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ladies and gentlemen start your robots
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we're here in Pomona California for the
long awaited DARPA robotics challenge
DARPA is the defense Advanced research
projects agency which is sort of the
Blue Sky research wing of the Pentagon
they have a multi-year robot contest
teams from around the world are
competing to get to he the finals which
is where each team is going to have to
do a series of tasks really any sort of
task that you wouldn't want a human
performing so that's the end goal of
these robots is to be able to send them
into an environment where you don't want
humans to go so like a nuclear reactor
shut down that sort of thing these are
the finals there something like 20 teams
competing today let's go check it
out welcome to the DARPA robotics
challenge I'm rsy pacher the director of
DARPA the defense Advanced research
projects agency so the dystopian signage
game on loock here at DARPA challenge
aggressive but very subtle signage all
over the place join us in Imagining the
future and may the best robot win I
don't know if it's that way or this
way it feels sort of like a state fair
50 years in the future it almost smelled
like livestock but then there's like
robots everywhere it's a strange mix of
the two it's trippy
[Applause]
but the real action is inside the
stadium teams have an hour to navigate
darpa's
course they're awarded points for
completing various tasks along the way
and they can also bypass any task of
they're choosing first a team drives its
robot in a car down a dirt track the
robot then must exit the vehicle open a
door walk through the door rotate a
valve drill a mark out of a plaster wall
pull down a lever walk over a pile of
debris and finally walk up a small
staircase so we've made it inside you
can see right behind me there's a
bipedal robot it looks like it's about
to walk over some uneven
terrain their robot fell Journey came to
an end and now they're about to hoist it
back up and Paul it ass out of
here so darp has purposefully messing
with uh their Communications channels to
see how these things do in conditions
where Communications can't be knocked
down so it really isn't about speed it's
just about completing the task so this
is Florian behind me it's one of the uh
bipedal robots that we hung out with at
Virginia Tech a couple months ago this
is the Atlas robot that was developed by
Boston Dynamics this robot was developed
specifically for the DARPA robotics
challenge there are about seven of these
in the world uh distributed to a number
of teams competing developing their own
software to operate the robot and
control it so to this point they had to
drive floor in way out from uh across
the field had to open a door turn this
lever here and now it's on to this shaft
Challenge and it looks like it's making
some
movement see how it
does it also seems the phrase of choice
here today is do something I've heard
multiple people just screaming do
something think that's what he want he
want to
tr explain what's going
on uh apparently that's it I don't
really know what happened but um looks
like they're going to wheel him out must
have been something obviously with
communication just could not uh could
not get going again so poor
guy as day one draws to a close we head
over to the garage where all of the
competing teams can take a breather and
work on their robots between runs we're
hoping to check in with team Valor
another Virginia Tech robot team that we
met while filming our documentary in
humankind the center of the lab here is
the robot eer so we've actually
fabricated this robot here and we have
people working on the mechanical side
how to build a robot as well as the
software side helping the robots see the
the world in front of it how' it go
today can you just tell us about um some
the issues there's some network issues
it started off the day really Rocky and
so when we got out to the build some of
the network coms that dark had set up
made a little uh tough for us to get
connected we did resolve that so I think
tomorrow we'll be all set we've got the
robot up walking again yeah and so we're
we're in good shape you're bypassing the
car yes so it makes
it easier yeah I know that's that's the
crazy thing we walked more than any
other robot in this competition today
yeah and we could still and we got zero
points so that's unfortunate
good luck tomorrow thank see you
guys done day one done it's the second
final day of competition and our two
Virginia Tech teams are hoping to make
it farther down the course and higher up
in the overall
standings once again team valor's
bipedal robot eer walks the preliminary
stretch instead of driving and eer Nails
it but it stalls shortly after while
trying to open up the door
floran the bipedal robot from Team Vigor
meets a similar fate the team
successfully guides Florian through the
car portion and manages to open the door
but then floran Falls
over doesn't look like either of our
teams are in the top 10 so the final
round of the 2015 Dara challenge is
wrapping up here in Southern California
and probably the next hour or so we're
going to get the final results and see
which of these teams is going to be
walking away with $2 million for the top
prize at the DAR
challenge in first place Dar robotics
challenge finals from tajon South Korea
team
Ka just so stoked this is a team from
South Korea that just won $2
million but I think it's interesting
that a team from the International
Community not from the US just won
darest money
so that does it for the DARPA challenge
2015 you know there were over 20 other
teams who we're doing some pretty
impressive things all things considered
but you know this is just sort of the
beginning of the future of Robotics
there's still a long ways to go don't
have to worry about the robo apocalypse
yet so sleep safe
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