Streaming Live: Day 2 of the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials
Robots working hard to try and navigate tough, disaster-themed challenges? Get the popcorn!
https://www.pcmag.com/news/streaming-live-day-2-of-the-darpa-robotics-challenge-trials
Robots are cool, right?
Subscribe to that philosophy, and you might as well cancel your Saturday plans, get some popcorn, and fire up your Web browser, for DARPA is officially broadcasting a live stream of its 2013 Robotics Challenge Trials as of this article's writing (around noon, PT, on 12/21).
The two-day competition, held at Florida's Homestead Miami Speedway, pits 17 teams against one another for what could ultimately be a $2 million prize for the grand winner – that won't happen today, as the current competition is just the trial round for the DARPA Robotics Challenge. The finals, set to take place at the end of next year, is the contest that will award the big bucks.
The ongoing competition is actually the second round in the grand DARPA Robotics Challenge. The first round, held in June, culled the field from 26 entrants to 17 – from an initial application base of more than 100 different teams. And if you're curious what it might takes to make the cut in a competition such as this, check out the initial challenge posed by DARPA as part of its preliminary examination:
You guessed it – robotics obstacle course.
While it might look a bit like fun and games, DARPA's challenge does have more serious connotations to it. The entire challenge was actually announced in April of last year as a response to the 2011 incident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant.
"The work of the global robotics community brought us to this point—robots do save lives, do increase efficiencies and do lead us to consider new capabilities," said Gill Pratt, DARPA program manager, in a statement.
"What we need to do now is move beyond the state of the art. This challenge is going to test supervised autonomy in perception and decision-making, mounted and dismounted mobility, dexterity, strength and endurance in an environment designed for human use but degraded due to a disaster. Adaptability is also essential because we don't know where the next disaster will strike," he added.
It's thought that robotic responders could have entered the radiation-filled Fukushima plant and worked to open up a key valve for venting hydrogen. This could have likely prevented an explosion at the plant that worsened the situation for all involved.
The 17 teams' robots in the ongoing challenge are definitely being put through their paces. Tasks include driving a vehicle through a course, navigating treacherous terrain, climbing a ladder, opening and moving through doors, turning valves, and attaching a hose nozzle to a wye.
In other words, the challenges replicate some of the exact tasks that a robotic assistant might be used for in a real-world disaster scenario. And if that sounds tricky, just wait until the final round: Robots will have to perform similar disaster-themed tasks, but with worsened communications between them and their human controllers (to mimic potential conditions in an actual disaster).
To watch the competition live, check out the stream below: