The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) is a competition of hardware and software teams vying to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters. Designed to be extremely difficult, the DRC Finals, which will take place from June 5-6, 2015 at Fairplex in Pomona, California (just east of downtown Los Angeles), will require robots to attempt a circuit of consecutive physical tasks, with reduced communications between the robots and their operators. The winning team’s robots will have to demonstrate task-level autonomy that can operate in the hazardous, degraded conditions common in disaster zones.
To qualify for the DRC Finals, teams had to submit videos showing successful completion of five tasks: engage an emergency shut-off switch, get up from a prone position, travel ten meters under its own power without falling, pass over a barrier, and rotate a circular valve 360 degrees. These tasks were selected by DARPA for their relevance to disaster response.
Twenty-five of the top robotics organizations in the world will gather to compete for $3.5 million in prizes as they attempt a simulated disaster-response course. The winning team will receive a $2 million prize; DARPA plans to award $1 million to the runner-up and $500,000 to the third-place team. The event is free to attend and open to the public.
The international robotics community has turned out in force for the DRC Finals. Fourteen new teams from Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, South Korea, and the United States recently qualified to join 11 previously announced teams.
The 14 new qualified teams are listed below by location and organizational affiliation.
Germany
Team Hector (Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt)
Team NimbRo Rescue (University of Bonn, Bonn)
Hong Kong
Team HKU (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Italy
Team WALK-MAN (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa; University of Pisa, Pisa)
Japan
Team Aero (University of Tokyo, Tokyo)
Team AIST-NEDO (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tokyo)
Team HRP2-Tokyo (University of Tokyo, Tokyo)
Team NEDO-Hydra (University of Tokyo, Tokyo; Chiba Institute of Technology, Chiba; Osaka University, Osaka; Kobe University, Kobe)
Team NEDO-JSK (University of Tokyo, Tokyo)
People’s Republic of China
Team Intelligent Pioneer (Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changzhou)
South Korea
Team ROBOTIS (ROBOTIS, Seoul)
Team SNU (Seoul National University, Seoul)
United States
Team DRC-Hubo @ UNLV (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Team Grit (Grit Robotics, Grand Junction, Colo.; Colorado Mesa University, Grand Junction, Colo.; AutonomouStuff, LLC, Morton, Ill.; Harbrick, Moscow, Idaho)
These 14 teams join the 11 teams that participated in the December 2013 DRC Trials and earned enough points to automatically qualify to participate in the Finals:
Tartan Rescue (Carnegie Mellon University, National Robotics Engineering Center, Pittsburgh)
Team IHMC Robotics (Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, Pensacola, Fla.)
Team KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea)
Team MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.)
Team RoboSimian (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.)
Team THOR (University of California, Los Angeles; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
Team TRACLabs (TRACLabs, Inc., Webster, Texas)
Team Trooper (Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, Cherry Hill, N.J., Rensselaer Polytechnic University, Troy, N.Y.; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
Team Valor (Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.)
Team ViGIR (TORC Robotics, Blacksburg, Va.; Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.; Oregon State University, Corvallis, Ore.)
Team WPI-CMU (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass.)