Robot Olympics Winner

Terminated: Japanese humanoid crushes competition to win Pentagon's robot Olympics as NASA's 'superhero' $3M entry comes up with ZERO

• Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) decided to host a competition that would test the world's greatest robotic technology
• The eight-part 'rescue challenge' was inspired by the nuclear meltdown at Fuskushima during the 2011 Japanese tsunami, where it was realized robots could do very little to help
• Coincidentally Japan won the competition, with its two-legged humanoid 'Schaft' completing all tasks and scoring 27 out of a possible 32
• Three teams scored zero, one of them being NASA

By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 02:03 GMT, 24 December 2013 | UPDATED: 10:25 GMT, 24 December 2013

A robot developed by a Japanese start-up that was recently acquired by Google has left 15 rivals for dead at a two-day competition hosted by the Pentagon to see which machine could cope best in the event of a nuclear meltdown.
Team Schaft's machine carried out all eight rescue-themed tasks - including scaling a ladder, opening a door, removing debris and clearing debris - to outscore its rivals by a mechanical mile, taking 27 of a possible 32 points.
However NASA's entry Valkyrie, a $3 million creation, failed to score a single point, in an embarrassing blow to the U.S. space station.
The machine was seemingly designed to much in an astronaut sense, weighing a clunky 125kg, rather than being to help out in a crisis.
Schaft' s closest competitor was IHMC Robotics - which used the Google/Boston Dynamics ATLAS robot - which cored 20 points, the BBC reports.
Three of the other 15 teams that took part failed to secure any points at the event near Miami, Florida, with NASA one of them.

'Anything you can do, humans!': Japanese robot Schaft completes one of the eight DARPA challenges - climbing a steep ladder

Embarassing: The robot created by NASA (pictured) failed to complete any of the eight tasks it was assigned during the two-day DARPA competition

Clean-up: Another task required clearing debris from an entry way. DARPA said the motivated to do the competition are realizing how little robots were able to help during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown

Four countries took place in the competition - United States, Japan, Korea and China.
Darpa said it had been inspired to organise the challenge after it became clear robots were only capable of playing a very limited role in efforts to contain 2011's Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan.
'What we realised was ... these robots couldn't do anything other than observe,' said Gill Pratt, programme manager for the Darpa Robotics Challenge.
'What they needed was a robot to go into that reactor building and shut off the valves.'

In order to spur on development of more adept robots the agency challenged contestants to complete a series of tasks, with a time-limit of 30 minutes for each.
Among the challenges were driving a utility vehicle along a course, climb an 8ft-high ladder, remove debris blocking a doorwar and cut a triangular shape in a wall using a cordless drill.
More than 100 teams originally applied to take part, and the number was whittled down to 17 by Darpa ahead of Friday and Saturday's event.

Schaft is also capable of opening a door. The two-legged humanoid out-mastered rivals by seven points

Epic fail: In a demonstration video, NASA said they were 'thinking about the competition the entire time' while making Valkyrie, which cost $3 million. Maybe they should have been thinking about it actually working?

Some entered their own machines, while others made use of Atlas - a robot manufactured by another Google-owned business, Boston Dynamics - controlling it with their own software.
One self-funded team from China - Intelligent Pioneer - dropped out at the last moment, bringing the number of contestants who took part at the Homestead-Miami Speedway racetrack to 16.
Schaft's 1.48m (4ft 11in) tall, two-legged robot entered the contest the favourite and lived up to its reputation.
It makes use of a new high-voltage liquid-cooled motor technology that uses a capacitor, rather a battery, for power. Its engineers say this lets its arms move and pivot at higher speeds than would otherwise be possible, in effect giving it stronger "muscles".
Virginia Tech's Thor-OP The robots had to attach a hose pipe as one of their challenges
The machine was developed by a spin-off from the University of Tokyo's Jouhou System Kougaku lab, which Google recently revealed it had acquired.

In case of an emergency, Schaft unhooks a fire hose

Robot Atlas-Iam attempts the ladder challenge during the event in Florida

The team scored 27 points out of a possible 32, putting it seven points ahead of second-placed IHMC Robotics, which used Atlas.
Scores were based on a system that awarded three points for completing a task's primary objectives, and then a bonus point for doing so without any human intervention.
Schaft's robot behaved almost perfectly, but lost points because 'the wind blew a door out of their robot's hold and because their robotic creation was not able to climb out of a vehicle after it successfully navigated an obstacle course,' reported the Japan Daily Press.

Four countries took part in the DARPA competition, including United States, Korea, China and of course Japan

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