The Department of Defense's advanced research arm, DARPA, announced the details of its next big challenge on Wednesday, Oct. 24.
Following up on its autonomous vehicle project, DARPA will now focus on robots in need of an operator. Such robots are designed to operate in what the research agency calls "degraded" environments, i.e. hazardous sites where bandwidth between the operator and the robot will not be guaranteed.
According to DARPA's Gill Pratt, the goal of the next big challenge was to help the Department of Defense provide humanitarian aid and disaster relief. The Fukushima disaster had a great influence in the agency's plans.
"During the first 24 hours [of Fukushima], there were several opportunities for intervention to help make the disaster less severe, but unfortunately, people could not go in to that zone because the radiation was too high, and as a result, the disaster was worse than it could have been," explained Pratt.
The DARPA robots must operate in what he calls an "engineered" environment, "not a random, unstructured outdoor environment." This engineered environment will likely include tools, and the robot is expected to go through doors and stairways and use everything from hammers to vehicles.
Pratt further mentioned that fire trucks were used in high-radiation areas at the Fukushima site, but that task could have been achieved more safely and thoroughly without humans' involvement.
Meanwhile, a high-radiation environment could challenge communication with many robots because radiation can interfere with command and control (C&C) systems. To this end, DARPA's challenge will focus explicitly on robots able to operate with a greater degree of autonomy in case their operators have limited ability to control them.
"In general, most of the robots that are out there these days require significant training for the operators in order to have high confidence in using them," said Pratt. "Often, in a disaster, the experts who know how to handle the disaster are not robotics experts."
Planned tasks for the grand challenge are subject to change, but currently include driving a vehicle under operator control, climbing stairs, opening doors, and connecting cables and hoses.
Several universities have signed on to build robots. On the academic side, these institutions include Carnegie Mellon, Drexel University, and Virginia Tech, while Raytheon and SCHAFT represent the commercial space. The Jet Propulsion Lab and the Johnson Space Center, two groups from NASA that have experience with operating robots in space, have signed up for the challenge as well.
The contest will have teams that can build their own robots, but also a second set of teams called Track B which will use a simulation package provided by DARPA. If they prove successful at building software, the Track B teams will receive a standard, government issue robot. The simulation package is generated by funding the Open Source Robotics Foundation.
Currently, the plan is to have the first virtual challenge next year, and then issue robots to six teams. The final grand challenge will raise those robots against any Track A teams that are still participating, and will take place in December 2014. The winner of the final challenge will receive $2 million, and likely will get the chance to sell some robots to the government.
