Studer Community Institute

Atlas heads to Homestead

December 16, 2013
/ Shannon Nickinson
/ community-dashboard

Atlas the Robot is coming for you, Homestead. The Terminator-esque robot and his Pensacola posse from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition will compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge at the Homestead Speedway. At stake is more than just nerd cred. A shot at $2 million in prize money for the research project is up for grabs. In June, the IHMC team took first place in the initial stage of the challenge, beating 26 robotics research teams across the world. They scored 52 out of possible 60 points in that computer simulation portion (outpacing the MIT team by 18 points, just saying). That earned them a chance to work with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s humanoid robot, built by Boston Dynamics. Since August, a 22-member team that includes Jerry Pratt and Peter Neuhaus have been working on making Atlas -- who “sees” with the laser and camera in his “head” -- perform eight tasks from driving a small vehicle, to climbing an eight-foot ladder, walking over rubble and debris and attaching a hose to a spigot and turning it on. “The tight schedule has been crazy,” Pratt says. Pratt says besides the laser lidar and two cameras in the head, in the body is a gyroscope which measures the orientation of the body in the same way gyroscopes are used on airplanes and satellites. In the feet are force sensors. At each joint are joint angle sensors. DARPA’s goal is to develop technology that would allow humanoid robots to work at disaster sites, such as the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011, where human action is limited. The robots must be able to work in a human-oriented environment, and be supervised by people with little training in robotics. For purposes of the competition, Pratt says, “our hardest tasks are ones that combine legs and arms. For example climbing the ladder. We haven't done much using both legs and arms but plan on doing more work in that area next year.” The 25-person team has been working long days in a building at the corner of Wright and Tarragona streets programming Atlas to walk over increasingly rugged terrain and other tasks. While they team records all of the trials so that every success and pratfall becomes a teachable moment for future trials. And they are good for a little comic relief, too. A video of Atlas slipping just as he completes a walk over random debris that the team scattered in front of him gained a viral following; it has more than 170,000 views on YouTube. [youtube id="d4qqM7_E11s"] A compilation video of his “falls” is coming to YouTube shortly. The finals will be next December. Pratt says the team shares their results through journal papers and collaboration. ““Rather than worry that someone might ‘steal our ideas,’ we try to share what we know and encourage others to use our ideas,” Pratt says. “Several of the key elements of our DRC entry are now being used by lots of other humanoid robot researchers. Likewise we use a lot of ideas from other teams. “That's how science works best. You can't stand on the shoulders of giants unless the giants make it easy to climb up.”

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Atlas heads to Homestead

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