Servo - August 2015

daughter, Maya by the hand and began exploration into robotics terra incognito — the DRC Expo.

At the expo, we wandered from booth to booth. I talked to engineer after robot building engineer. I talked to the engineers that built the DRC robots. I talked to NASA’s engineers about their robots. I talked to a man with a life-size white robot parrot on his shoulder that squawked and tried to bite my finger. I saw a robot automobile driver that could theoretically drive any car and might just kill the Google car long before it arrives in showroom floors.

My daughter and I walked the long central expo corridor which highlighted DARPA, as well as many robots, engineers, and inventors over the century. I saw and chatted with friends and associates that I knew from the Riverside Robotics Expo that our local club puts on every year. I stopped with my daughter so that she could “be the robot” and perform a few of the robotics challenges herself with a manually controlled robot hand.

Some of the bigger names that were there at the expo included: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Lockheed Martin, Cornell, SRI, National Geographic, the R2 Builder’s Group (R2D2 replicas ARE big in my eyes), GE, iRobot, IEEE, and a gaggle of kids and mentors from the FIRST robotics organization.

NASA Created a Fembot and “Her” Name is Valkyrie

As I was making my way from booth to booth absorbing every nuance of leading-edge robotics technology, I found myself at NASA’s exhibit. As I was watching an engineer demonstrate a disembodied robot hand with a silent beauty and fluid motion, I saw out of the corner of my eye a large humanoid robot standing just a few feet away from me. I started to question the engineer in the booth about this large-as-life human-looking machine.

I took a closer look at the six foot tall human-esque android. It kind of looked like an astronaut in a space suit

— with a thong and an Iron Man-like light pulsing blue in its chest. I did a double take. “She” definitely looked like a female astronaut wearing a space suit.

Now, I build robots as a hobby and part-time business, and the pride of my robotic creations is my fembot Robot Betty9 made from a plastic mannequin, a dozen overpriced servos, and an EZ Robot microcontroller. So, when I saw that NASA built a fembot, my jaw dropped to my chest. I stared at the lovely robotoid lady for a few seconds, and finally, in front of everyone, I burst out laughing! NASA had built a curvaceous feminine humanoid. As the NASA engineer explained, “You see, we ran out of room to put the ball screw motors, and so extended the chest cavity. We’ve gotten a bit of flak for that.”

Strange Looking Robot Contenders

Throughout the day, I went back and forth from the expo and into the grandstands to witness the actual DRC competition. The competing robots came in many humanlike shapes and sizes. From Tokyo, Team HRP2’s robot was a super hero-like Transformer robot, while some robots — for example, Tartan Rescue — appeared more like mechanical gorillas. Team Aero’s robot had four legs, and I remember at least one robot being able to roll around on its wheeled “shins” and then stand up to walk when needed.

Team Grit’s robot, Cog-Burn — with its pencil-like appendages — resembled a walking stick insect. Some of the robots looked like gentle astronauts, while others resembled perilous killer robots from your worst nightmares. Various robots took a few slips and falls though. (More on that later.)

Introduction to DARPA and the DARPA Challenges

By taking a few minutes to read about DARPA from their website at darpa.mil — aside from the obvious DoD (Department of Defense) weaponry goals — I learned a few new things.