Google to start selling humanoid robo-firefighter
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Google is to start selling a humanoid robot which can walk, climb, use tools and even drive a car.
Call Schaft, the robot was developed by a Japanese firm bought by Google.
It recently won a military 'robo-olympics' - but Google has revealed the machine is being pulled from future rounds of the contest so it can be developed into the firm's first commercial robot.
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Call Schaft, the 1.48m robot was developed by a Japanese firm bought by Google, and is now set to be turned into a commercial product.
WHAT THE GOOGLEBOT CAN DO
During the recent 'robo olympics' 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.
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'.
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'.
The announcement came as the next round of the robo-contest was revealed.
'The first-place finisher, SCHAFT, has elected to withdraw from the Finals to focus on the development of its first commercial product,' organisers said.
California will be the stage for the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals.
Teams from around the world will meet at Fairplex in Pomona to compete for the $2 million prize to be awarded to the team that best demonstrates human-supervised robot technology for disaster response.
The DRC is a competition of human-robot systems developed to help emergency personnel respond to natural and man-made disasters.
Participating teams from some of the most advanced robotics research and development organizations in the world are designing hardware, software, sensors, and human-machine control interfaces to be tested in a series of tasks selected by DARPA for their broad relevance to disaster response operations.
'Six months ago at the DRC Trials, we began physically testing human-supervised robots against disaster-relevant tasks.
'Their impressive performance gave us the confidence to raise the bar,' said Dr. Gill Pratt, DRC program manager.
'A year from now at the DRC Finals we will push the technology even further'
'Anything you can do, humans!': Japanese robot Schaft completes one of the eight DARPA challenges - climbing a steep ladder
The 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 scored 20 points.
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.
The robot can also operate tolls - and is seen here closing a valve with a spanner
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
The googlebot driving a car as part of the test
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.
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
Google's robot currently has power cables and tether attached - but future versions could be wireless
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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