Google’s New SCHAFT Robot Dominates At The DARPA Robotics Challenge

Team SCHAFT posing with their winning robot

With the DARPA Robotics Challenge, or more simply put DRC ending yesterday one clear winner was crowned. This being Google’s newly acquired SCHAFT Robot form Team SCHAFT, which started off at a Tokyo University before becoming a private company and then being bought by Google.  Which Google confirmed the purchase along with that of Boston Dynamics (the company that built the Atlas robot) a week before the DRC started. Team SCHAFT was crowned the clear winner with 27 points followed by Team IHMC robotics which were using Google’s other acquisition, the Boston Dynamics designed Atlas Robot.

Team SCHAFT’s 1.65 meter tall, 94 kilogram blue bipedal machine moved with uncanny grace through the challenges set before it. All of the top 8 finishers out of the starting group of 16 teams will be eligible to receive$1 million in funding from DARPA to continue honing and upgrading their robots before the final next year. With most teams more likely to put more time and effort into improving the software for controlling their machines. Also time will most likely be spent on improving the code that allows the robots to perform their tasks with supervised autonomy. However the Team SCHAFT robot offered a glimpse into what could be the future to come, with its fast movement through the rough terrain course and it’s ability to without hesitation move up two flights of steps at a time whilst the other robots moved a lot slower and with more care.

Could we be on the verge of seeing robots like that from the Terminator movies? We’ll have to wait for the finals next year to see, but with Google now owning two of the companies that are producing the smartest robots out there it could be a possibility. Only time will tell.

Thanks to Gizmodo for the information provided.

Images courtesy of Gizmodo