tonight on the special edition of "60 minutes presents" looking towards the future. >> 9 minutes of work, 7 minutes of terror. >> he's talking about the decent and landing of the perseverance rover on mars. >> landed on her own. >> there it goes. >> big sigh of relief. i almost collapsed on the console. >> a mini helicopter to take off and navigate in the marchtian atmosphere. here's a little bit of a jump. >> that's incredible. >> there's a lot of incredible

things going on at boston dynamics. cutting edge dynamics company. >> this is inside atlas's brain. it shows its perception system. it will use the vision to adjust itself as it goes running over these blocks. you are in control. >> this is called an evitol. >> electric vertical aircraft. >> you can feel the wind up here. >> an entire industry hopes to have the electric vehicles available so you can soar over bumper to bumper traffic. some for about the cost of an uber. ♪ you cannot tear it down ♪ ♪ crush it, and kick it, ♪

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good evening, i'm anderson cooper. welcome to "60 minutes presents." tonight a look towards the future, the earth above it and even beyond it. we'll visit a futuristic factory in boston where robots s to dance and when electronic planes soar. a place out of this world. it's been nearly two years since ingenuity have left planet earth. in february of last year they landed in a hazardous and previously unexplored area of mars where perseverance was looking for signs of life. two months after landing

ingenuity disconnected and made history conducting the first flights in another atmosphere's planet. it's worth remembering that this all happened millions of miles away in outer space. >> last year on april 6th in this martian crater perseverance posed for a selfie. two weeks later the rover's fligh hoverin it may not look like so much. but for those who worked so hard to make it happen, it was a reason to rejoice. mimi ung led the team. she had been working on ingenuity for six years. how hard is it to play hookup to

mars? >> very, very hard. we truly started with the question of, is it possible? >> a lot of people thought it could not be done. >> because it's kind of intuitive. you need atmosphere. >> the atmosphere on mars is completely different. >> the atmosphere on mars is so dense. the room we're in, it's 1% there. so the question really can you generate enough lift to really lift up anything, that was the fundamental question. >> subsequent flights to ingenuity have gone higher and farther traveling four miles in all circles of mars. it is a triumph not only for nasa but for the partners in the >> matt keenin is with aerovirnin who produces drones. >> that's incredible.

ten years ago he and his team created this robotic hummingbird which has a tiny camera on board. >> whoa! >> there it is. >> oh, my god, that's amazing. keenan and ben led the team that created ingenuity's rote tors, motors and landing gear. why was this so challenging? >> because it has to be a spacecraft as well as an aircraft and flying it as an aircraft on mars is pretty challenging because the density of the air is similar to about 100,000 -- >> how do you go about it? >> building everything extremely light weight is really, really critical. >> the helicopter's blades are made from a tie row foam material coated with carbon fiber. stiff, strong. >> you get a sense of how stiff and light weight that is.

>> nothing. >> yeah, it is nothing. >> incredibly light. >> here we go, taking off. >> this is the first time they've shown an outsider a version of ingenuity. here on earth terry's blades are spinning at about 400 revolutions per minute. on mars in the thin atmosphere it had to spin six times faster to generate the same lift. >> and then land. >> ingenuity cost $85 million to build and operate. terry a lot less. it's still nerve racking to be handed its controls. >> all right. go ahead. you've got it. slide it right. you can push it all the way to the right if you want. slide left. >> wow. >> bring it up a little. now stop. >> the joysticks we used to fly terry are of no use on mars. radio signals take too long to get there. >> let me take over. i've switched you out. >> whew. >> even someone who's good at

flying drones and hummingbirds couldn't fly a helicopter on mars. here's what happened when keenan tried to use a joystick to fly an early version of it. >> surprise. >> this is to show you a human being can't respond quickly enough to control it. >> exactly. >> so they equipped ingenuity with a system to allow it to stabilize itself. in 2006 it aced the chamber test. >> it's being commanded 4 or 500 times per second. >> they proved it could fly. it's in the belly of perseverance. >> 5, 4 -- engine ignition, 2, 1. >> it had to be tough enough to survive the journey to mars.

>> liftoff. >> on july 20th, 2020, it took off from cape canaveral. the spacecraft's heat shield hit the martian atmosphere going 12,000 miles an hour. >> ready to enter and land on her own. >> as they sat in the control room. al chan had no control. radio signals take about 11 minutes to travel from earth to mars. the spacecraft was preprogrammed to descend, maneuver, and pick a landing site on its own. all the work its colleagues hoped to do on mars would be impossible if his part of the mission failed. how long had you been working on this mission? >> coming up on nine years or so. >> that's a lot of work. >> nine years of work, seven minutes of terror. >> it's done if the parachute doesn't -- >> yeah, no one wants to be the guy that drops the baton. >> no landing by a spacecraft

has ever been recorded as well as this one. there were six cameras capturing it all from different angles. the parachute deployed and then the heat shield fell away like a lens cap and perseverance got the first look at ground. this is not a simulation. this is what it looks like to parachute on to mars. how fast is it moving at this point? >> still going 350 miles an hour and still slowing down. >> it looks gentle here but it's falling at more than 300 miles an hour. >> that's right. we're heading down at near race car speed. >> below safe landing spots but it was blowing it towards more treacherous territory towards the east. perseverance sent a message saying the thrusters might not be working properly. so you get a reading saying the jets that are going to help it. >> right. >> slow down and control the landing, that they're not working. >> right. >> what do you do? >> nothing you can do. everything's already happened.

>> you are sweating now? >> exactly. i'm right back there again. yeah. >> about 300 meters. >> to al chen's relief, it did what it was designed to do, found a suitable landing spot even in rocky terrain. despite the warning, the thrusters worked. you can see them kicking up dust as they fire to slow the spacecraft down. the dissent stage known as the sky crane lowered it to the ground and hovered and flew off to crash a safe distance away. >> touchdown confirmed. perseverance safely on the face of mars. >> at that moment a big sigh of relief. i almost collapsed over the console. >> for two months a team of engineers, programmers and scientists were living on mars time. it's their job to monitor the rover's health and tell it where to go and how to search for

signs of life while perseverance slept to conserve energy on nights, the team on earth analyzed the photographs and prepared a list of things for it to do the following morning when it woke up. >> it's just after midnight on mars. the vehicle is asleep. >> matt rollins said a day on mars is 40 minutes longer than on earth. the team's schedule was constantly changing. >> the people here are mars night shift workers? >> that's a good way to think of it. >> working night shift, this is a night shift that's constantly moving? >> right. >> on perseverance's fourth day of mars it swiveled the powerful camera and took a look around. a space enthusiast named shawn dorin put the photos together, put them to music and posted them to youtube.

even a top scientist was moved when he saw it. >> i went and got a beer and watched this thing scroll by. that was the moment when i felt like i was there. >> reporter: tim farley leads the team that will direct the team through the area. >> the oldest evidence of life on earth is about 3.5 billion years old. the rocks were deposited in a shallow sea. this crater that you see here was a lake 3.5 billion years ago so we are looking at the same environment and the same time period, two different planets. >> it's determined however long in the future that know there was not ever life, what does that mean? >> the place where perseverance landed here is the most habitable time period in mars and the most habitable environment we know about. this is as good as it gets at

least of our current understanding of what we understand. if we don't find life here, it makes us worry perhaps it doesn't exist anywhere. >> perseverance's telescopic camera spotted a lot of boulders he didn't expect to see in the middle of an ancient lake. >> so this is surprising? >> absolutely. >> what do those boulders tell new. >> the most reasonable interpretation tell you the flood. you don't have fast flowing water in the middle of a lake. you get fast flowing water in the river. there was a river that was capable of transporting boulders this big. >> so, what, the lake would have gone down and later on there was a flood? >> yeah, exactly. >> perseverance was supposed to leave ingenuity behind after a 30 day demonstration of its flying ability. nasa officials decided to keep them together and explore how

rovers and helicopters might be able to work together. the fastest perseverance is designed to travel is a tenth of a mile an hour. ingenuity has gone 20 times faster. >> an aerial vehicle, flying vehicle for space exploration is game changing. >> it frees you in a way? >> absolutely. a flying vehicle, rotor craft allows us to get places. inside deep sea cliffs. >> after perseverance explored the floor, it's headed to a remnant of an ancient river delta where conditions should have been right for microorganisms to exist. as this simulation shows, it's taken 40 core samples of rock and sealed in special tubes and left on the surface. nasa plans to accepted another mission to mars to retrieve the tubes and in ten years ken

farley says scientists examining those samples may be confronted with a new and perplexing question. >> how do you look for life that may not be life as you know it? we've never had to do that before. we've never had to ask the question -- >> is there a form of life we can't even conceive of it. >> that's the whole point of this. ars for years t a goes accordine to come since it's carrying the first audio microphones we'll leave you with what it sounds like as the 1 ton rover moves across the vast, slow moving expanses of mars. earlier this year nasa and the european space agency agreed on a plan to send three new spacecraft to mars in 2027 and

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boston dye namm smiks a cutting-edged robotics company that makes robots that move in ways we've only seen in science fiction films. they've released videos with them summer soughting and springing without fear. we've been trying without any luck to get into boston dynamic's workshop for years and in march of 2021 they finally agreed to let us in. so we went to massachusetts to

see how they make robots do the unimaginable. from the outside boston dynamics headquarters looks pretty normal. inside, however, it's anything but. if willey wonka made robots, his workshop might look something like this. there are robots in corridors, offices, kennels. they trot and dance and whirl. 250 or so roboticists barely bat an eye. that is atlas. nearly 5 feet tall. 175 pounds and is programmed to run, leap, spring. mark praber doesn't like to play

favorites. >> here's a little bit of a jump. >> that's incredible. >> atlas isn't doing all of this on its own but the robot's software allows it to make other key decisions autonomously. >> really the robot is doing all of its own balance and control. brian is just steering it. >> atlas balances with the help of censors and gyroscope and three on board computers. it was definitely built to be pushed around. >> push it. >> it's just trying to keep its balance just like you would. >> you can push it in any direction. you can push it from the side. making machines that can stay upright on their own move through the world with the ease of an animal or human has been

an obsession of mark hrabers. >> some people look at me and say, you've been stuck on this problem for 40 years. animals and people are very good at what they do. we're so agile. we're so versatile. we really haven't achieved what humans do yet but i think we can. >> he isn't making it easy on himself. he's given most of his legs. >> wheels and tracks are great if you have a prepared surface but people and animals can go anywhere on earth using their legs. that was the inspiration. >> some of the first contraptions he built in the early 1980s bounced around on what looked like pogo sticks. he was at carnegie mellon.

he foundedos 92 and with ceo robert plater has been working on this. they developed this robot big doing for the military. it can carry 400 pounds on its back. experimenting with speed, they got this cheetah like robot to run 30 miles an hour. none of these made it out of the prototype. but they did lead to this. it's called spy. boston dynamics made it not knowing how it would be used but the inspiration for it isn't hard to figure out. >> spot is an omni directional robot. i can go forwards and backwards. >> this is crazy. >> the real benefits of legs. legs give you that capability. >> that's robert ceo and hannah rossi who 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. >> you don't have to be perfect. drive it wherever you want to go and the robot will do the rest. >> in some ways it's like driving a sophisticated remote control car. what makes it different? >> spot is very smart about its own locomotion. it deals with the details about how to place my feet. what gait to use, how to manage my body. 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 signalled, spot can take itself off its charging station and go for a walk all on its own as long as it's pre-programmed to go for a walk. atlas has a similar technology. while we were talking in front

of atlas, this is how it saw us. >> this is inside atlas's brain and it shows its perception system. what looks like a flashlight is really the data coming back from its cameras. you see the white rec ttanglesrt attaches a footstep. then it adjusts its mechanics so it hits those places when it's running. >> all of that happens in a matter of milliseconds. >> so it's going to use that vision to adjust itself as it goes running over these blocks. >> atlas costs tens of millions of 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 800 are out in the world and sell for about $75,000 a piece. accessories cost extra. some spots work at utility companies using mounted cameras

to check on equipment. several police departments have tried them out 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 there's a lot of people who think this is terrifying. >> the rogue robot story is a powerful story and it's been told for 100 years but it's fiction. robots don't have agency. they don't make up their own minds about what their tasks are. they operate within a narrow bound of their programming. >> it is easy to project human qualities on these machines. >> i think they attribute much to our machines than they should. they want to project intelligence and emotion on to that in ways that are not

possible. >> it's not c3 p 0. it's not thinking. >> let me tell you about that. there's cognitive intelligence and athletic intelligence. cognitive intelligence is making plans, reasoning, things like that. >> it's not doing that. >> mostly doing athletic intelligence mapping body, posture, energetics. if you told it to travel in a circle it can go through the sequence of steps but if you ask it to go find me a soda, it's not doing anything like that. >> oh, no. >> just picking an item off the floor can sometimes be a struggle for spot. enabling it to open a door has taken years in programming and practice and a human has to tell it where the hinges are. >> each time we add some new

capability. that's when you push it to failure. >> at times he appreciates a low tech approach to testing robots. >> you're tough on robots. >> we think of that as 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. i mean, it's part of our culture. we have a motto, build it, break it, fix it. >> to do that, they have recruited robotocists to build them. bill washburn is part of that pit crew. >> how often do these need to get repaired?

>> it breaks off the top part of the robot. >> seems like a big failure. >> hydraulic hoses are the only ones. >> at least six months or eight. then we start to get technical working on the behavior. >> the behavior was dancing. ♪ ♪ >> all their robots got in on the act ♪ ♪ >> the movements were cutting edge, but the music and the mashed potato were definitely old school. ♪ ♪ >> there are some people who see that and say, that can't be real? >> nothing is more gratifying than hearing that. >> what's the point in proving

that the robot can do the mashed potato? >> this process of doing new things with the robots lets you generate new tools, understanding of a problem that takes you forward but, man, isn't this fun? >> it costs a lot of money. 18 months of your time. >> i think it was worth it. >> whether it will be worth it to the latest owner will be unclear. >> hyundai has bought it and there's pressure to turn the research into revenue. boston dynamics hopes this new robot will help. it's called stretch. it went on sale earlier this year. this was the first time they had shown it publicly. >> warehouses is really the next frontier for robotics. stretch isn't very exciting to look at.

it has a 7 foot arm. they say it can move 800 boxes an in 8 hours. stretch is designed to move around. >> you can drive it around with a joystick. once it's ready to go in a truck and unload it. you hit go and it will keep finding boxes and moving it until it's through. >> this generation of robots is different. they're going to work amongst us, next to us in ways where we help them but they also take some of the burden from us. >> the morrow boots integrated into the workforce, the more jobs would be taken away. >> at the same time you're creating a new industry. we envision a job, we like to call the robot wrangler. will launch and manage five to ten robots at a time. sort of keep them all working. >> is there a robot you've always dreamt of making you

haven't been able to do yet? >> a car with an active suspension, like a roller skate. and a robot like that could go anywhere on earth. that's one thing maybe we'll do at some point. the sky's the limit. there's all kinds of things we can and will do. >> as with so many things boston dynamics does, it's hard to understand how that would work but then again who'd of thought a bunch of metal machines would one day show us how to do the mashed potato. they both go down while number one seed novak djokovic advances

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if you've ever had the fantasy of soaring over bumper to bumper traffic in a flying vehicle that may be upon sooner than you think. not with a flying car but with an evitol. electric vertical takeoff and landing gear. as we first reported in april, dozens of companies are spending money to make them operate like air taxis. taking off from the tops of buildings, parking garages or hellie pads. they promise a faster, safer and greener mode of transportation. sound too good to be true? we went for a joyride to find out. >> i will arm the aircraft if you are ready. >> yeah, totally.

>> clear. >> if this looks like an oversized drone i'm about to take off in, that's pretty much what it is. >> breaking ground there. >> it's a single seat vehicle powered by 18 propellers, each with its own battery and jet fuel for fire. >> you are in control. >> on board computers automatically adjust for altitude and wind. >> you can really feel the wind up here. all i had to do was use a joystick. it took about 30 minutes of pre-flight training. >> use that yaw to rotate 90 degrees. >> wonderful. >> it's still in its testing phase so i had to stay close to the chief pilot and his ground crew. they say it's flown up to 195 feet in the air 24 miles per hour. >> whenever you are ready you can come back to home.

>> batteries go 15 minutes. i was going to land over the cameras. >> to land i pressed a button and the computers did the rest. >> right there, you are on the ground and spin it down. >> that ws cool. >> piece of cake, right? >> that was awesome. that was so much fun. wow. i so just want to take off in it. >> i know. >> matt is ceo of austin based aircraft which makes hexa. commuters will skip rush hour traffic. >> you can fly 10 miles in 10 minutes instead of spending an hour on the roads in rush hour congestion. >> will it be something an individual owns and flies? >> we don't see individual ownership very practical. these are very expensive. we see putting fleets at locations where we provide maintenance and training and

people can come in and pay for a flight. >> that's still a long way off. federal, state, local regulators aren't ready for hundreds of thousands of commuters piloting their own evitols in skies over congested cities, so to give people a taste of the future now, they designed hexa as an ultra weight vehicle. it doesn't have to go through the certification process but also can't fly over populated areas. he plans to start offering rides to customers for $250 by the end of the year. >> the initial market is joyrides for people? >> yes. i think there's a huge market for people to just experience the thrill and joy of flight. >> around the world all kinds of evitols are being developed. a whole barrage of arrow taxis.

some with the pilots and others without. dozens of companies are already working with the faa. it's not a flying car that science fiction movies anticipated? >> no. i look back at the arc of my own career, i'm just amazed at the amount of innovation that has been taken place. tois there ar of movingtsn >> we have to certify the design of the aircraft itself. is it piloted? is it aautonomous. where will it operate? then we decide where to put it into our air space. once it's met that safety first and only then will we be prepared to certify it.

>> some are well on their way. flew in a gas guzzling helicopter with joe ben bever. he took us to this remote facility in california where he was testing his evitol aircraft. when we landed it felt like the old guard meeting the new. obviously it's a combination and a plane. >> that's right. >> reporter: he's been working on this for a decade. six propellers and four batteries and will operate as an air taxi carrying the pilot and four passengers. it can fly 150 miles on a single charge and top speed around 200 miles an gn?ertil takeoff is imt to take you where you want to go. we don't need a huge runway.

and with the wing, we've had it cle cleared. >> no, that's -- >> pilot said it didn't need time to take off. >> that's it? that's really quiet. >> we wanted it to sound like the noise and the trees. >> reporter: noise issues are a big issue since they're meant to take off where people work and live. you needed to make sure that the aircraft is to be quie >> studied mechanical engineering where he discovered flexible camera tripod. the jobie rained an elusive

dream. >> there were definitely skeptics even good friends of mine who didn't believe you could make this with batteries. >> the battery technology wasn't there? >> yeah. >> dever hired john wagner away from tesla where he helped develop the revolutionary batteries. making them lighter but still powerful enough to get them off the ground. >> had to play to the strengths of battery power. so typical aircraft might have one big motor but we can have six motors distributed throughout the aircraft and in that way operate it with the weight of everything. >> how do you make a plane as light as possible? >> the outside of the joby is made with layers of light weight carbon fiber. batteries, computers, electronic motors are constructed under

john wagner's watch. his team shapes, bakes, spins down and makes sure they'll meet the faa's rigorous safety standards. >> you have to satisfy them that they're safe and certify the production of all parts. >> and the on per rags, the pilot training, maintenance steps. every facet is heavily regulated. >> all this costs a lot of money. toyota has invested about 400 enveloped joby and dever took the company public last year. >> i think the texture is good. >> the co-founder of pinterest has put in a small fortune. they'll launch in three cities. passengers will end up paying around 3 to $4 a mile to fly. a little more than an average uber ride. >> can you take me through as a pass sen der what it looks like? i want to get to jfk airport,

what do you do i do? >> take out your phone, click on the app and it's taking you from the take off and delivery port. maybe there's a car at the other end or just walking. >> if people are taking cars to and from vertiports, toebt that add to congestion? >> if we're able to take out 80% of the miles people are working and get them -- >> reporter: just a few weeks after we saw this joby aircraft fly, it crashed due to a component failure. no one was hurt but it was totaled. dever says that's all part of the testing process and he's as optimistic now as he was when we interviewed him. >> how far are you from getting the first joby in the sky with

passengers? >> we are launching our ser sflis 2024. >> you think you can do it that kwukly? >> yes. >> people have said they can do it and then it doesn't happen. >> we're very confident. >> at evitol they're developing what will be more complicated to bring to marked because it's fully autonomous. there will be passengers but no pilot on board. >> you're not just figuring out an electric vehicle but you're figuring out a fully autonomous flying vehicle. >> that's right. we're going for that. ceo gary geison says they will plan on paying $200 billion. they're bankrolled by others. >> how many test flights have you done? >> 1600 without an incident.

>> we watched one of those test flights in hollister, california. a team of engineers started the evitol with the click of a mouse. the entire route was preprogrammed. why autonomous? why go this route? >> we're going straight to self driving because it's safer. much of commercial aviation is automated. he sees the entire evitol industry going that way. he's determined to get there first. >> we do it from a safety and scale. you don't have to do pilot training, how you're flying four passengers. we can charge less. we don't want this to be a premium helicopter like service. we want it affordable to the

people. >> it takes time for people to get into a plane without a pilot at control. >> that's right. each passenger can be talking to a pilot whenever they want to. all designed to provide comfort. it will take time. >> geison wants to launch within the next decade. >> wheels down. >> you don't give a date when you think you'll be operational? >> you know why we don't do that? the faa is, in europe it's the ossa. when they certify our aircraft to fly might be coming. billy noland told us piloting this is well within the realm of possibility.

>> the challenge for us is to make sure innovation doesn't come at the expense of safety but clearly we are seeing the emergence of something that's fantastic, i think. >> this is real. this is no longer just the stuff of fantasy. >> we want to be very careful. we want to be very measured. you're absolutely right. this is real. this is happening. we've come a long way from what we knew, you know, a mere decade ago.

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i'm anderson cooper. stick around. another edition of "60 minutes presents" is coming up next. ♪ (cashier) nice. 2% cash back, right? (regina) and it is saving the day right now. ♪ (locksmith) good afternoon? (regina) it was. (vo) the wells fargo active cash visa card. that's real life ready.

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on this special edition of "60 minutes" presents, the ritchie boys -- think you know all about world war ii's greatest heroes? think again. tonight you'll meet four surviving members of a secret group called the ritchie boys. 11,000 american soldiers, many of them jews, who had fled nazi germany and were trained in espionage and psychological warfare. >> how effective were they at gathering intelligence? >> they were incredibly effective. 60-plus percent of the actionable intelligence gathered on the battlefield was gathered by ritchie boys. they made a