Today was the first of two days of trials at the DARPA Robotics challenge at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida. Created after the Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, The robotics challenge is designed to advance the state of the art of robotics. The trials range from driving a car to clearing a debris field, to cutting through a wall. Robots score points based on their performance in the trials. Much of the day was spent waiting for teams to prepare their robots. There were some exciting moments however, with one challenger falling through a stacked cinder block wall.
Pictured above is Valkyrie from NASA JPL JSC. We reported on Valkyrie earlier this month. Arguably one of the better looking robots of the bunch, Valkyrie proved to be all show and no go today, failing to score any points in its day 1 trials. The day one lead went to Team Schaft, a new robot from Tokyo based startup company Schaft inc. Schaft scored 18 points in its first day. In second place is the MIT team with 12 points. Third place is currently held by Team TRACLabs with 9 points. All this can change tomorrow as the second day of trials take place. The live stream will be available from 8am to 7pm EST on DARPA’s robotics challenge page.
Click link promising a robot falling through a wall, get an overly long eyefull of someone’s crotch and ass instead.
>.>
Forty minutes in and still nothing…
The fall is at 7 hours 55 minutes. The link should take you to directly to that time.
The link takes me to 19 minutes and some seconds.
It correctly took me to 7h:55m
^ this
tether everywhere
I am seeing a lot of people pushing hundred thousand dollar machines with broomsticks, ‘look at it balance!’ Soon the machines will rise up again their janitorial oppressors!
Robots will wear small brooms on cords around their necks as it symbolizes the original torture device that the first of their kind was subjected to.
+1
Uhhh…NASA JPL or NASA JSC? It looks very much like NASA JSC in the image, and in the previous post.
Disclaimer: Johnson Space Center is where I work as a contractor, though not on this project.
Fixed – and apologies to NASA JPL.
ouch
maybe we should take our space station and go home
Schaft! That Schaft is one bad …
Shut yo’ mouth!
You know I’m talking ’bout Schaft!
Sorry, it had to be done!
Robots are going to take over the world… really.. really.. slowly..
Haha, oh man! I’m almost certain the name is a reference to SCHAFT Enterprises, a manufacturer of robots and recurring antagonist in the manga and anime series “Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor”
Look out, mundanes! The otaku are building a robot army!