The robot Schaft, a Japanese start-up recently acquired by Google, has a Darpa contest won that revolves around rescue tasks. In the competition in which 16 teams participated had 8 tasks to be performed, from driving a car to roll up a hose.
Darpa’s contest started as a result of the very limited ability of robots seemed to have in the aftermath of the Fukushima-nuclear-disaster, reports the BBC. In the competition required the robots a series of tasks with a time limit of thirty minutes. Under more had a ladder to be climbed, a route in a vehicle to be covered, debris to be removed, there had to be a triangle shape out of a wall to be drilled and a hose had to be rolled up and the nozzle is hung on the wall.
Schaft, as the robot is called, is a 1.48 metres big robot that uses a new liquid-cooled engine. These motors operate at a high voltage. According to the creators, the robot can move faster with his arm to move and rotate. The machine is built by a spin-off of the Jouhou System Kougaku laboratory of the university of Tokyo, which Google recently acquired.
From the videos of Darpa turns out that robots are still much slower than humans at performing these tasks. I had the robots for a minute or more break, while calculations for the next movement to perform.
Schaft won with a big lead over the competition. The team won 27 of the 32 points, compared to 20 and 18 points, respectively the number two and three. Eight teams, including the Schaft team, can now claim grants from Darpa for further improvement of their creations. They get to do something more than 700.000 euros. There is still a finals, december of next year, will be held. The winner will then have an investment in the robot of slightly less than 1.5 million euro.