Sunday 5 July 2015

Victory for Korean Robot in DARPA Challenge



With multitudinous advances being made in technology day by day, along with our increasing desire to maximize output by delegating tasks to machines to both save time and work in places where there are great hardships for humans.

Just last month (on the 5th and 6th of June), in Pomona, California, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA), held a competition, where the participants were to design a robot that could aid humans in times of disasters, whether man made or natural; which saw a Korean team walking away with the two million dollar prize. The team’s DRC-HUBO won after clocking in at a time of slightly less than forty five minutes. Basically, the design followed a humanoid shape, but could also be shifted into a kneeling and wheeled position, providing both speed and stability.

Inspired by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, an aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan in 2011, DARPA held the first edition of this event in 2012. The main concept behind this competition was to work on robots that could be a major help in disaster relief, especially to venture out to places that are not safe for humans.

The competition was task-oriented, with robots being given eight tasks and evaluation hinged on completion of tasks, for which they were given two chances and, the time taken. The required tasks were: driving a utility vehicle, exiting the vehicle, opening a door, cutting a hole in a wall, walking over a pile of rubble , walking up a short flight of stairs, and along with a surprise task, which varied according to the day.

Twenty five teams from all over the world participated, and day one saw the Carnegie Mellon University's CHIMP (CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform) robot take the lead, as it was the first team to complete all eight tasks in around fifty five minutes. German team NIMBRO RESCUE's robot Momaro and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Robo Simian robot, each scoring seven points, followed CHIMP on the leadership board for the first day.

However, it was on the second day, when, the robot by South Korea's team KAIST, managed to secure the first place as it completed all eight tasks, as well as the surprise task of unplugging a wire and then plugging it into a different outlet, in lesser time than the CHIMP, at forty five minutes. The Running Man robot from Florida's Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, also taking part on day two, secured second place, when it took fifty minutes to complete all tasks, leaving CHIMP to finish at third place. Both the second and third position also received prizes of one million dollars and five hundred thousand dollars respectively.

"Today was incredible. It was everything we hoped it would be and more," Gill Pratt, the DARPA program manager in charge of the challenge, told the press.

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