A Japanese team takes the prize - The Truth

Washington, Dec. 23 (Reuters) -. A Japanese company team Schaft, owned by Google, this weekend took the prize for best robot rescue in organized by the Pentagon in Florida competition <. / p>Schaft

robot took 27 of the 32 points at stake in this robotics competition in which teams must get their wits remove debris, walk stony ground, open doors or climb stairs.

The competition was organized by Projects Agency Defense Advanced Research (DARPA, in English), the Pentagon agency responsible for high-tech projects, which will give $ 2 million to the winner.

The winning team is led by Yuto Nakanishi, University of Tokyo, an expert in this type of technology and creator of Kojiro, a robot that mimics the structure of human muscles.

Schaft, a biped robot, beat the other 15 teams and finished well ahead of second in the ranking, IHMC Robotics and humanoid robot “Atlas”, created jointly with Boston Dynamics, another robotics company recently acquired by Google.

Boston Dynamics robot gave his “Atlas” several teams, they have had to create the software and terrain recognition techniques on your own.

DARPA

objective is to contribute to the development of robots that can act in rescues during natural disasters or man-made, as in the case of the nuclear crisis in Fukushima Daiichi in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011.

In fact, during that disaster Japan had to resort to U.S. robots to access the highest radiation areas of the plant due to lack of this type of technology operational.

Google has increased its investment in robotics in a clear commitment to the future potential of this technology and is also involved in the Rescue Team Tartan of Carnegie Mellon University, which finished third.

participated in the competition as prestigious institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the U.S. space agency NASA and the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology of South Korea (KAIST).

robots had to drive a vehicle, breaking a door or a wall, remove iron columns with a single human command without outside intervention as possible. EFE