If you are ever trapped in a collapsed building, SCHAFT is the robot you’ll want by your side. The a bipedal robot, built by a Japanese team, just took the top score in the DARPA Robotics Challenge trials, where it scored 27 out of a possible 32 points.
IHMC Robotics (20 points), Tartan Rescue (18 points), MIT (16 points), RoboSimian (14 points), WRECS (11 points), TracLabs (11 points) and Trooper (9 points) filled out the next seven spots. DARPA will soon announce up to eight teams that will receive funding to proceed on to the finals next year.
SCHAFT proved itself to be the leader early on when, during day one of the competition, it completed every task except driving a car.
Those who went into watching the Robotics Challenge blind were likely confused. The robots moved slowly, often stopping altogether for minutes at a time. They fell. They fumbled. By…
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