DARPA Robotics Challenge: RoboSimian finished in fifth place

June 20, 2015

NASA’s Jet Propulsions Labortory (JPL) designed and built RoboSimian while UCSB’s Robotics Lab, led by Katie Byl and graduate students Brian Satzinger and Chelsea Lau, helped write the software to control how the robot moves. With an ape-like body and spider-like limbs, RoboSimian is a slow but incredibly strong robot designed to offer lots of torque.  Each limb can function both as a leg or an arm, which have extremely strong, pincher-like hands able to grab onto things securely enough to support its own weight. 

Paired against 22 other robots in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, RoboSimian took fifth place and was one of only two robots to not require human intervention during the course. Each robot is put through a series of tasks, including driving a vehicle through a slalom course, cutting a hole in a half-inch-thick panel of drywall using a cordless power drill, and walking up a set of stairs. DARPA officials, to better simulate the disorientation of a true disaster situation, also incorporated surprise obstacles and tasks each day. The contest is designed to simulate a “rescue scenario” in which robot are used because the environment is too hazardous for human intervention. This challenge comes as a result of the hazardous conditions and devastation to Tohoku, Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. 

For more information about RoboSimian see:

http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/015520/future-simian

RoboSimian in Action at 2015 DARPA Robotics Finals