First Place Bot Battle Prize Goes To DRC-Hubo
The 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge in Pomona, California, took place on this past Friday and Saturday with DRC-Hubo robot from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, South Korean accomplishing all 8 tasks with the shortest overall time of 44 minutes, 28 seconds. Florida’s Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC) came in second place, winning $1 million, and Tartan Rescue’s Chimp Robot from Carnegie Mellon University came in third, winning $500,000. For full lineup of teams, see our article from last week.
The competition pitted 24 teams on an obstacle course set up to mimic the Fukushima nuclear disaster area requiring specific types of disaster responses such as climbing over or around debris, driving a vehicle, unlocking doors, and more. One of the competition’s highlights was DRC-Hubo dazzling the crowd of onlookers by climbing up stairs backward.
It is anybody’s guess whether or not Team KAIST has moved the world any closer to a robot apocalypse. Certainly it’s sleek looking humanoid robot has written another chapter in robot lore that includes robotic chimps, cheetahs and more.
IHMC Robot opens door and enters building (Image Courtesy www.darpa.mil)
KAIST’s HUBO drilling a circle in wall board. (Image Courtesy www.darpa.mil)
RoboSimian from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab drives a car. (Image Courtesy www.darpa.mil)
Tartan Rescue CHIMP does a drilling task. (Image Courtesy www.darpa.mil)
WPI-CMU Warner ATLAS doing drilling task but dropping drill. (Image Courtesy www.darpa.mil)
Tipsy DARPA Challenge Robots Falling Over
From the video of the competition it looks as those a number of robots might have drinking problems, falling down just like humans do.
