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Virginia Tech's RoMeLa Answers DARPA Robotics Challenge With THOR
smackay writes "Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory is building a humanoid robot designed for dangerous rescue missions as part of the new DARPA Robotics Challenge. Lab founder/director Dennis Hong calls it the 'greatest challenge of my career.' The robot's name: THOR"
From the article: "The task is massive: The adult-sized robot must be designed to enter a vehicle, drive it, and then exit the vehicle, walk over rubble, clear objects blocking a door, open the door, and enter a building. The robot then must visually and audibly locate and shut off a leaking valve, connect a hose or connector, climb an industrial ladder and traverse an industrial walkway. The final and possibly most difficult task: Use a power tool and break through a concrete wall. All these tasks must be accomplished under a set time limit."
If one of these things get built, American jobs are at risk! Stop them now! ... sort of...
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
This article has photos and some video of other robots being built by teams that have already announced participation in the competition: http://robots.net/article/3453.html
Why not just use one of those self-driving cars?
The same thing goes for climbing a latter, connecting hoses, and using power tools. These are devices designed for human use. If you design both the tool and the robot to be compatible, you can arrive at a simpler solution that works better.
I built it in my basement in 30 minutes. *yawn*
Doesn't have to be autonomous:
"The exact type of robot to be developed also is left open, said Hong. The competition calls for neither an autonomous humanoid robot that can function on its own without instruction nor an “avatar”-like robot that would be fully controlled by an off-set human user. Hong said the robot developed by his team will operate under “supervised autonomy.”
So probably a combination of remote control for direction plus automated walking to avoid debris, etc. Just solving issues of power are going to be tough here.
Obvious joke is obvious. Which is why I'm a safely anonymous coward
Slightly off topic, but the listing of capabilities and the "competition" aspect made me think of how the various robot fighting shows could use a reboot with obstacle course arena and fighting. - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
What happend to the various winners and losers from the Grand Challenge car program? Is their tech dead, in Google's cars, or actively in development still?
I don't even know if their software was 'general' enough to work in both the desert and urban challenges -- it's value is lessened if you still need custom software for each environment.
I'm all for these challenges but you can't get my hopes up with this awesomeness and then not do anything with it...
Does the door have be closable after it has been "opened"? If not, that concrete-wall-breaking tool could come in handy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What OS will it run. Obligatory Can it run Linux Murder Death Kill edition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFj2B1UdqsY
& will it have a sense of humor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMPmgTgE_88
Even a 'simple' telepresence robot with the dexterity to operate a vehicle and perform various manual tasks would be incredibly useful in hazardous environments - including battlefields. I can see why DARPA doesn't mind it being human operated.
It's not a teleoperator. DARPA will limit bandwidth and add delay to prevent direct teleoperation. Balance, slip control, locomotion, and fine manipulation have to be autonomous or it won't work. Human control will probably look like video games - click on where to go or what to work on, select verb from menu.
This robot could just as much then drive a vehicle, break into your home and machine-gun
and then take your body to the morgue.
The 21st century will soon begin in earnest. All you young'uns would be well advised to review world history between about 1907 and 1946 or so. This kind of technology will make us all live in interesting times indeed.
If anything would provoke a nasty, ruthless war, it'd be the fear of meeting robots like this on the battle field.
Any nuclear power would be wise to pre-emptively destroy an opponent with an army of robots. No hesitation. More than drones, man-sized, humanoid, autonomous robots are like 10,000 times more capable of threatening the political stability of the world at large.
Once mass produced, think about the capability of waves of wire-guided, unjammable, "suicide" styled, attacks, that can cross any terrain, even in cold climates, even under water. And the only promise of safety is nukes as a deterrent, but even then...
I think it's time to rank DARPA's own behavior as a threat to national security. They certainly don't make ME feel any safer.
. . . welcome our new robot overlords.
dun dun dun da dun!
dun dun dun da dun!
dun dun dun da dun!
(adding padding to joke to bypass lameness filters. Meanwhile, frist pr0st trolls post merrily away.)
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
They didn't name it Nimrod. Or Ultron.
Sounds like the specification for a T800.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Yeah, and one of those self-climbing ladders?
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
DARPA is part of our military... but yet, they are doing the best stuff our government is doing now-a-days. Whats up with that? They're like what NASA used to be... Call me paranoid, but when are they going to turn evil and invent the super quark bomb or whatever?
"Use a power tool and break through a concrete wall. All these tasks must be accomplished under a set time limit."
Under a set time limit? Not even a real, human contractor can do the latter, it's impossible.
"THOR is here."
Biggus Dickus
Highly appropriate for this willy-waving pork monster.
Didn't end well for us. It did however finally cleanup the gangs in Los Angles, so it can't be all that bad.
The referred article states that one use for this toy would be in assessing damages to reactors under meltdown conditions and asserts that Japan, despite being Robot Mecca (my paraphrase), doesn't have any that can do that,
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that thing would survive ten seconds under the kind of radiation barrage one would expect inside a nuclear reactor. Not at those radiation levels.
Many CCD images from Fukushima are completely washed-out because of radiation. I hesitate to speculate exactly what would happen to the contents of modern CPUs and RAM chips, but it won't be pretty.
I'm glad they contacted VT because they have the brains to figure out this issue. Have you seen the other robots the team have made, Charlie he's pretty cool by himself.