DARPA Robotics Challenge Final Highlights + Ride Along with RoboSimian 2015 DARPA-NASA JPL

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives or Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The video was silent. I have added music created by myself using the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation and the Independence and Proteus VX VST instrument plugins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) was a prize competition funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Held from 2012 to 2015, it aimed to develop semi-autonomous ground robots that could do "complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments." The DRC followed the DARPA Grand Challenge and DARPA Urban Challenge. It began in October 2012 and was to run for about 33 months with three competitions: a Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) that took place in June 2013; and two live hardware challenges, the DRC Trials in December 2013 and the DRC Finals in June 2015.

Besides spurring development of semi-autonomous robots, the DRC also sought to make robotic software and systems development more accessible beyond the end of the program. To that end, the DRC funded the adaptation of the GAZEBO robot simulator by the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) for DRC purposes and the construction of six Boston Dynamics ATLAS robots that were given to the teams that performed best in the VRC...

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4617

Showing off its robustness and versatility, the ape-like RoboSimian robot, developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, took fifth place in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals, held June 5 through 6 in Pomona, California. RoboSimian squared off against 22 other robots in the international robotics competition, which promoted the development of robots that could respond to disaster scenarios too dangerous for humans.

"I couldn't be more proud of our team and their performance in such challenging circumstances," said Brett Kennedy, principal investigator for RoboSimain at JPL. "The robot didn't fall once, and we never had to reset it, confirming how versatile and dependable RoboSimian really is."

RoboSimian and its competitors faced a variety of complex tasks during the tournament. Each robot had one hour to:

-- Drive a vehicle through a slalom course and then exit the vehicle

-- Open a door

-- Turn a wheel to open a valve

-- Cut a hole in a half-inch-thick panel of drywall using a cordless power drill

-- Cross a field of debris or walk over uneven terrain

-- Walk up a set of stairs

In addition to the tasks known in advance, DARPA officials gave competitors an additional surprise task each day. These included throwing a switch on an electrical panel and pulling a plug from an electrical socket and reinserting it....