Seven Teams to Advance in DARPA Robotics Challenge

Image courtesy DARPA.

 

By Holly Gonzalez 



Seven teams will move ahead with DARPA support in DARPA’s Robotics Challenge (DRC), aimed at developing advanced robots that can aid humans in mitigating and recovering from disasters.



The first step of the DRC was a competition carried out in a virtual environment that resembled an obstacle course in a suburban area. That effort, the Virtual Robotics Challenge, was held June 17-21, 2013.



A total of 26 teams participated in VRC and seven teams will advance to the December 2013 DRC trials.  The advancing teams will compete with ATLAS robots and DARPA support, where they will square off against other teams with their own robots.



The teams completed the following tasks through the use of software: “entering, driving and exiting a utility vehicle; walking across muddy, uneven and rubble-strewn terrain; and attaching a hose connector to a spigot, then turning a nearby valve.” The teams completed five runs with three tasks in each run for a total of 15 runs.  



“The Virtual Robotics Challenge itself was also a great technical accomplishment, as we have now tested and provided an open-source simulation platform that has the potential to catalyze the robotics and electro-mechanical systems industries by lowering costs to create low-volume, highly complex systems,” says Gill Pratt, DRC program manager.



VRC prepared teams for real-world robotic disaster cleanup through the use of a cloud-based simulator created by Open Source Robotics Foundation through funding by DARPA. The simulator supports sending commands and returning data from the robot through the Internet.