LONDON: South Korean boffins carried home the $2 million top prize on Saturday after their robot triumphed in a disaster-response challenge inspired by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan.
Team KAIST and its DRC-Hubo robot took the honour ahead of Team IHMC Robotics and Tartan Rescue, both from the US, at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) after a two-day competition in California. The runners-up win $1m and $500,000 respectively, in a field of more than 20 competitors.
But it is about more than just the money, with the teams also winning the kudos of triumphing after a three-year robotics contest organised by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, which commissions advanced research for the US Defence Department.
Over the two days, each robot had two chan¬ces to compete on an obstacle course comprising eight tasks, including driving, going thro¬ugh a door, opening a valve, punching through a wall and dealing with rubble and stairs.
The challenges facing them in Pomona, just east of Los Angeles, were designed specifically with Fukushima in mind and were meant to simulate conditions similar to the disaster at the nuclear plant.
In all, 24 mostly human-shaped bots and their teams — 12 from the United States, five from Japan, three from South Korea, two from Germany and one each from Italy and Hong Kong — won through to the finals.
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