The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency runs an annual robotics competition designed to lead to advanced robots. A recent challenged focused on developing self-driving cars, but DARPA also wants to support work on robots that can operate autonomously.
The DARPA Robotics Challenge 2014 actually started in 2013 and produced a group of finalists in December of that year. The prize-winning round will be held later this year or in 2015.
The eight finalists are competing for a total prize of $2 million. The finalists are from Google, UCLA and Virginia Tech and NASA in the United States. A joint project between designers in Virginia and German and a robotics team from South Korea are the other two finalists.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a robot named RoboSimian in the completion. That team’s participation in the finals was announced previously.
Three teams will be self-funded. Google’s robot, called Schaft after the Google division that built it, will continue in the competition as a self-funded effort. RoboSimian will also be self-funded for the finals. The South Koreans, Team KAIST, will fund their own DRC-HUBO robot.
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