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Official Details For the DARPA Robotics Challenge
An anonymous reader writes "The DARPA Robotics Challenge is offering tens of million of dollars in funding to teams from anywhere in the world to build robots capable of performing complex mobility and manipulation tasks such as walking over rubble and operating power tools. It all will culminate in an audacious competition with robots driving trucks, breaking through walls, and attempting to perform repairs in a simulated industrial-disaster setting. The winner takes all: a $2 million cash prize."
No other government agency inspires me like DARPA does.
The things Boston Dynamics are already putting together give me nightmares. I'm pretty sure the only reason they don't use the name Cyberdyne Systems is because someone from the future came back and told them not to...
A robot that does anything like that is going to cost more than 2 million.
robots driving trucks, breaking through walls, and attempting to perform repairs in a simulated industrial-disaster setting.
I think I saw all that in 1984.
Do the specs call for a human exoshell so they can be transported back in time?
This is classic DARPA... while these grand challenges are good for focusing research initiatives, they tend to ask for much more than the field can offer in a reasonable amount of time given the funds. Look at the first grand challenge: not a single team finished the race, and even the best team from the best school with the most funding only finished 12km of the proposed 240km course.
It was an utter embarrassment. Only after they relaxed the requirements in 2005 of the competition to more accurately reflect what was humanly (or more aptly roboticly) possible at the time was the competition a success.
Now they're expecting a full-on humanoid that can drive a car, bust down walls, move rubble, operate tools, all in unstructured environments? Look at the DARPA ARM grand challenge, where the state of the art could barely do these kinds of manipulations in a controlled well-lit laboratory.
On the other hand, I suppose if they're allowing teleoperation/assisted autonomy that makes things a lot easier. I guess I just don't want a repeat of the collective embarrassment of the robotics community that happened in 2004.
Just kidding... ;)
Me!
1. Execute complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments." Check! (I assume Detroit counts.)
2. Supervised autonomy. Check!
3. Mounted mobility, dismounted mobility . Check!
4. Dexterity, strength, and platform endurance. Check!
Does an ACL reconstruction count as "robotic"?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
...have to yell "OH YEAH"! and be red...
The winner will have the privilege of knowing he/she was responsible for indirectly enslaving everyone he/she ever loved. Laws of unintended consequences, folks. Think about it, these contests are not underwritten by the CareBears. This is the US Department of Defense. Remember those pesky drones we built to help us with foreign wars? Our chickens are coming home to roost -- almost literally.
...the folks at f*ckingmachines have a proverbial "leg up" on the competition.
If I had a robot that could do all that I could rule the world. I certainly wouldn't sell it to the powers that be for a paltry 2 million.
It appals me how much positive press coverage Slashdot gives to technology obviously designed either to kill people or to aid one of the biggest mass murder factories in the world: the US military.
Yes, this is dual-use technology, which could certainly be used to help innocent civilians. But it will also undoubtedly be used to help the military be more effective killers as they operate in disaster areas they themselves have created.
I think this could be squeezed in the summary, it was added to end of IEEE-article:
UPDATE 12:36 p.m. From DARPA's announcement:
To answer questions regarding the Robotics Challenge and provide an opportunity for interested parties to connect, DARPA will hold a virtual Proposers’ Day workshop on April 16, 2012. This online workshop will introduce interested communities to the effort, explain the mechanics of this DARPA challenge, and encourage collaborative arrangements among potential performers from a wide range of backgrounds. The meeting is in support of the DARPA Robotics Challenge Broad Agency Announcement. More information on the BAA and Proposers’ Day is available at: http://go.usa.gov/mVj
You know, the leaked details appeared on Slashdot just last week: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/06/0232219/humanoid-robots-for-the-next-darpa-grand-challenge Looks like they were pretty accurate.
. . . and the Defense Department will pay you more than $2 million.
. . . Israel is rumored to be acquiring large amounts of clay and letters on parchment for a similar project appropriately code named as "Golem."
. . . and North Korea's missile launch will be foiled, when a Mechagodzilla springs out of the ocean and steals the missile, after emitting consuming a giant jar of Kimchi and flatulating the audience.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
what will the world's millions of taxi drivers do? turn into luddites, perhaps, attacking robot cars with lug wrenches?
I guess I just don't want a repeat of the collective embarrassment of the robotics community that happened in 2004.
Yes, the 2004 Grand Challenge was a disaster. I was there to watch. In the 2005 Grand Challenge, all 23 teams that made it to the California Motor Speedway had better systems than anyone had in 2004. I had a team there. Yes, the course in 2005 was easier, but some of the vehicles there could have completed the 2004 course.
I don't think the humanoid challenge will succeed on the first try, either, since the schedule is so tight. The first trial with real robots is only 15 months away. By try 2 or 3, though, a robot will probably complete the event.
DARPA really did get mobile robotics going. For years, there were all these little groups in academia, typically one professor and three to five grad students, turning out minor improvements and theses. Tony Tether kicked academia into high gear with the 2005 Grand Challenge, DARPA made it clear, quietly, that if the schools with DoD robotics funding didn't produce, the money would be turned off. DARPA had been funding Stanford and CMU since the 1960s without getting anything really useful. That's why entire CS departments were focused on the first Grand Challenge.
Sometimes somebody has to kick ass. As an example of the DARPA attitude, the 2005 Grand Challenge events were run by a Marine colonel. ("We're starting at 0600...")
Based on the challenge requirements, it sounds like a robot avatar for a sysadmin?
https://xkcd.com/705/