Over the weekend, 25 teams from all over the world were pitted against in each in DARPA Robotics Challenge, a competition designed to encourage—with $3.5 million dollars in cash prizes—the creation of rescue robots that could go into disaster areas too dangerous for humans, such as the site of the Fukushima nuclear reactors shortly after the meltdown.
“This is the end of the DARPA Robotics Challenge but only the beginning of a future in which robots can work alongside people to reduce the toll of disasters,” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, Director Arati Prabhakar said in a statement.
The robots were tasked with navigating an obstacle course and performing the usual mundane duties one might find in a rescue mission: driving a car, walking over debris, opening a valve, and cutting a hole in a wall.
