Rebuilt from earlier versions of the ATLAS robot in preparation of June 2015’s DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, a $2 million competition to demonstrate the very best in disaster response by a human-supervised robot, the new ATLAS robot from Boston Dynamics is now wireless, untethered, and completely battery powered: ATLAS Unplugged.
ATLAS will be joining at least 11 finalists already slated to compete. New finals challenge requirements include:
- Robots will not be connected to power cords, fall arrestors, or wired communications tethers
- Humans will not be allowed to physically intervene if a robot falls or get stuckβrobots that fall will have to do so without breaking and will have to get up without assistance
- Speed will be more heavily weighted in the scoring, and all tasks must be completed in a total time of approximately one hour (versus four hours in the DRC Trials)
- Communications will be further degraded and intermittent
See how far ATLAS has come in a short time: This DARPA video from December 2013 introduces an earlier version of ATLAS, and gives a quick summary of recent Boston Dynamics robot development:
Related videos: NASAβs Valkyrie Superhero Robot, The DARPA Robotics Challenge 2013, MITβs electric cheetah-bot runs offleash, and Anthropomorphism in Robots.
via Gizmodo.
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