DENNIS HONG: Just trying to make a robot walk steadily is ridiculously difficult. I won't say impossible, because I don't like that word, but it's a very difficult challenge.

THURMON LOCKHART (Virginia Tech): All right, so, David,…

DAVID POGUE: Yet, we're masters at it.

THURMON LOCKHART: Come on in.

DAVID POGUE: Wow. What are you doing here?

And engineer Thurmon Lockhart is trying to figure out why. He's built this strange looking device to analyze, not just how we walk, but how we avoid falling.

And I'm about to try it out.

But first, I need to suit up.

Thurmon's outfit is filled with sensors that measure how far, how fast and in which direction I move.

I can't decide if I feel more like a superhero or a Broadway dancer.

THURMON LOCKHART: Both.

And you're going to have to wear a headband, as well.

DAVID POGUE: This is just an elaborate prank to humiliate me on television, isn't it?

The little white balls are part of an optical motion capture system that instantly creates a stick figure of me.

(Singing) Well you can tell from the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man, no time to talk.

Next, I'm put in a harness, because it's time to take a stroll through Thurmon's obstacle course.

THURMON LOCKHART: That's good.

DAVID POGUE: After walking back and forth several times, suddenly…

THURMON LOCKHART: Oh, good.

DAVID POGUE: What the hell?

THURMON LOCKHART: Did you feel that a little bit?

DAVID POGUE: Did I feel it? You made the earth shake under my feet.

But check out what happens when I do this a second time.

I handle the jolt much better. My body and brain have already integrated thousands of pieces of information in a flash.

THURMON LOCKHART: You ready?

DAVID POGUE: That's because we have the exceptional ability to adapt to sudden changes in our environment.

Walking is a skill that took millions of years for us to develop. And, when you think about it, it still takes each of us about year to go from floppy, to crawling, to waddling and, finally, mustering the skills and courage to walk on our own two feet.

And we never stop learning how to adapt to the many obstacles we confront every day.

So walking is not just more complex than I thought, it's much more complex than I thought. And if you wanted to design a robot that could walk as well as a person, I mean, this would be fantastically complicated software. I mean, it would have to be doing billions of calculations with every step.

THURMON LOCKHART: It is amazing that we are able to do it almost innately and without really even thinking about it.

DAVID POGUE: Dennis Hong hopes that in the future, his robots will be able to master this extraordinary human skill. And they're learning how to do it one kick at a time.

DAVID POGUE and DENNIS HONG: Score!

DAVID POGUE: Every year, hundreds of teams from around the world compete at RoboCup Soccer, a competition designed to foster research in robotics and artificial intelligence.

DENNIS HONG: To make a autonomous soccer-playing robot, you really need to solve all the grand challenges, the really difficult problems in robotics. Robot vision, autonomous behavior, bipedal walking—and running, in the future. All of these need to be solved to truly build a soccer-playing robot.

DAVID POGUE: But what comes naturally to us,…

DAVID POGUE and DENNIS HONG: Whoa...

DAVID POGUE: …comes a lot harder for Dennis's robots.

Dominobots!

You think you're pretty good at soccer? I'm better. I can do this. Whoa, that's scary. He got right back up, and he gave me a dirty look!

Despite his robot's shortcomings, Dennis is optimistic.

DENNIS HONG: By the year 2050, we want to have these type of full-size humanoid robots play soccer against the human World Cup champions and win.