2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge Crown Goes to South Korea's Team KAIST

Team Kaist’s DARPA Robotics Challenge winner DRC-HUBO completes the vehicle egress task

The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals competition was held Friday and Saturday at the Fairplex in Pomona, California. After years of research and development, several intense days of preparation at the competition site, a day of rehearsal and two full days of head-to-head competition the winner, taking the  $2 million in prize money that goes with it, was DRC-HUBO, the latest of the "HUmanoid robot” (HUBO) robots developed by the Korean Institute for Science and Technology (KAIST). DRC-HUBO is a bipedal robot with a twist: It has wheels on its knees and can transform so that the wheels are used to move the robot around.

The US Department of Defense's project to develop robots that can help responders in disaster areas saw KAIST beat 23 other teams from around the world in front of a crowd of 10,000 people. Team KAIST’s robot navigated the DARPA obstacle course in less than 45 minutes. Coming in second and taking home $1 million was Team IHMC Robotics of Pensacola, Fla., and its robot Running Man. The third place finisher, earning the $500,000 prize, was Tartan Rescue of Pittsburgh, and its robot CHIMP.

The DRC Finals competition challenged participating robotics teams and their robots to complete a difficult course of eight tasks relevant to disaster response, among them walking through rubble, tripping circuit breakers, opening a door, turning valves and climbing a flight of stairs. To prevent the teams from pre-programming the robots to run the course, a surprise task was included, which on the final day of the two-day competition required the robots to remove an electrical plug from a socket and set it in a different socket.

Launched in response to a humanitarian need that became clear during the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan in 2011, the DARPA Robotics Challenge consisted of three increasingly demanding competitions over two years. The goal was to accelerate progress in robotics and hasten the day when robots have sufficient dexterity and robustness to enter areas too dangerous for humans and mitigate the impact of natural or man-made disasters.