists and engineers

at a magical place called DARPA?

They are nerds,

and they are heroes among us.

They challenge existing perspectives

at the edges of science

and under the most demanding of conditions.

They remind us

that we can change the world

if we defy the impossible

and we refuse to fear failure.

They remind us

that we all have nerd power.

Sometimes we just forget.

You see, there was a time

when you weren't afraid of failure,

when you were a great artist or a great dancer

and you could sing, you were good at math,

you could build things, you were an astronaut,

an adventurer, Jacques Cousteau,

you could jump higher, run faster,

kick harder than anyone.

You believed in impossible things

and you were fearless.

You were totally and completely in touch

with your inner superhero.

Scientists and engineers

can indeed change the world.

So can you.

You were born to.

So go ahead,

ask yourself,

what would you attempt to do

if you knew you could not fail?

Now I want to say,

this is not easy.

It's hard to hold onto this feeling,

really hard.

I guess in some way,

I sort of believe it's supposed to be hard.

Doubt and fear always creep in.

We think someone else, someone smarter than us,

someone more capable,

someone with more resources will solve that problem.

But there isn't anyone else;

there's just you.

And if we're lucky,

in that moment,

someone steps into that doubt and fear,

takes a hand and says,

"Let me help you believe."

Jason Harley did that for me.

Jason started at DARPA

on March 18th, 2010.

He was with our transportation team.

I saw Jason nearly every day,

sometimes twice a day.

And more so than most,

he saw the highs and the lows,

the celebrations and the disappointments.

And on one particularly dark day for me,

Jason sat down

and he wrote an email.

He was encouraging,

but firm.

And when he hit send,

he probably didn't realize what a difference it would make.

It mattered to me.

In that moment

and still today

when I doubt,

when I feel afraid,

when I need to reconnect

with that feeling,

I remember his words,

they were so powerful.

Text: "There is only time enough to iron your cape

and back to the skies for you."

♫ Superhero, superhero. ♫

♫ Superhero, superhero. ♫

♫ Superhero, superhero. ♫

♫ Superhero, superhero. ♫

♫ Superhero, superhero. ♫

Voice: Because that's what being a superhero is all about.

RD: "There is only time enough

to iron your cape

and back to the skies for you."

And remember,

be nice to nerds.

(Applause)

Thank you. Thank you.

(Applause)

Chris Anderson: Regina, thank you.

I have a couple of questions.

So that glider of yours,

the Mach 20 glider,

the first one, no control, it ended up in the Pacific I think somewhere.

RD: Yeah, yeah. It did. (CA: What happened on that second flight?)

Yeah, it also went into the Pacific. (CA: But this time under control?)

We didn't fly it into the Pacific.

No, there are multiple portions of the trajectory

that are demanding

in terms of really flying at that speed.

And so in the second flight,

we were able to get three minutes

of fully aerodynamic control of the vehicle before we lost it.

CA: I imagine you're not planning to open up to passenger service

from New York to Long Beach anytime soon.

RD: It might be a little warm.

CA: What do you picture that glider being used for?

RD: Well our responsibility

is to develop the technology for this.

How it's ultimately used

will be determined by the military.

Now the purpose of the vehicle though,

the purpose of the technology,

is to be able to reach anywhere in the world

in less than 60 minutes.

CA: And to carry a payload

of more than a few pounds? (RD: Yeah.)

Like what's the payload it could carry?

RD: Well I don't think we ultimately know what it will be, right.

We've got to fly it first.

CA: But not necessarily just a camera?

RD: No, not necessarily just a camera.

CA: It's amazing.

The hummingbird?

RD: Yeah?

CA: I'm curious, you started your beautiful sequence on flight

with a plane kind of trying to flap its wings

and failing horribly,

and there haven't been that many planes built since

that flap wings.

Why did we think that this was the time to go biomimicry

and copy a hummingbird?

Isn't that a very expensive solution

for a small maneuverable flying object?

RD: So I mean, in part,

we wondered if it was possible to do it.

And you have to revisit these questions

over time.

The folks at AeroVironment

tried 300 or more different wing designs,

12 different forms of the avionics.

It took them 10 full prototypes

to get something that would actually fly.

But there's something really interesting

about a flying machine

that looks like something you'd recognize.

So we often talk about stealth

as a means for avoiding any type of sensing,

but when things looks just natural,

you also don't see them.

CA: Ah. So it's not necessarily just the performance.

It's partly the look. (RD: Sure.)

It's actually, "Look at that cute hummingbird

flying into my headquarters."

(Laughter)

Because I think, as well as the awe of looking at that,

I'm sure some people here are thinking,

technology catches up so quick,

how long is it

before some crazed geek with a little remote control

flies one through a window of the White House?

I mean, do you worry about the Pandora's box issue here?

RD: Well look, our singular mission

is the creation and prevention of strategic surprise.

That's what we do.

It would be inconceivable

for us to do that work

if we didn't make people excited and uncomfortable with the things that we do

at the same time.

It's just the nature of what we do.

Now our responsibility

is to push that edge.

And we have to be, of course, mindful and responsible

of how the technology is developed

and ultimately used,

but we can't simply close our eyes

and pretend that it isn't advancing; it's advancing.

CA: I mean, you're clearly a really inspiring leader.

And you persuade people

to go to these great feats of invention,

but at a personal level,

in a way I can't imagine doing your job.

Do you wake up in the night sometimes,

just asking questions

about the possibly unintended consequences

of your team's brilliance?

RD: Sure.

I think you couldn't be human

if you didn't ask those questions.

CA: How do you answer them?

RD: Well I don't always have answers for them, right.

I think that we learn

as time goes on.

My job is one of the most exhilarating jobs you could have.

I work with some of the most amazing people.

And with that exhilaration,

comes a really deep sense

of responsibility.

And so you have on the one hand

this tremendous lift

of what's possible

and this tremendous seriousness

of what it means.

CA: Regina, that was jaw-dropping, as they say.

Thank you so much for coming to TED. (RD: Thank you.)

(Applause)