Robotics by James Stewart

An area in which I am very interested, and would like to do at university and beyond, is robotics.
Although many people might think robots are for nerds and geeks, the field of robotics is a becoming
rapidly more significant in a variety of ways, in industry, commerce, and the military. But perhaps the
largest area of interest, is robots which can perform tasks in environments that would normally be
harmful to a human being, like the zones around natural or man-made disasters.
The inefficacy of human rescue services in extreme conditions was brought to light during the
horrific nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, and many organisations have since looked to
robots as the solution. One of these organisations was the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), which is an agency of the US Department of Defense, designed to develop emerging
technology for use by the US military.
However, despite how nefarious that may sound, many of their projects do involve non-military
technology, such as the annual DARPA Robotics Challenge. The Robotics Challenge is competition
between different teams of roboticists from all over the world, in which the robots have to complete
various extremely difficult challenges in a controlled environment. Its aim is to develop robots that
can "complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments. This years challenge
was held in June, in Florida, and 22 teams took part, attempting to win $2 million dollars in prize
money. Their robots had to complete a kind of obstacle course, involving eight tasks, each worth one
point, relevant to disaster response, such as driving a car, navigating rubble, tripping circuit breakers,
turning valves and climbing stairs. Three teams scored eight points, and took home varying amounts
of prize money, according to how quickly they completed the course. In third place was the American
team, Tartan Rescue, who took home $500,000, with their robot CHIMP a machine with a
humanoid torso, but rolls on rubberized tracks instead of legs, to help it navigate difficult terrain. In
second place was Team IHMC Robotics also from the US, who took home $1 million, with their robot
Running Man a far more humanoid robot, with special effort invested into creating a robot able to
balance reliably on only two legs. But the winners of the DARPA Robotics Challenge Final, was Team
KAIST from the Republic of Korea, who took home $2 million, thanks to their robot DRC-Hubo
another robot which stands upright normally, although it can change to a kneeling position in order
to move faster on the wheels installed there.
Unfortunately, this year was the last ever DARPA Robotics Challenge, but the progress from the
rudimentary machines showcased in the 2012 Challenge, to the sophisticated, efficient robots on
show this year is startling. Personally, I find these advances very exciting, and promising, in terms of
minimising the damage of natural or man-made disasters in the future, as well as aiding people in
other fields, and I hope that the work of DARPA will be picked up by another organisation, if only for
the enjoyment of watching robots traverse an obstacle course, successfully or unsuccessfully.