Ronaldo vs My Unbeatable Goalie Robot

This is the world's greatest goalkeeper

because it's a robot

and it's really, really fast.

And this is Ronaldo,

the world's greatest SOCCER >> CRISTIANO RONALDO. RONALDO.

>> SO, THE QUESTION BECOMES, what happens when the world's greatest player faces off against

the world's greatest keeper?

Now, to even get to this point, I had to survive the toughest of coaches.

>> Don't cut the corner.

>> The strongest of legs. >> Let's go.

A lot of failure

and a little blood.

Look at my hand.

But all that started for me right here at the most iconic football stadium

in the world when I was invited to play in the Sideman

charity match and I came ready to play. >> Left Mark.

>> Biggest stage of football we could ever play 90,000.

>> My second favorite moment was when Speed

tried to outspeed me.

challenge from Mark Rover

>> because my first favorite moment was when I got to take a penalty kick

>> and score a goal in front of 90,000

of my closest friends.

Now, to say this was a dream of a lifetime would be an understatement.

I've been playing soccer my whole life starting at 5 years old, and that's

the kind of moment you only dream about as a kid.

The problem was now that I realized how good that felt, I couldn't shake

the idea that somehow I'd missed my life's calling to compete at the highest

level with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo.

Now, NORMALLY BECAUSE I'M GENERALLY UNCOORDINATED,

WHEN I NEED TO compete at the highest level, I just rely on my

brain, which means I know what it feels like to be a world-class

bowler, a world class field goal kicker,

>> world class darts player, jigsaw

champion, domino layer, and golfer.

And so, while that was a reliable plan B, if I was ever going

to have a chance to actually compete in a sport with my raw athletic

talent, this would be my best shot.

So, with the cheers of Wimbley still ringing in my ears, I made my

way back to the pitch to meet up with the one person I knew

could prepare me for the debut of my professional career, the goat of American

soccer himself, >> Mark, what's up, bud?

>> Landon Donovan, how we doing?

And I cut right to it, asking if there's anything I would first need

to know before going

>> Okay, so you're training twice a day on the field. Got it?

And then hour, hour 15 in the gym every day.

After that, calf raises. Okay.

30 minutes a day, you're at home.

Calf raises every time you're running.

Ball at your feet.

Ball at your feet all the time.

What about your ice creams and your treats and your dessert? Lots of stretching. It's yoga.

That's Pilates as well.

Talking to a sports psychologist.

Keep your heart rate low while you're doing cutting. It's sprint.

Keep your hips mobile. Running. Jogging. It's massage. >> Six more things.

>> Can you just write this down for me?

>> Just read my book.

>> Oh, does it come in audio book? >> Yes, it does. It does. Okay, good.

>> Let me see what we're working with.

>> We started by running a five drill gauntlet to see if I had what it takes.

Starting with the simple exercise of kicking a ball straight up in the air. >> Easy enough. Oh boy. >> No.

Every time you mess up, you got to take a lap. Lap.

>> Apparently, this is a pretty common training technique for soccer.

>> Don't cut the corners. >> My bad.

>> With every mistake meaning a full lap around the field. >> Try again.

>> Oh, take a lap.

Ah, drill number two was testing my aerial attack where I had to practice

heading a ball lifted up to Ronaldo's

max jump height at 9.5 ft. >> Is it close?

Must have been good, right? soccer's hard.

Test three was the banana kick >> just like this where we had to put

spin on the ball to bend it into the >> Not bad. I got it. Not bad. Not good.

I got to knock good. I know. I know. I know. Lap faster, please.

>> The next two tests involve speed and

>> So, just like this.

>> This one we had to bomb a ball into the goal from halfway down the field. >> That's pretty.

>> So, I gave it a shot and actually made it pretty far

away from the net. >> Dang it.

But I was feeling optimistic

about the final test because that was aiming at targets at a much closer distance.

So, I was pretty sure I was running my last lap.

DON'T CUT THE >> Barely cut. >> All right, Mark.

Four targets, four balls.

>> I just had to hit the top right. >> Oh.

Oh, I hit the post and then the top left

and then the bottom right

and the bottom left.

>> Oh, is that even possible?

>> I mean, you could have just said yes. Lap. Let's go. >> CORNER.

IT'S LIKE A FOOT, COACH.

I love the effort.

I'd uh I'd stick to science, bud.

>> So, with that resounding end to my professional soccer career, >> thanks, Lion.

>> It's time to start thinking like an engineer

and initiate plan B.

And so, after consulting with the team for a little brainstorm,

this was plan B.

If I want to be the best soccer player in the world, I'll first

need to defeat the best soccer player in the world.

In other words, I need to switch positions

and make it impossible

for Cristiano Ronaldo to score a goal on me by building the world's greatest goalkeeper.

But there's a problem with that.

Ronaldo kicks the ball at 80 mph.

So, it'll reach the goal line in just a quarter of a second.

Now, for goalie centered, then the maximum distance he has to travel is 12 ft.

That means he'll need to yeet himself to 40 mph,

then slam back on the brakes to zero.

All within 250 milliseconds.

That's literally half the time it takes to blink.

In other words, I'm going to need some really big motors and a bunch

of fancy cameras to track the ball so we can predict the trajectory

after only a few milliseconds.

For the fancy camera part, we got ourselves 12 high-speed infrared cameras.

So, while a normal camera sees me and Ian and anything else that's randomly

in the background, those 12 cameras

only see one thing, this soccer ball.

And that's because if you look real close on the soccer ball, we've got

these little gray stickers called retroreflectors

whose surface is made up of tiny little glass spheres that bounce any light

right back at the light source like you see with those markers on the

road or with road signs.

So these cameras blast the scene with infrared light.

And because they can only see infrared,

the retroreflectors glow super bright relative to everything else.

So when you compare exactly where the center of the bright spot is in

all 12 images and then do some really complicated

math, you get a 3D position of where the ball is down to the

nearest millimeter 500 times per second.

For us, that means 6 milliseconds

after being kicked, we now have three data points we can draw a line

through to predict where the ball will end up.

In other words, by the time Ronaldo's

kick has traveled exactly

this far, the goalie robot will already know exactly where it needs to be

to block the shot.

So, we first needed to validate our tracking system by recording the kick that

was faster than 70 mph.

And apparently Ian got Coach Landon's scouting report cuz when I showed up, there

were two D1 soccer players already there to take the kick instead of just asking me.

>> Ian, I specifically remember telling you, I can do that for you.

I remember you saying that. I do.

>> But I'm nothing if not a team player.

So, I volunteered to get in goal. >> I'm so confident.

Not only am I going to block your shot, but I'm going to get

it speed at the same time.

Please don't hit me. AM I DONE?

I TRIED AIMING AWAY from him. >> Medic. >> Oh, that's bad.

>> Look at my hand.

>> But it would take a lot more than that to keep Mark Robber down.

Cuz it's not about how many times you fall.

It's about how many times you get up.

So, I cleaned my wounds and courageously

stepped back in the line of fire.

>> Let's see what SHE GOT. >> That's not bad.

>> Which was good, but not quite fast enough.

We had to keep trying. >> OH, WOW.

67, >> which I'm assuming will be good enough for the top comet, but not

good enough for our top speed. >> Wo! 71.

>> We now had the data to verify our design would actually work, which meant

we were finally ready for a 10-second

build This is one to one. No. >> Yeah, that checks.

>> Here's how it works.

Those cameras we talked about all plug into a computer that figures out super

quickly in real time where the ball is going to end up.

And then it sends that answer to the pair of 50 horsepower

motors right here and here.

Then each of those motors is attached to a belt that whips our carriage

mounted gold to the exact spot the ball will be plus or minus the

width of a human hair.

So, all that was left to do now is to see if it actually worked.

>> We want to try to take a shot.

>> Do you want to try and block a shot?

Hands away from the keyboard. Here we >> WOW. OKAY, MARK ROVER.

>> BETTER luck next time, Mark Rover.

>> Now, to appreciate how tricky that is, there is a ton of data with

over 5,000 camera frames updating the goalie position real time every second.

The only problem was this warehouse was basically in the middle of nowhere with zero internet.

So, I hit up my besties at T-Mobile

and they hooked us up, which meant we were firing on all cylinders thanks

to the best network in the US.

For my second shot, I tried to get tricky with the offspe kick. >> Bring the heat.

>> 3 2 1 >> there's no fake outs.

>> You coated the panka. Dang it.

There's no fool in this guy.

You want to go again?

>> Finally, in frustration, I just reverted to raw power with a kick

that would make Coach Landon very proud.

So, while it wasn't yet perfect,

it was certainly looking very promising,

even if I'd already identified a couple

Oh, hey, we weren't ready. Redo, redo.

>> So, to make sure we had truly worked out all the bugs before facing

Ronaldo, we decided to gather real world data by heading out to a local

high school for some actual competition

in the form of five shooters of increasing

difficulty, culminating with the final boss,

Destroyer, aka the strongest leg on the

And we kick things off with what was certainly the most intimidating opponent to date.

How fast can you kick? >> Really fast.

>> Guess how fast Mark Rover can move. >> How fast? >> That fast. That's faster.

>> All right, science Bob, do the honors. Oh, YES.

BETTER luck next time, Jonah.

Okay, >> now in hindsight, I do admit my round one Sy against Jonah might

have been a bit extra. >> That's right.

>> But regardless, Z round two versus Tori.

>> All right, Tori, what's your strategy?

>> Which corner would you say? >> She's going left. >> Tori. Best of luck. CONCENTRATION.

>> TORI, that was a good effort. Well played.

And with two of six down, I think it's worth pointing out now that

we were out in the field, I once again asked T-Mobile for an internet hookup.

And that's when they suggested, "Why don't you just run the entire robot on 5G?"

And I said, "Well, in order to stop Ronaldo,

it would need to start moving in less than 10 milliseconds,

and that's 140th the time it takes to blink once, so there's no way

wireless could keep up with that."

And they said, "Actually, it can."

And I said, "Wow."

And sure enough, it actually worked.

So, like before, the camera sees the ball.

But now, when the computer picks up where it's going, that signal flies through

Google Pixel Rock in the Tensor Chip, ensuring super fast 5G speeds wirelessly

through the air across T-Mobile's

portable private 5G network straight into the robot all in less than 10 milliseconds.

Which means by the time your brain can even register the balls moving, this

robot has already moved to block it, which is wild.

Our third opponent, Kazushi,

came in hot, making some very bold claims.

>> How fast can you kick? >> Like 70 mph. >> Really, Kazushi?

I'm going to ask again now that I'm holding a radar gun.

How fast can you kick a soccer ball? >> Like 60.

>> And it just caught your blood placement.

>> All right, Kazushi, let's see your 60 mph blast.

>> Actually, like let's go 55. >> Okay, 55. Oh, WOW. WOW. YEAH, LET'S GO.

UNFORTUNATELY, my goalie couldn't keep a clean sheet due to some accuracy issues.

>> For the record, 54 mph.

>> But failure is part of the process.

So, I took note and graciously moved on.

Get out of here, Kazushi.

He walks at 2 miles an hour. I know that.

>> Our fourth circa, what the heck?

YOU BROKE MY LEFT ARM. >> That's my bad.

>> I think it might have actually hit the

>> Honestly, that's better than scoring. I broke it.

>> SENA, GET OFF MY FIELD.

My robot counterpart was definitely starting to fall apart, but my hope was he

could keep it together for at least a few more

>> Are you a lefty, Neo?

>> HE'S NOT EVEN SAYING, "OH, MARK, HE'S TRICKING YOU." >> He is left. NO, HE'S RIGHT. >> YEAH. LET'S GO. >> GOOD SAVE.

>> WE GOT GOOD NEWS and bad news.

We blocked the shot, but we seem to be losing

material on each one. >> Falling apart, man.

>> Neo, this is for you.

That's a piece of me.

Better luck next time, Neo.

Robot Mark Robber was on his last leg, but there was no time to

tend to wounds when the final boss was waiting.

>> I've watched all these boys compete.

I've seen him do their thing.

>> Yeah, but we've also been calibrating and learning ourselves.

>> I know, but you haven't seen a leg like mine before.

>> Calibrate all you want.

>> First video of yours I saw, you bombed what would have been like a

70 yard field goal.

>> It's a light work.

>> I mean, the wind was

>> I can see your SHORTS DOING THIS.

I'VE HEARD ENOUGH TALK.

NOW, I want to see the action.

So, I gave him three tries. Simple rules.

Best of three >> You're not going to ask my strategy?

No, >> I don't need to know your strategy.

You just kick it real hard.

>> See if you ready for this, Mark. >> RIGHT AT ME. OH, COME ON.

>> I WANT TO TEST THE BODY.

See what the body has.

>> 65 mph, by the way. >> Not bad.

I'm just warming up.

Let's try to hit 70 right here. >> OH, BOY.

>> HE BLOCKED IT, THOUGH. >> HE BLOCKED IT. >> But he's hurt.

You got to sub him.

I knew he should have used better glue.

I broke his robot.

Bro, this man spent months designing this thing, building this thing.

He was bragging about carbon fiber this steel foam this.

I think we might require a goalie swap.

>> So, after a quick sub of my critically injured keeper, it all came down to this. The final shot.

And with the score tied, it was winner takes all.

>> I think we need to move you closer. >> Closer.

Robo goalie is optimized

for the penalty kicks.

>> We'll see how optimized he is. >> All right. LET'S GO.

>> AND WITH AN absolutely

heroic effort, literally destroying

himself to get an extra foot of reach, he made the save.

Well, almost made the save. NO. NO. OPTIMIZE, HUH?

SO, we have some strength issues.

To be fair, I feel like the tracking is working well.

It's been there every time.

But what do you think our chances are against Ronaldo?

>> If you fix the strength issues, I think he's got a pretty good shot

against the >> While these real world tests were encouraging,

it was clear we still had a bit more work ahead of us.

Ronaldo kicks even harder than D.

So, we'd clearly need to level up the robot strength and durability.

Dang it, he kicks hard.

But even the speed and accuracy would need some work.

For the strength issues, we knew from the beginning this would be a huge

challenge because to withstand an 80 mph

kick, it needed to be really strong.

But the bulkier and stronger something is, the harder it is to move it quickly.

But it's a trade-off, just like how it's harder for me to move this

big, heavy bowling ball back and forth versus this lightweight,

flimsy little ping pong ball.

So to solve that, we just use an old trick I learned at NASA

where you sandwich a piece of dense foam between two sheets of carbon fiber.

And now you've got something that's really lightweight,

weighing less than a gallon of milk,

and yet it's also super strong. abs, baby.

But this solution had one critical

oversight, our attachment point.

When we looked at the footage in slow motion, it was clear before the

ball even made contact,

the damage had already been done.

And that's because we had to pull so hard on the goalie to get

it moving that fast.

We were peeling off the bracket

and the whole back face in the process.

So, we reinforced the attachment of the bracket by adding four large diameter shear

bolts and a carbon fiber crossmember.

And once we ran a test to simulate running the goalie with the old

method, >> that'll do her >> versus the new method.

>> it was clear this would make a huge >> Ship it.

>> To solve the accuracy issues, we doubled the number of cameras to 22,

which means we've doubled the number of eyes looking for the ball stickers.

So, we no longer have the issue where we sometimes would lose sight of the ball.

And finally, for the speed, we just pushed the motors to 250%

of the standard power levels, which doubled the robot's speed to 41 mph.

So, with all those fixes in place, it was time for one final test

to see if we were finally ready to face Cristiano Ronaldo.

And the early indicators

pointed to yes, we were.

>> The brain is not meant

to see things that large moving that fast.

>> It triggers your get out of here now

>> But just to be sure, we collected a few more data points.

>> I THINK I'M REALLY LIKING our chances.

I think this is ready for the pros.

And with that, let's go.

We were off to

Did you get it?

And it turns out Portugal is a beautiful country filled with really cool people.

But unfortunately, we had no time to enjoy it cuz we had only one

day to prepare to face off against their most famous countrymen.

And out of the gate, disaster

struck because once we got to the field and set things up, our goalie

robot was basically missing every shot.

>> Wait, did it move?

>> But did you want it to move? >> something is wrong.

>> We couldn't get a good read on the ball position because there was so

much noise in the tracking signal.

And this was really confusing

cuz we hadn't changed anything.

I wonder what that noise is from that it's so clean when we were

in the States, right?

>> I'm kind of surprised.

I'm looking at sources of variability.

And so as we step through all the sources of variability

one by one, when we looked at the graph of the ball position from

all the cameras and zoom all the way in, the ball seemed to be

wiggling up and down just a tiny bit about

1500 times per minute, even though the ball itself was perfectly still.

And 1500 wiggles per minute coincidentally

was the same RPM

frequency of an engine

you would find in a forklift

that happened to be moving

all around our field for the previous 3 hours.

And that meant the motor vibrations

were traveling through the tires,

through the ground, and ever soslightly

wiggling all 22 of our cameras,

causing the super delicate tracking system to basically be useless.

And so, as soon as we cleared out the forklift,

sure enough, the signal cleaned up perfectly

and we got back to blocking shots

smooth as butter for the most part.

So, while Ian stay back to tackle that final bug in the code, I

headed off to a Portugal World Cup qualifier

game to do some last minute recon

on their star player

before he would come over to meet our robot goalie after the match.

Now, to be honest, I didn't learn much about Ronaldo's

kicking game, but I did learn that his fans are very loyal.

>> Would you be willing to unsubscribe

from Ronaldo for me? >> Absolutely not.

>> Because I'm only 5 million subscribers

away from passing him on YouTube.

And suffice it to say, >> no.

No, no, absolutely no. No.

>> I would not be getting myself any closer while in this country.

But the good news is I know of another country that has five times

the population of this one.

So, do your thing, Argentina.

Now, seeing that I was mere hours away from the greatest showdown of my

life, I headed back to the field to wait for Ronaldo to finish his

game while I ran one final test.

Because this is a super complicated

robot that took a year to build.

But if you want to know what it feels like to build an epic

robot of your own, well, you're in luck with Hackpack,

where you get a really cool robot in a box delivered right to your

door, and it'll work right away with no programming required,

unless you want to get creative,

leveling up your robot's capabilities

by tweaking the code, which we make really easy to do, like with this

desktop lamp that has its own personality,

or this plant tank that will drive itself around the house to find the

perfect sunny spot, as well as letting you know when it needs water.

But then if you're just getting started on your journey of learning how to

build anything you can dream up, with Buildbox, you get a really fun mechanical

tour each month where you build it alongside me and I teach you all

the cool physics that make it work.

On top of that, each month your box has the chance to contain the platinum ticket.

And if you get it,

then you're coming out to Crunch Labs to build and play with my team for a day.

So, if you're a kid and you're looking for something to put at the

top of your Christmas list,

or you're just looking to be the household hero by giving it to someone

else, head to crunchlabs.com

where we're giving away two free boxes for our holiday special and where you'll

find we finally completed our trilogy of Creative Engineering subscription box options, now ranging

from ages 6 to 106.

And now that the game was over, it was time to face Cristiano

Ronaldo, the greatest soccer player of all time, a legend on the field, and

oh my gosh, he's right here tying his shoes right in front of me.

All of a sudden, this was real. It was happening.

And I had to show him that I meant business.

All right, Cristiano, I will bet you 5 million subscribers

that you cannot score on me in goalie.

>> I'll give you three tries.

Even >> that I don't score. >> Yeah.

And you won't score. >> let's go.

>> Now, of course, I didn't think I was going to stop all of them,

but considering my lifetime of soccer experience,

I wondered if I had a shot at stopping one.

I mean, he is Cristiano

Ronaldo, but I've been training my whole life for this moment. >> Wow.

Oh, that's not good.

>> Okay, obviously I wasn't going to be able to block all of them.

>> I'm not even wearing gloves or even two.

>> That was like an inch gap.

Okay, >> but now now I know your tells.

I had a shot at getting one because having seen Cristiano's

form hitting both the left

and the right, I had a chance to study his body language to figure

out which direction he was going to >> again the same. >> OH, WOW.

YOU EVEN told me that's >> One more.

>> No, I actually have something else I want to show you over here.

It was time to introduce Ronaldo

to my guest of honor in front of half the Portugal

national soccer team he brought over with him. No biggie. >> All right, Cristiano.

When I said you couldn't score on me, I meant you couldn't score on my robot.

>> And I held for applause,

as did my robot.

But Cristiano seemed less than >> It looks big.

>> Yeah, he's a little bigger than me. >> Yeah.

>> You want to see how fast it moves?

Okay, Ian, we good? Let's show him.

Do it one more time. >> Really fast. >> It's really fast.

The robot is better than me. >> So, let's try. >> Ronaldo was game. >> Here we go.

I wanted to get started pretty far away from the goalie.

>> All right, Cristiano, we are ready.

>> Okay, it was time for Ronaldo

to face some cold hard engineering.

>> let me do another one just to see.

>> And his first kick didn't offer him up any clues.

>> Do you have a strategy now?

What do you >> We need to I don't know.

Let Let me try >> That was fast.

>> So, is he better than me?

>> Ronaldo kept trying to go at it full force.

Oh, and quickly realized this was not going to be an easy fight.

>> I like that you're stretching

>> But the only thing taking a beating

>> was Ronaldo standing amongst his

>> So, I took a shot on my own.

>> If you keep going, you might tire him out. I don't know. >> I'm just kidding.

>> Until he gently suggested

I SHUT MY >> OH.

which left quite an impression.

>> Wow, that would have broken a nose.

>> The goalie robot looked to be unbeatable,

which was a huge relief because when shipping the robot over here, one of

the carriage rails got slightly damaged, and this meant sometimes it would stop short

of the goalpost on kicks placed to the right.

But thankfully, it didn't seem to be an issue after all.

>> You think he could be on the Portuguese >> Yes. Better than Diego.

It seemed like his theory was that the cameras were tracking his body

to predict the ball direction before he kicked it.

So, he ran a simple test. the stutter.

>> But then he seemed to have a new plan

>> because he stopped using his kicks to try and beat the robot

and started using his kicks to try and find a that potential. >> Okay. I'm getting nervous.

>> Let me try again. >> Okay. Okay. >> Last one. >> All right.

Ready when you are.

>> The funny thing about lifelong

dreams is they always involve a bunch of unexpected

twists and turns on the pathway up the mountain that often end for being

some of the best moments.

>> And even when the view at the top isn't exactly what you first pictured. >> Thank you, buddy. Really appreciate it.

And all that >> and very good. Very good.

>> It means you can now see a bunch more mountain tops you could potentially climb next.

But those will have to wait for another video.

>> Oh, that's nice as you this.

This holiday season, if you want to have a ton of fun while learning

how to think like an engineer

now from ages 6 to 106,

go to crunchlabs.com or use the link in the video description where we're currently

giving away two free boxes as a holiday special.

Oh, and also my friends at YouTube agreed to give you 20% off if

you use Google shopping features like the product links below this video while discounted supplies