The DARPA Robotics Challenge, one of the most rigorous tests of robotic ability ever conceived, kicked off on Wednesday. The contest sets teams of engineers from around the US and the world a set of Herculean robot trials that promise to take automatons' abilities far beyond anything that's come before.
The emphasis is on testing robots' abilities to work in difficult situations in environments designed for humans. "It's the grandest, the most exciting, and possibly the most important robotics project ever," says Dennis Hong of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
Hong leads a team that plan to field the humanoid THOR (Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot). THOR will be in training over the next year, learning tough skills like scrambling over debris, driving cars and climbing ladders.
Previously, Hong's team has worked on everything from firefighting to soccer-playing humanoid robots. "People might think it's a waste of time building robots that play soccer," he says.
"But if a robot can't play soccer, how would you use it to save people's lives?"
In a press conference, DARPA project lead Gill Pratt said that the challenge is "about trying to use robots to improve the resiliency of the US and world to natural and man-made disasters".
Entrants are split into four tracks. Hong and Virginia Tech are in Track A, along with six other teams, and will build robotic hardware and software for the challenge, with funding from DARPA. Track B competitors will also be funded, but will only make software, the best of which will be chosen to run a special version of the Atlas humanoid robot built by Boston Dynamics. Track C and D get no funding from DARPA, but can still win the grand prize of $2 million.
Pratt noted that managing the communication link between operator and robot would be crucial, and that DARPA would degrade the quality of that link to test the teams' abilities. When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan overheated last year, maintaining wireless contact with robots going into the plant posed a challenge. The only robot that was ever operational in the disaster zone ended up going in tethered for communications. Pratt said that a mix of autonomy and reliable operator control would probably be required to complete the tasks.
Hong describes the first step of the first task - opening a car door and getting into the car - as "practically impossible right now", highlighting how much work his team must do if it is to get out of the starting blocks in the first round of the challenge in December 2013.
The Virginia Tech team is in good company. Two teams from NASA will be building a robot for the competition, as well as a collaboration headed by Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a team from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, one from robotics company Schaft and another from defence contractor Raytheon.
Syndicated content: Hal Hodson, New Scientist
