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So, robots.
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Robots can be programmed
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to do the same task millions of times with minimal error,
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something very difficult for us, right?
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And it can be very impressive to watch them at work.
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Look at them.
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I could watch them for hours.
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No?
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What is less impressive
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is that if you take these robots out of the factories,
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where the environments are not perfectly known and measured like here,
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to do even a simple task which doesn't require much precision,
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this is what can happen.
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I mean, opening a door, you don't require much precision.
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(Laughter)
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Or a small error in the measurements,
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he misses the valve, and that's it --
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(Laughter)
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with no way of recovering, most of the time.
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So why is that?
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Well, for many years,
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robots have been designed to emphasize speed and precision,
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and this translates into a very specific architecture.
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If you take a robot arm,
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it's a very well-defined set of rigid links
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and motors, what we call actuators,
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they move the links about the joints.
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In this robotic structure,
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you have to perfectly measure your environment,
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so what is around,
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and you have to perfectly program every movement
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of the robot joints,
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because a small error can generate a very large fault,
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so you can damage something or you can get your robot damaged
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if something is harder.
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So let's talk about them a moment.
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And don't think about the brains of these robots
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or how carefully we program them,
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but rather look at their bodies.
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There is obviously something wrong with it,
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because what makes a robot precise and strong
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also makes them ridiculously dangerous and ineffective in the real world,
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because their body cannot deform
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or better adjust to the interaction with the real world.
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So think about the opposite approach,
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being softer than anything else around you.
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Well, maybe you think that you're not really able to do anything if you're soft,
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probably.
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Well, nature teaches us the opposite.
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For example, at the bottom of the ocean,
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under thousands of pounds of hydrostatic pressure,
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a completely soft animal
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can move and interact with a much stiffer object than him.
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He walks by carrying around this coconut shell
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thanks to the flexibility of his tentacles,
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which serve as both his feet and hands.
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And apparently, an octopus can also open a jar.
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It's pretty impressive, right?
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But clearly, this is not enabled just by the brain of this animal,
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but also by his body,
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and it's a clear example, maybe the clearest example,
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of embodied intelligence,
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which is a kind of intelligence that all living organisms have.
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We all have that.
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Our body, its shape, material and structure,
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plays a fundamental role during a physical task,
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because we can conform to our environment
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so we can succeed in a large variety of situations
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without much planning or calculations ahead.
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So why don't we put some of this embodied intelligence
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into our robotic machines,
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to release them from relying on excessive work
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on computation and sensing?
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Well, to do that, we can follow the strategy of nature,
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because with evolution, she's done a pretty good job
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in designing machines for environment interaction.
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And it's easy to notice that nature uses soft material frequently
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and stiff material sparingly.
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And this is what is done in this new field or robotics,
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which is called "soft robotics,"
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in which the main objective is not to make super-precise machines,
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because we've already got them,
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but to make robots able to face unexpected situations in the real world,
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so able to go out there.
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And what makes a robot soft is first of all its compliant body,
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which is made of materials or structures that can undergo very large deformations,
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so no more rigid links,
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and secondly, to move them, we use what we call distributed actuation,
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so we have to control continuously the shape of this very deformable body,
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which has the effect of having a lot of links and joints,
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but we don't have any stiff structure at all.
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So you can imagine that building a soft robot is a very different process
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than stiff robotics, where you have links, gears, screws
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that you must combine in a very defined way.
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In soft robots, you just build your actuator from scratch
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most of the time,
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but you shape your flexible material
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to the form that responds to a certain input.
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For example, here, you can just deform a structure
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doing a fairly complex shape
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if you think about doing the same with rigid links and joints,
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and here, what you use is just one input,
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such as air pressure.
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OK, but let's see some cool examples of soft robots.
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Here is a little cute guy developed at Harvard University,
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and he walks thanks to waves of pressure applied along its body,
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and thanks to the flexibility, he can also sneak under a low bridge,
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keep walking,
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and then keep walking a little bit different afterwards.
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And it's a very preliminary prototype,
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but they also built a more robust version with power on board
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that can actually be sent out in the world and face real-world interactions
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like a car passing it over it ...
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and keep working.
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It's cute.
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(Laughter)
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Or a robotic fish, which swims like a real fish does in water
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simply because it has a soft tail with distributed actuation
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using still air pressure.
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That was from MIT,
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and of course, we have a robotic octopus.
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This was actually one of the first projects
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developed in this new field of soft robots.
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Here, you see the artificial tentacle,
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but they actually built an entire machine with several tentacles
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they could just throw in the water,
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and you see that it can kind of go around and do submarine exploration
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in a different way than rigid robots would do.
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But this is very important for delicate environments, such as coral reefs.
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Let's go back to the ground.
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Here, you see the view
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from a growing robot developed by my colleagues in Stanford.
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You see the camera fixed on top.
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And this robot is particular,
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because using air pressure, it grows from the tip,
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while the rest of the body stays in firm contact with the environment.
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And this is inspired by plants, not animals,
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which grows via the material in a similar manner
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so it can face a pretty large variety of situations.
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But I'm a biomedical engineer,
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and perhaps the application I like the most
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is in the medical field,
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and it's very difficult to imagine a closer interaction with the human body
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than actually going inside the body,
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for example, to perform a minimally invasive procedure.
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And here, robots can be very helpful with the surgeon,
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because they must enter the body
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using small holes and straight instruments,
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and these instruments must interact with very delicate structures
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in a very uncertain environment,
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and this must be done safely.
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Also bringing the camera inside the body,
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so bringing the eyes of the surgeon inside the surgical field
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can be very challenging if you use a rigid stick,
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like a classic endoscope.
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With my previous research group in Europe,
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we developed this soft camera robot for surgery,
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which is very different from a classic endoscope,
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which can move thanks to the flexibility of the module
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that can bend in every direction and also elongate.
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And this was actually used by surgeons to see what they were doing
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with other instruments from different points of view,
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without caring that much about what was touched around.
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And here you see the soft robot in action,
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and it just goes inside.
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This is a body simulator, not a real human body.
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It goes around.
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You have a light, because usually,
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you don't have too many lights inside your body.
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We hope.
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(Laughter)
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But sometimes, a surgical procedure can even be done using a single needle,
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and in Stanford now, we are working on a very flexible needle,
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kind of a very tiny soft robot
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which is mechanically designed to use the interaction with the tissues
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and steer around inside a solid organ.
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This makes it possible to reach many different targets, such as tumors,
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deep inside a solid organ
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by using one single insertion point.
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And you can even steer around the structure that you want to avoid
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on the way to the target.
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So clearly, this is a pretty exciting time for robotics.
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We have robots that have to deal with soft structures,
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so this poses new and very challenging questions
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for the robotics community,
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and indeed, we are just starting to learn how to control,
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how to put sensors on these very flexible structures.
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But of course, we are not even close to what nature figured out
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in millions of years of evolution.
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But one thing I know for sure:
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robots will be softer and safer,
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and they will be out there helping people.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)