As part of its efforts to develop various autonomous robots that could fill military roles, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, launched a robot competition. The said competition simulated a disaster scenario (a gas leak, specifically) in an unfinished underground power plant located in Elma, Washington.
The winning team came from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a 60 person crew that oversaw a group of 12 robots they'd programmed through an initiative called Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots (CoSTAR).
The robot group included Spot, the famous four-legged product of Boston Dynamics that was loosely modeled after a dog, as well as flying drones and a group of rolling robots in spherical metal frames.
The robots were tasked with tracking down 20 unique targets, including a warm mannequin simulating a disaster survivor, and a lost cell phone, which they located by tracing its Wi-Fi signal.
More details about the competition over at Daily Mail.
(Image Credit: DARPAtv/ Daily Mail)
(Image Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ Daily Mail)