OSRF - Home. DARPA Robot Masters Stairs. About The Disaster Robotics Challenge. Start Your Mad Science: DARPA's Humanoid Robot Challenge. DARPA's latest challenge kicked off yesterday at the agency's conference center in Arlington, Va.
The Pentagon research division wants semiautonomous robots that can perform human chores such as driving vehicles, letting themselves into buildings, and repairing equipment, with the stated purpose of creating bots that could help in disaster-response efforts. Inspiration for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, or DRC, comes in part from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster following the tsunami of March 2011, program manager Gill Pratt says. "During the first 24 hours there were several opportunities for intervention to help make the disaster less severe," Pratt tells PM, "but unfortunately people could not go into that zone because the radiation was too high... So DARPA's question with the DRC is ‘What advances in robotic technology can be made to improve our collective resilience during the first few days of a disaster?
'