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Science Recorder | Drew Adams | Wednesday, July 17, 2013
A group of robots will be competing in a series of physical trials this December in an effort to gauge whether or not they might one day replace humans in hazardous situations.
What once was considered a favored staple of science fiction is now on the way to becoming a reality as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, spearheads its Robotics Challenge from December 20 – 21. The competition consists of various obstacle courses that will test the limits of the robotic representatives via disaster response operations. The winning team will receive $2 million.
The Robotics Challenge website claims that “The goal of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) is to generate groundbreaking research and development so that future robotics can perform the most hazardous activities in future disaster response operations, in tandem with their human counterparts, in order to reduce casualties, avoid further destruction, and save lives.”
Six Track A customized robots will compete in the trials, including the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Rainbow Co. developed HUBO. The current version of the humanoid machine, DRC-HUBO, will be operated by a team led by Drexel University. The other competing bots include CHIMP (Carnegie-Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center), RoboSimian (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab), T.H.O.R. (Virginia Tech), Valkyrie (NASA’s Johnson Space Center), and a HRP-2 based robot from Japan’s SCHAFT Inc.
July 11 unveiled the Atlas robot as well, a 6-foot-2, 330 pound humanoid machine that will be used by seven Track B/C teams as they train for the December trials. Atlas was developed by Boston Dynamics and is considered one of the most advanced humanoid robots to date. It consists of a hydraulic powering system and two sets of hands that were developed by both Sandia National Labs and iRobot.
The seven Track B/C teams won the use of Atlas by progressing through DARPA’s Virtual Robotics Challenge in June. The challenge, which was the first part of DARA’s overall initiative, consisted of groups directing a virtual avatar of Atlas through computer simulated environments.
“[T]he software algorithms that were successfully employed by teams in the VRC should transfer with minor tuning to the ATLAS hardware,” stated a press release from DARPA.
Program manager for the challenge Gill Pratt elaborated further: “The Virtual Robotics Challenge was a proving ground for teams’ ability to create software to control a robot in a hypothetical scenario. The DRC Simulator tasks were fairly accurate representations of real world causes and effects, but the experience wasn’t quite the same as handling an actual, physical robot.”
A fourth track will be open to an unspecified, unfunded number of robot competitors. The event will be open to the public.
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