DARPA Robotics Challenge powers up

Rather than a signal to embrace our robot overlords, the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge, or DRC, is an opportunity to see how robots will in the future be able to assist in life-threatening situations too dangerous for human first responders.

Over the next two days, 25 teams will send their robots through a series of contests designed to mimic natural and man-made disasters while communication with the robots is hampered in ways similar to what would happen in a real disaster. The teams are competing for $3.5 million in prizes, including $2 million for the winning robot's team.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is responsible for finding and developing leading edge technology for the Department of Defense. Its purpose, since President Dwight Eisenhower established it in 1957 in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, is to develop advanced technological solutions for the U.S. military.

"Disasters, both natural and man-made, are something we see every year happening throughout the world," Gill Pratt, program manager for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, said in a news conference in mid-May. "If we could only intervene [with robots], we could mitigate the extent of these disasters," he said.

The DRC was created in 2011 after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Japan when human responders were unable to investigate the scene because the nuclear contamination was too dangerous. Robots, however, could have accessed the scene, helping victims and possibly mitigating some of the fallout much sooner than humans were able to get there.