technician brian holings worth is steering it with this remote control. but the robot software allows it to make key decisions. >> really the robot is doing its own balance and scroll. brian is just steering it and telling it what speed and direction. the computers are directing the legs and applying force to keep it balanced. >> it has sensor and a gyroscope and three on board computers. it was built to be pushed around. >> push it more. it's just trying to keep its balance. you know, just you will if i push you. >> and you can push it in any direction. you can push it from the side. >> making machines that can stay up right on their own and move through the world with the ease of an animal or human has been an obsession of mark raburn's for 40 years. the space and time you have been work enging in is nothing in ti

that it took for humans to develop. >> people say, you have been stuck on the problem for 40 years. animals are amazingly good, and people, at what they he do. we are agile and versatile and we have not achieved what humans can do yet, but i think we can. >> raburn is not making it easy for himself. he has given most of his robots legs. why focus on legs? i would think wheels would be easier. >> yeah, wheels and tracks are great if you have a prepared surface like a road or even a dirt road. but people and animals can go anywhere on earth. using their legs. so, that, that was the inspiration. >> ready, 1-2- -- >> some of the first items he built bounced around on what looked like pogo sticks. they appeared -- they appeared in this documentary. he founded boston dynamics in 1992 and with ceo robert plater

has been working for decades to perfect how robots move. they developed this robot called big dog for the military as well as this larger pack mule that could carry 400 pounds on its back. experimenting with speed, they got this cheetah like wrobot to run nearly 30 miles an hour. none made it out of the prototype phase. but they did lead to this. it's called spot, boston dynamics made it not knowing exactly how it would be used but the inspiration for it is not hard to figure out. >> so, spot is a only any directional robot. i can go forwards and backwards. >> this is crazy. >> this is the real benefit of legs. legs give you that capability. >> that is robert plater, the ceo and than a is a technician that works on spot. >> i'm not doing anything special to let it walk over the rocks. there you go. >> the controls are easier to use than you might expect. >> does it have to come in

straight on? >> you don't have to be perfect about it. just drive it close to wherever you want to go and the robot will do the rest. >> wow. >> in some ways it's like driving a very sophisticated row mote control car. what makes it different? >> spot is smart about its own locomotion. it deals with the details of how to place the feet, what gate to use. how to manage my body. so that all you have to tell it is the direction to go to. >> and in some cases you don't even have to do that. >> when signaled, spot can take off the charging station and go for a walk on its own. as long as it's preprogrammed with the route. it uses five 3d cameras to map surroundings and avoid obsta obstacles. atlas has a similar technology. while we were talking in front of atlas, this how it saw us. >> this is inside atlas brain and it shows the perception

system. what looks like a flashlight is the data coming back from the cameras. you see the white rectangles, that means it is identifying a place to step. once it identifies it, it attaches the footsteps to it and it says, okay, i will try to step there and it adjusts to hit the places when it's running. all of that happens in a matter of miliseconds. >> so it will use the vision to adjust itself as it runs over the blocks. >> atlases cost 10s of millions dollars to develop but it's not for sale. it's used purely for research and development. but spot is on the market. more than 400 are out in the world. they sell for $75,000 a piece. accessories cost extra. some spots work in utility companies, using mounted cameras to check on equipment. and others monitor construction sites and several police departments are trying had them out with to assist with

investigations. >> let's talk about the fear factor. when you post a video of atlas or spot doing something a ton of people are amazed by it and think it's great and a lot of people think terrifying. >> the rogue robot story is powerful. it's been told for a hundred years. but it's fiction. the robots do not have agency or make up their minds of what their tasks are. they operate in a narrow bound of their programming. >> it ises -- it is easy to project human qualities on to the machines. >> people do it a tribute to our robots more than they should, they have not seen machines move like this before. and so they want to project intelligence and emotion to that in a way that is fiction. >> in other words, these robots still have a long way to go. >> i mean, it's not c-3po, it's not a thinking --

>> so let me tell you about. that there's a cognitive intelligence and an athletic intelligence. you know, cognitive intelligence is making plans, and making decisions, reasoning and things like that. >> it's not doing that. >> it's mostly doi iing athleti intelligence. it's managing its posture and energetics if you told it to travel in a circle in the room. it will go through the sequence of steps. if you ask it to go find me a symptom oda, it's not doing anything like that. >> oh, no. >> just picking an item off the familiar can sometimes be a struggle for spot. enabling it to open a door has taken years of programming and practice. and a human has to tell it where the hinges are. >> each time we add new capability and we feel we have got it to a good point. that's when you push it to failure to figure out how good of a job you have really done. >> kevin blank is one of the lead engineers here. at times he prefers a low tech

approach to testing robots. >> you are pretty tough on the robots. >> we had think of it as just another way to push them out of the comfort zone. >> failure is a big part of the process. >> when trying something new, robots like humans don't get it right every time. might be dozens of crashes for every one success. >> how often do you break a robot? >> we break them all the time. it's part of our culture. we have a motto, build it, break it, fix it. to do that boston dynamics has recruited robotosits with diverse backgrounds. there's plenty of ph.d.s and mechanic-s. >> how often do they need to get repaired? >> the biggest failures for me are the bottom part of the robot breaks off of the top part of the robot.

>> seems like a big job. >> and the hioses are the only thing holding it together. >> they decided to push their robots in way they never have before. >> we spent six months, maybe eight, preparing for what we were going to do. and then we started to get the teams working on the behavior. >> the behavior was dancing. ♪ ♪ >> older robots got in on the act. ♪ ♪ >> the movements were cutting edge. but the music and the mashed potato were old school. ♪ ♪ there's people see that and think it's not real. >> nothing is more gratifying than hearing that. >> what's the point in proving that the robot can do the mashed potato? >> the process of doing new

things for the robots let's you have new understanding of the problem that takes you forward. man isn't it just fun? >> anderson cooper reporting. now you can see the full report on our website, cbs news.com. an do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now you can sell your policy, even a term policy, for an immediate cash payment. call coventry direct to learn more. we thought we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized that we needed a way to supplement our income. our friends sold their policy to help pay for their medical bills and that got me thinking. maybe selling our policy could help with our retirement. i'm skeptical, so i did some research and called coventry direct. they explained life insurance is a valuable asset that can be sold. we learned that we can sell all of our policy or keep part of it with no future payments, who knew? we sold our policy. now we can relax and enjoy our retirement as we had planned. if you have one hundred thousand dollars or more of life insurance you may

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the same time teaching the teenagers a real lesson in retail. we have the story. >> reporter: an innovation born out of desperation during the pandemic. it's a food bank run like a grocery store inside a school. >> if a single mom is leaving the house and tells the kids i'm going to go to the food pantry, or i'm going go to the grocery store, which one has more dignity? going to the grocery store. >> reporter: he has teamed up with the principal to transform an art room in to a store that offers job skills to the students. >> that's the upc number. >> reporter: at the linda tutt high school, 40% of the families are at or below the poverty levels. teens stock shelves and order supplies and shops for food using a point season based on need. >> we give our students opportunities to earn bonus points that they can use for shopping in the grocery store for food and supplies for their family. >> every wednesday the store

opens up for the entire community. >> what do you like best about the store? >> seeing how they smile and knowing that they have food and they are not going to wake up in the morning hungry. >> providing lif

. youtube and reddit have opened up a world to show case the odd skills and activities they love. michael george introduces us to a guy who has become an internet sensation just by cleaning up his neighborhood. >> oh, good morning, good morning!

it's great to pick up trash. >> reporter: steve may seem that he is talking to himself. >> and we are live. >> reporter: out bebut he is ta to thousands of fans who tune in every morning to watch him pick up garbage. >> how is do everybody doing. >> reporter: steve is a 27-year-old musician. he started to live stream his trash clean ups in reddit, who thought he would have 12,000 followers in weeks. why does this connect with people so much? >> there's a couple of reasons. one, there's a sense of community on the streams and there's a sense of connectedness that people have been missing in the pandemic. >> he spreads positivity every morning. >> first of all, congratulations on the new job to amy. amy, this piece goes out to you. >> reporter: and then something unexpected happened. viewers started to do their own

clean up walks. not just in the u.s., now his small act has gone global. in germany this woman was inspired to clean up her neighborhood. and she has her own audience of 2,000 viewers. >> it was not just about picking up trash but picking up spirits. i have made lots of friends all over the world. >> reporter: and steve does not just talk to people, he listens. inviting followers to rea lay what is happening in their lives. >> hope your surgery goes well, thank you so much for sharing. >> reporter: proving that one man's trash. >> it's not the largest problem in my city, but it's something that i can do slowly. you know, get out and feel like i'm helping in some way. >> reporter: can be a neighborhood treasure. michael george, cbs news, new brunswick, new jersey. ♪ ♪ fly me to the moon and pick up all the trash. that's the overnight news for this wednesday, for some of you the news continues for others check back ater for cbs this

morning and follow us online any time at cbs news.com. reporting from the nation's capitol, i'm jan crawford. it's wednesday, march 31st, 2021. this is the "cbs morning news." >> first thing that concerned me is his face was smooshed into the ground, swollen. >> gripping testimony. witnesses give powerful statements in the murder trial of former cop derek chauvin. and we hear a dramatic 911 call. breaking overnight, congressman matt gaetz under investigation. the florida republican is accused of having a sexual relationship with an underage girl. cramped conditions. a look inside a migrant holding facility packed with thousands facility packed with thousands of children. captioning funded by cbs