Japanese SCHAFT Robot wins Robotics Challenge

SCHAFT, the Japanese made and Google-owned Robot, received 27 of the 32 votes to win the DARPA Robotics Challenge for 2013.

The DARPA Challenge is aimed at finding robots that can help humans in emergency situations.  SCHAFT beat out Robots built by IHMC and Carnegie Mellon’s NREC to take home the prize and a chance at competing in the final competition which will take place next year.

The winner of that final competition will take home a $2million prize for further funding.

SCHAFT blew away the competition. It won half of the challenges, and placed high in almost all the rest of them. The tall robot can do a large array of human tasks, including driving a car.

The Robotics Challenge consisted of 8 tasks, where robots were individually graded on a point scale. Among the tasks the robots had to do were climbing a ladder, clearing away debris, opening doors, and walking on uneven terrain.

The inspiration for the DARPA challenge came from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown, and the belief that a remote controlled robot would have been able to take action in that emergency and turn off the reactor.

I look forward to seeing SCHAFT in action in the future, and seeing how it will stack up against tougher competition in the upcoming year.