more at
Two films combined:
1. “2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge Final Event Compilation video. See a fun video compiled from the whole event.”
2. “This video shows the robot’s-eye view from JPL’s RoboSimian on the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals course on June 5, 2015. Video speed is enhanced.”
Public domain films from DARPA and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The first film has been edited to remove talking head sequences. The audio on both film has been replaced by music I created myself using the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation and the Independence and Proteus VX VST instrument plugins.
The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) is a prize competition funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Held from 2012 to 2015, it aims to develop semi-autonomous ground robots that can do “complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments.” The DRC follows the DARPA Grand Challenge and DARPA Urban Challenge. It began in October 2012; it is to run for about 33 months with three competitions, a Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) that took place in June 2013 and two live hardware challenges, the DRC Trials in December 2013, and the DRC Finals in June 2015…
Results
In the Finals, three teams had a perfect score of 8. The tie was broken by their total time. First place went to Team KAIST with their DRC-Hubo robot and a winning time of 44 minutes. Second place went to IHMC for Running Man, and third to Tartan Rescue of CMU NREC for Chimp.
The robots performed better than expected. But there were a variety of failures indicating how difficult robotics remains. For example, Running Man fell over while waving to the crowd after successfully completing all 8 tasks.
Position Team Final Score Time (min)
1 TEAM KAIST 8 44:28
2 TEAM IHMC ROBOTICS 8 50:26
3 TARTAN RESCUE 8 55:15
4 TEAM NIMBRO RESCUE 7 34:00
5 TEAM ROBOSIMIAN 7 47:59…
June 9, 2015
RoboSimian Drives, Walks and Drills in Robotics Finals
Showing off its robustness and versatility, the ape-like RoboSimian robot, developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, took fifth place in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals, held June 5 through 6 in Pomona, California. RoboSimian squared off against 22 other robots in the international robotics competition, which promoted the development of robots that could respond to disaster scenarios too dangerous for humans…
RoboSimian and its competitors faced a variety of complex tasks during the tournament. Each robot had one hour to:
— Drive a vehicle through a slalom course and then exit the vehicle
— Open a door
— Turn a wheel to open a valve
— Cut a hole in a half-inch-thick panel of drywall using a cordless power drill
— Cross a field of debris or walk over uneven terrain
— Walk up a set of stairs
In addition to the tasks known in advance, DARPA officials gave competitors an additional surprise task each day. These included throwing a switch on an electrical panel and pulling a plug from an electrical socket and reinserting it.
After the first day of the two-day competition, RoboSimian was in third place in the overall standings. The robot completed seven of the eight tasks with 12 minutes remaining in the hour available for its run. Day two saw the JPL team complete the course with 6 points at the end of the hour. Teams were scored on the best of their two runs…
Designed to traverse complicated terrain and perform dexterous tasks, RoboSimian has four generic limbs for maneuvering and manipulation. To further minimize its complexity — something engineers accustomed to designing interplanetary robots think about a lot — the robot uses just one type of actuator (a kind of motor) in each of its limbs’ 28 articulated joints. So that the robot can see its environment and the operators can understand it, RoboSimian is equipped with seven sets of stereo cameras and a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) device for mapping its environment in 3-D…
