NASA vs DARPA with Mark Micire [Idea Machines #1]

12/07/18 • 58 min

My guest this week is Mark Micire, group lead for the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Previously Mark was a program manager at DARPA, an entrepreneur, and a volunteer firefighter.

The topic of this conversation is how DARPA works and why it’s effective at generating game-changing technologies, the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA, and developing Robotics and technology in high-stakes scenarios.

Links

Intelligent Robotics Group

DARPA

Camp Fire

DARPA Defense Sciences Office

First DARPA Grand Challenge Footage - looks like a blooper reel

FEMA Robotics

Transcript

Ben: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Mark, welcome to the show. I actually want to start let's start by talking about the campfire.

[00:00:04]Camp Fire

[00:00:04] So we have a unprecedented campfire going on right now. It's basically being fought primarily with people. I know you have a lot of experience dealing with natural disasters and Robotics for emergency situations. So I guess the big question is why don't we have more robots fighting the campfire right now?

[00:00:26] Mark: [00:00:26] Well, so the believe it or not. There are a lot of efforts happening right now to bring robotics to bear on those kinds of problems. Menlo Park fire especially has one of the nation's leading. Groups, it's a small called kind of like a squad of folks that are actually on Menlo Park fire trained in their absolute career firefighters who are now learning how to leverage in their case.

[00:00:57] They're [00:01:00] using a lot of uavs to to do Arrow aerial reconnaissance. It's been used on multiple disasters the we had the damn breakage up in almost the same area as campfire. And they were using the the uavs to do reconnaissance for for those kind of things. So so the the ability for fire rescue to begin adopting these two new technologies is always slow the inroads that I have seen in the last say five years is that they like that it has cameras.

[00:01:32] They like that it can get overhead and can give them a view they wouldn't have been able to see otherwise the fact that now you can get these uavs. That have thermal imaging cameras is frighteningly useful, especially for structure fires. So that's so that's the baby steps that we've taken where we haven't gone yet that I'm hopeful we'll eventually see is the idea that you actually have some of [00:02:00] these robots deploying suppressant.

[00:02:01] So the idea that they are helping to, you know, provide water and to help put out the fire that that's a long leap from where we are right now, but I would absolutely see that being within the realm of the possible. Sybil about gosh now friend 2008. So about 10 years ago NASA was leveraging a predator be that it had with some with some.

[00:02:27] Imagery technology that was up underneath it. Um to help with the fire that was down in Big Sur and I helped with with that a little bit while I was back then I was just an intern here at Nasa and that's I think a really really good example of us using of the fire service leveraging larger government facilities and capabilities to use Robotics and usually these and other things in a way that the fire service itself frankly doesn't have the budget or R&D [00:03:00] resources to really do on their own.

[00:03:00]Ben: [00:03:00]

[00:03:00]So you think it's primarily a resources thing

[00:00:00] Mark: [00:00:00] t it's a couple factors there's resources. So, you know outside of I'll say really outside of DHS. So the problem that homeland security has a science and technology division that does some technology development outside of that. There's not a whole lot of organizations outside of commercial entities that are doing R&D a for fire rescue the it just doesn't exist.

[00:00:28] So that's so that's that's your first problem. The second problem is culturally the fire service is just very slow to adopt new technology. And that's not it. It's one part. You know, well, my daddy didn't need it in my daddy's daddy didn't need it. So why the heck do I need it right at that?

[00:00:49] That's it's easy to blame it on that. What I guess I've learned over [00:04:00] time and after working within the fire service is that everything is life-critical? There's very few things that you're doing when you're in the field providing that service in this case Wildfire response where lives don't. Kind of hang in the balance.

[00:01:09] And so the technologies that you bring to bear have to be proven b...

Links

Intelligent Robotics Group

DARPA

Camp Fire

DARPA Defense Sciences Office

First DARPA Grand Challenge Footage - looks like a blooper reel

FEMA Robotics

Transcript

Ben: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Mark, welcome to the show. I actually want to start let's start by talking about the campfire.

[00:00:04]Camp Fire

[00:03:00]Ben: [00:03:00]

[00:03:00]So you think it's primarily a resources thing

[00:01:09] And so the technologies that you bring to bear have to be proven b...

Next Episode

Venture Capital Meets Fusion Power with Malcolm Handley [Idea Machines #2]

My Guest this week is Malcolm Handley, General Partner and Founder of Strong Atomics.

The topic of this conversation is Fusion power - how it’s funded now, why we don’t have it yet, and how he’s working on making it a reality. We touch on funding long-term bets in general, incentives inside of venture capital, and more.

Show Notes

Strong Atomics

Malcolm on Twitter (@malcolmredheron)

Fusion Never Plot

Fusion Z-Pinch Experiment.

ARPA-e Alpha Program

ITER - International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

NIF - National Ignition Facility

ARPA-e

Office of Fusion Energy Science

Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air

Transcript

[00:00:00] This podcast I talk to Malcolm Hanley about Fusion funding long-term bets incentives inside of venture capital and more Malcolm is the managing partner of strong atomics. Strong atomics is a venture capital firm that exists solely in a portfolio of fusion projects that have been selected based on their potential to create net positive energy and lead to plausible reactors before starting strong atomics.

Malcolm was the first employee at the software company aside. I love talking to Malcolm because he's somewhat of a fanatic about making Fusion Energy reality. But at the same time he remains an intense pragmatist in some ways. He's even more pragmatic than I am. So here in the podcast. He thinks deeply about everything he does.

So we go very deep on some topics. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Intro

Ben: Malcolm would you would you introduce yourself?

Malcolm: Sure. So I'm Malcolm heavily. I found in strong [00:01:00] atomics after 17 years is software engineer because I. I was looking for the most important thing that I could work on and concluded that that was kind of change that was before democracy fell off the rails.

And so it was the obvious most important thing. So

my thesis is that climate change is a real problem and the. Typical ways that we are addressing it or insufficient, for example, even if you ignore the climate deniers most people seem to be of the opinion that we're on track that Renewables and storage for renewable energy are going to save the day and my fear as I looked into this more deeply is that this is not sufficient that we are in fact not on track and that we need to be looking at more possible ways of responding to [00:02:00] climate change.

So I found an area nuclear fusion that is that it has the potential to help us solve climate change and that in my opinion is underinvested. So I started strong atomics to invest in those companies and to support them in other ways. And that's what I'm doing these days

What did founding strong atomics entail?

Ben: and he did a little bit more into what founding strong atomics and Tails. You can just snap your fingers and bring it into being

Malcolm: I almost did because it was extremely lucky but in general Silicon Valley has a pretty well worn model for how people start startups and I think even the people getting out of college actually no a surprising amount about how to start a company and when you look at Fusion companies getting started you realize just how much knowledge we take for granted in Silicon Valley.

On the other hand as far as I can tell the way [00:03:00] that every VC fund get started in the way that everyone becomes a VC is unique. It was really one story for how you start a company and there are n stories for how funds get started. So in my case, I wasn't sure that I wanted to start a fund more precisely.

It hadn't even occurred to me that I would start a fund. I was a software engineer and looking for what I could do about climate change. I'm just assuming that I was looking for a technical way to be involved with that. I was worried because my only technical skill is software engineering but I figured hey, but software you can do many things.

There must be a way that a software engineer can help. So I made my way to The arpa-e Summit in DC at the beginning of 2016 and went around and talked to a whole lot of people if they're different boots about what they were doing and. My questions for myself was does what you're doing matter. My question for them was how might a software engineer help [00:04:00] and to a first approximation even at a wonderful conference like the arpa-e summit.

...