DARPA Wants Atlas Robot To Go Wireless

mikejuk writes: Atlas is a humanoid robot, one of the most advanced in the world. But it's always had cables that provided it with power and made it look a little like a dog on a leash. It was designed to provide a hardware platform for teams competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge — a competition designed to encourage the construction of an effective disaster response robot. DARPA now says the finals of the challenge later in the year will require that the robots be completely wireless.

Power will be supplied by an onboard 3.7 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery. That battery will drive a variable-pressure pump which operates all of the hydraulic systems. The pump makes ATLAS much quieter, but introduces a complication for the teams: it can be run at low pressure to save power and then switched to high pressure to get harder work done. Managing power consumption will be a very difficult task, but DARPA has also upped the prize money to $3.5 million in total.

Wireless - does that also mean autonomous?

[Grench]

So operating the robot wirelessly - will that mean it is completely self-contained? By which I mean, does the robot's shell contain all of the computer control / decision-making equipment it needs to operate and move around, or will this equipment remain on separate hardware, transmitting commands wirelessly to a much smaller "movement control" system on-board?

Just wondering if cutting the cords means that the robot could simply be told "go and explore your environment", with the decision-making on where t

First

[rossdee]

You need a power source

Re:

[Zaatxe]

You need a power source

Man, it's right in the summary... I know people here aren't supposed to read the articles, but stop right after the headline is too much!

For Comparison

[necro81]

A typical laptop battery maxes out at 100 Whr capacity. (Above 100 Whr gets problematic with shipping and air travel regulations.) So picture a stack of about 40 laptop battery packs - that's what Atlas' will be lugging around. In the videos, you can see a large briefcase-like box on the back.

This is the big one

[neorush]

...in that, with this effort / funds, someone may be able to solve the energy density problem. Even our best batteries are something like 1/30th the density of unleaded fuel. As soon as the electrical energy storage problem is solved the world really will change drastically...flying cars anyone?

Re:

[jandrese]

Solving the battery problem won't get us flying cars, but it will make a huge difference for all electric travel in general.

Re:

[nospam007]

"I'm not an engineer and probably not qualified for saying this. But it seems like it has plain(straight) feet. Doesn't that make it harder to walk?"

Personally I have no problems walking with straight plain feet. I almost never fall over.

Taking a step back from the power source issue

[Malcolm Reynolds]

I couldn't help but think about the environment that the robot would be operating in. The objective from the post stated it was to create a robot that would help clear disaster recovery areas. Suppose one of those areas became radioactive. It wasn't too long ago that the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred. I'm not 100% on how high the radiation levels were at the time of the disaster, but wouldn't it stand to reason that a robot operating solely off of WiFi commands would have difficulty operating there? P

Taking a step back from the power source issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Radioactivity does not interfere with wireless lan. It does interfere with non rad-hard electronics in general though.

Re:

[kesuki]

but shielded corridors inside a shielded power plant would not allow full building wifi penetration