Superhuman Machines Emerge from DARPA Robotics Challenge
Only a few months have passed since the teams for the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) were announced, but already many of the competitors are beginning to take shape (and action). The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced the competition last October, aiming to advance robotics technology for disaster response.
DARPA is offering tens of millions of dollars to help fund teams across the world who will be participating in the challenge, and will offer a $2 million cash prize to the victor.
The goal is to develop robots capable of responding to disasters such as the Fukushima, where having capable robots could eliminate the need for human workers to expose themselves to radiation while possibly being able to resuscitate a failing reactor.
The event is being broken up into two phases that each end with a competitive challenge. The first lasts until December 2013 while the second will end in December 2014. The first phase will establish which of the teams will receive funding to continue into Phase 2, where the ultimate winner will be determined.
The first part of Phase 1 will culminate in June of this year and will test the facets of their design that are virtual. These include: operator control stations, robot perception, manipulation and locomotion.
These tests will be carried out through the DRC Simulator and will determine which of the Track B (funded) and Track C (unfunded) will win the six Atlas robots to be used in later stages of the competition that deal with physical challenges.
By the time they reach the final challenge, however, each of the robots will be tested on their ability to complete complex and demanding physical tasks, such as driving a utility vehicle, removing debris blocking an entryway, opening doors (it's trickier than it sounds), breaking a concrete panel and replacing a component like a cooling pump.
Registration is open for both the C and D tracks, however neither tracks will receive funding for software or hardware. While big names in the funded B track such as Lockheed Martin, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and even NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory are busy developing software to conquer the Virtual Robotics Challenge, the Track A teams are developing their own hardware – the part of the competition that is likely to attract the most attention.
This week, the team from Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering center (NREC) offered a glimpse of its design, called CHIMP (CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform). The design features treads along the arms and feet that allow for tank-inspired locomotion over bumpy terrain, while maintaining the ability to stand upright and walk like a human when on even footing.
“When we walk or stand, our brains are actively controlling our balance all of the time,” explains NREC director Tony Stentz. This makes people extremely dynamic, but equally complex. Instead, CHIMP is designed for static stability through its treads.
“In a pinch, it can do anything,” Stentz continued. And indeed – in addition to traditional hand-like grips, CHIMP's arms also include hooks that even allow it to climb a ladder.
At the moment, what makes CHIMP unique from many of the other prototypes in the works is that this design deviates slightly from the traditional bipedal machine based on human bio-mechanics. But since this isn't BattleBots and the machines have to interact with the same tools and infrastructure designed with humans in mind, the similarity across many of the DRC robots is understandable.
The other DRC robots in development from Track A teams are: RoboSimian, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Hubo, from Drexel University; NASA Johnson Space Center's “R2;” Guardian, a design proposed by Raytheon; SCHAFT Inc's self-entitled robot; and Virginia Tech's “Thor.”
One burgeoning technology in the field of robotics that is not a requirement, however, is haptic feedback. Most of us only know of this technology through video games such as first person shooters, where the controller vibrates when the player in question is being shot.
But for robotics, haptics will be essential in bridging the gap between the human nervous system and what a robot comes into contact with. Currently, users have to completely rethink countless everyday processes when operating robots in order to answer normally simple questions such as “am I actually gripping this door handle? Or is my hand simply cupped around it?”. The result is an “increased cognitive load” that can slow operators down in critical moments.
By installing vibration- and temperature-specific sensors on a robot's exoskeleton, feedback such as vibrations to a control joystick could be made possible. However, rather than fixating on the problem of providing tactile feedback that isn't distracting (such as incessant vibrations), it's possible that the best solution for the sake of time and innovation will be to invest in a solution through which the robot can sense something and react to it autonomously. However, as Slate's Erik Sofge notes, this could very well deliver to robots a stronger “sense of self.”
But for those of you concerned about an incipient Cylon takeover of Earth thanks to the DRC, you need not fear. While these robots may be able to perform superhuman tasks, the state of artificial intelligence does not allow robots to execute chains of complex tasks autonomously. In CHIMP's case, a human operator will assume manual control of many of the machine's actions through a traditional mouse-and-keyboard interface. Meanwhile, the robot that Track B and C teams will use – the Atlas – has a power tether that will keep them limited to a certain range of their power source while in operation.
