Are you ready for the robot invasion? This isn’t a movie plot or ‘end of the world’ message. Yes, there really are human like robots out there. There is an organization who is behind this phenomenon.
That company is called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency). It’s a military organization that comes up with bigger and better technology tools for our defense forces. Over the years, they’ve been involved in the Internet, GPS, Siri, and Google cars. Now they’re investing heavily in two legged, two armed, human acting robots, almost the kind people my age grew up watching. Believe it or not, the 3/11/11 tsunami that devastated Japan is what inspired the upcoming DARPA challenge. The reasoning is if these robots were put into action, many lives would have been saved. Back to the challenge: 3.5 million dollars was offered to any person, group, or business that can come up with a robot that can do eight things in a power plant rescue situation. Remember, the Fukashima power plant was hard hit in the 3/11/11 tsunami and it never fully recovered. But the eight things included drive a car to the plant, enter the plant, cut a hole big enough for escape, get out of the rubble, and exit climbing a metal staircase, among other critical tasks. I used past tense because the audition started in 2013.
Why am I talking about it two years later? The finals just wrapped up. The mostly humanoid robots came from various nations and continents.The winner and was a robot named Hubo from a South Korean tech team called KAIST. It’s a noble concept to build robots to save lives in emergencies like this. I think this was DARPA’s other reason for this long drawn out contest: to quell the concern that robots are evil and out to take our jobs and eventually our lives. But some are still skeptical. Has this contest changed your perception about robots?