A Spanish consortium coordinated by the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) has been one of the 23 classified to participate in the penultimate phase of the challenge organized by the US Department of Defense (DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge, by its name in English) to design rescue androids.
Each finalist team will present between the 18th and 20th of this month aalgorithmic proposal for motion control, perception of the environment and decision makingthat allow the robot to effectively overcome a series ofvirtual testsin the shortest possible time. The six winners will receive funding of $ 750,000 to continue their research for 6 more months until the next competition, as well as a robot to put their progress into practice in real scenarios, with which they will face in the final.
The objective of the initiative is to developHumanoid robots that can operate, in collaboration with rescue teams, in disaster scenarios avoiding the tasks of maximum risk to human teams. “The algorithms that we have designed should allow the robot to solve three tests: driving a vehicle on a road over obstacles, walking through uneven terrain that is progressively complicated by mud and debris, and connecting a hose to a pipe and opening the tap. step ”, explains the CSIC researcher Elena García, from the Center for Automation and Robotics, a joint center between the CSIC and the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
The SARBOT team (acronym forSearch And Rescue Robot), the only Spanish team selected and one of the three Europeans, is made up of researchers from the CSIC, the University of Alcalá, the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the Carlos III University of Madrid.
