Hasta La Gadget!

DARPA’s Robotic Challenge Trials wrapped up earlier today, and the robot that reigned supreme is SCHAFT. The squat 209 pound, 4.85 foot-tall robot smoked the competition, scoring 27 points, besting its next closest competitor by 35% in overall points.

The challenge is focused on demonstrating advancements in robotics which could improve disaster response efforts. For the competition, the bipedal humanoid robots had to perform each of the following tasks:

1. Drive a utility vehicle at the site.
2. Travel dismounted across rubble.
3. Remove debris blocking an entryway.
4. Open a door and enter a building.
5. Climb an industrial ladder and traverse an industrial walkway.
6. Use a tool to break through a concrete panel.
7. Locate and close a valve near a leaking pipe.
8. Connect a fire hose to a standpipe and turn on a valve.

In the end, SCHAFT beat out numerous teams from DARPA’s home nation, taking the top spot in the terrain, ladder, debris, and fire hose tasks.

Here’s  Team SCHAFT explaining a bit about what makes their robot special:

The time-compressed footage shown below is SCHAFT practicing its tasks prior to this weekend’s event.

Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition’s (IMHC Robotics) robot did quite well, coming in second place, taking first place in the door and wall challenges.

While it’s the end of the line for some of the robots, the top eight teams will get funded to move on to the final rounds in 2014.

[via LiveScience]

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The Google-owned Japanese robotics company SCHAFT has won the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials by a wide margin. It scored 27 out of 32 points, beating its nearest competitor IHMC Robotics … Continue reading

This article was written on October 16, 2006 by CyberNet.

Optimus is preparing to announce a completely new input device called Upravlator next week and the image above is supposed to be a life-size mock-up. Yep, it is a teaser that they provided because you can’t really tell what it is going to be. Here is the information that they give on their blog:

It will be plugged into your second monitor port. It will be as fast as LCD display may be. It will be a single best friend of any music engineer or video editor. Graphic designers should be happy as well.

It essentially looks like the Mini-Three that they released a few months ago but in some sort of case or stand. I guess we will find out soon enough.

As far as the full Optimus Keyboard goes they plan on accepting pre-orders around December of 2006 but it will not ship until after the Spring of 2007. As exciting as it will be to see the full keyboard get released I can’t even imagine how much it will cost. The Mini-Three costs $160 to order and that only has three buttons! I think for that price I’d rather get another monitor to show me notifications. 😀

The image to the right is a prototype key that will be used for the Optimus Keyboard. It is cool that the keys are still removable because if something happens to one of them then you’ll just need to buy a standard key…there is no more making sure you get the right letter!

Thanks to Koromar for the tip!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

A PR agency that handles CollegeHumor, OkCupid, the Daily Beast, Vimeo and other high-profile web properties has “parted ways with” a corporate communications officer over a tweet deemed offensive by … Continue reading