Virginia Tech's RoMeLa Answers DARPA Robotics Challenge With THOR 62
smackay writes "Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory is building a humanoid robot designed for dangerous rescue missions as part of the new DARPA Robotics Challenge. Lab founder/director Dennis Hong calls it the 'greatest challenge of my career.' The robot's name: THOR"
From the article: "The task is massive: The adult-sized robot must be designed to enter a vehicle, drive it, and then exit the vehicle, walk over rubble, clear objects blocking a door, open the door, and enter a building. The robot then must visually and audibly locate and shut off a leaking valve, connect a hose or connector, climb an industrial ladder and traverse an industrial walkway. The final and possibly most difficult task: Use a power tool and break through a concrete wall. All these tasks must be accomplished under a set time limit."
Jobs Are At Risk!!! (Score:4, Funny)
If one of these things get built, American jobs are at risk! Stop them now! ... sort of...
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Hmmph... the "/sarcasm" tag didn't take...
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If t
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I think it's Chinese jobs at risk.
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No, it's Japanese Nuclear Worker Jobs at risk in places like Fukushima...
Not really a bad thing at all eh?
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Because this technology won't be used elsewhere? You might as well as said "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"*
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I didn't say it was a bad thing - but it's a stretch to imagine that this technology would be used regularly in situations that weren't life threatening.
Especially when you consider that for other applications, much cheaper technology would suffice.
GrpA
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You are right. Jobs are at risk.
Once the technolgy gets to the point where a generic robot can be program for different tasks, the job numbers in the service industries will plummet.
Pretty much ever fast food place, maid services, gas attendant, barrista, will mostly disapear.
Millions of people won't have work. What do we do? I'm not saying don't have robots.
DO we make it so companies can't own them and peopel can own only 1? then they can choose between working or having their robot work?
Do we put money in
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Reducing the number of people on the planet, thereby reducing the number of jobs required, is one solution.
Can't decide whether or not I'm being sarcastic.
Info on the other robots in the competition (Score:1)
Drive a car? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not just use one of those self-driving cars?
The same thing goes for climbing a latter, connecting hoses, and using power tools. These are devices designed for human use. If you design both the tool and the robot to be compatible, you can arrive at a simpler solution that works better.
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Why not just use one of those self-driving cars?
Because this planet is still mainly inhabited by humans, not robots ;-)
Re:Why not just one of those self-driving cars? (Score:3)
Yeah, and one of those self-climbing ladders?
Re:Drive a car? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The use case is obviously something like Fukushima, responding to an industrial accident no one was expecting. Even if you can deliver a self-driving car to the site, it might not be useful in the particular environment you're facing. Odds are, you're going to have to cope with the equipment that's already on site, which is primarily designed for humans.
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Oh! I know, the robot is going to test the TSA scanners?! Sweet, about time someone/something tested them.
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You are sooooo busted Phineas!!!!
Not like the car (Score:1)
Doesn't have to be autonomous:
"The exact type of robot to be developed also is left open, said Hong. The competition calls for neither an autonomous humanoid robot that can function on its own without instruction nor an “avatar”-like robot that would be fully controlled by an off-set human user. Hong said the robot developed by his team will operate under “supervised autonomy.”
So probably a combination of remote control for direction plus automated walking to avoid debris, etc. Just
Re:Not like the car (Score:4, Informative)
Even a 'simple' telepresence robot with the dexterity to operate a vehicle and perform various manual tasks would be incredibly useful in hazardous environments—including battlefields. I can see why DARPA doesn't mind it being human operated.
But I admit the remote control aspect causes it to lose a bit of the 'cool' factor; that's why I'm more intrigued by DARPA's other project, "Build a fully autonomous robot which can locate a single individual in the city of Los Angeles."
It's not a teleoperator (Score:4, Informative)
Even a 'simple' telepresence robot with the dexterity to operate a vehicle and perform various manual tasks would be incredibly useful in hazardous environments - including battlefields. I can see why DARPA doesn't mind it being human operated.
It's not a teleoperator. DARPA will limit bandwidth and add delay to prevent direct teleoperation. Balance, slip control, locomotion, and fine manipulation have to be autonomous or it won't work. Human control will probably look like video games - click on where to go or what to work on, select verb from menu.
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"Build a fully autonomous robot which can locate a single individual in the city of Los Angeles."
There are no individuals in the city of Los Angeles.
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And the randomly selected individual to be found is a person by the name of...
Sarah Connor.
Battlebots/Robot Wars (Score:2)
"...clear objects blocking a door, open it..." (Score:5, Funny)
Does the door have be closable after it has been "opened"? If not, that concrete-wall-breaking tool could come in handy.
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The 21st Century (Score:3)
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Any nuclear power would be wise to pre-emptively destroy an opponent with an army of robots.
It will be the countries with nuclear power who will develop these robots, not the fucking Taliban, so there's no chance of pre-emptively destroying your enemy without them getting a huge hit back on you too. MAD.
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"More than drones, man-sized, humanoid, autonomous robots are like 10,000 times more capable of threatening the political stability of the world at large."
That's an asserted conclusion. Now support it.
IMO they are just something different to destroy if they attack.
I for one (Score:1)
Nobody else beat me to it? (Score:3)
dun dun dun da dun!
dun dun dun da dun!
dun dun dun da dun!
(adding padding to joke to bypass lameness filters. Meanwhile, frist pr0st trolls post merrily away.)
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They didn't name it Nimrod. Or Ultron.
It's still human controlled and has some rather specialized tasks that could be handled by individual specialized modules. I'm looking for the composite one named Voltron.
Terminator (Score:2)
Sounds like the specification for a T800.
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so... (Score:1)
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Call *me* paranoid, but all the DARPA challenges soudns to me only superficially humanitarian in nature.
I think the clue to the main purpose of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is in the word "defense". If they wanted to creata a HARPA I'm sure they could, except that it wouldn't get the funding.
Can't work. (Score:5, Funny)
"Use a power tool and break through a concrete wall. All these tasks must be accomplished under a set time limit."
Under a set time limit? Not even a real, human contractor can do the latter, it's impossible.
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Under a set time limit? Not even a real, human contractor can do the latter, it's impossible.
Duh. That's exactly why we need a robot!
At first the humans thought that enabling sentience for the Neural Networks of their self driving cars was a grand idea. However, they failed to realize that the mechano-electric beings would get bored, get distracted by scenery including hot younger models, and slack off computing the meaning of their own existence. The humans would have been better off assigning driving shifts to all those unemployed college kids -- They're cheaper, use less electricity, and only think they're better than you.
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"Use a power tool and break through a concrete wall. All these tasks must be accomplished under a set time limit."
Under a set time limit? Not even a real, human contractor can do the latter, it's impossible.
No, it's always possible but the guys will have to do extra work at double time.
Oblig SC2 (Score:2)
"THOR is here."
Fukushima? (Score:1)
The referred article states that one use for this toy would be in assessing damages to reactors under meltdown conditions and asserts that Japan, despite being Robot Mecca (my paraphrase), doesn't have any that can do that,
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that thing would survive ten seconds under the kind of radiation barrage one would expect inside a nuclear reactor. Not at those radiation levels.
Many CCD images from Fukushima are completely washed-out because of radiation. I hesitate to specula