Science Fiction Dictionary
A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

 

DARPA's Subterranean Challenge

Our friends at DARPA are at it again, amazing us with their nearly science-fictional technology and challenges. In this case, the Subterranean Challenge.

DARPA encourages participation from multidisciplinary teams from around the world to address the autonomy, perception, networking and mobility technologies necessary to map subsurface networks in unpredictable conditions. To attract a broader range of participants, the SubT Challenge includes both a physical Systems competition, as well as a software-only Virtual competition.

Here's the summary recap, courtesy of DARPAtv:


(DARPA Project List)

All of the teams shared a warehouse-sized space that was set up as a staging area for the competition. That gave them a chance to trade tips and tools, and gawk at the robotic menagerie. Team CoSTAR, which included roboticists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MIT, brought along a couple of four-legged SpotMini robo-dogs from Boston Dynamics. A team of students from Taiwanese schools, including the National Chiao Tung University, showed off a couple of makeshift blimps.

Over the course of the week, each team was given two sets of runs through two different mazes set up at Satsop. Every time an artifact was found, a team scored a point. The Singapore team ended up putting a single point on the board, while Team CoSTAR took the top score with 16 points.

Today, Chung handed out the awards to the winners. Team Explorer, which paired Carnegie Mellon University with Oregon State University, won second place behind CoSTAR with 11 points. A Czech-Canadian team, CTU-CRAS-NORLAB, took third place with 10 points. CSIRO Data61 came in fourth with nine points — including the point that was earned for finding that gas leak.

I can't help but think that the 2012 movie Prometheus, directed by Ridley Scott, might have influenced the presenters - and suggested a quick way to win! The following scene shows the exploration of a vast alien artifact.

Learn more at DARPA's Subterranean Challenge website and the GeekWire story.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 2/17/2020)

Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.

| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |

Would you like to contribute a story tip? It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add it here.

Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )

Related News Stories - (" Surveillance ")

Chameleon Personalized Privacy Protection Mask
'...the Virtual Epiphantic Identity Lustre.' - Neal Stephenson, 2019.

Spherical Police Robot Rolls In China
'Rand could effectively be in several places at once...' - Niven and Pournelle, 1981.

Vietnam To Have Full Biometric Transparency
'inscriptions too small to be seen with the naked eye; microscopic data...' - Eric Frank Russell, 1939.

Simple Way To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'... designed to foil facial recognition systems.' - Neal Stephenson, 2019.

 

Google
  Web TechNovelgy.com   

Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.

 

 

 

 

Science Fiction Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's   1950's
1960's   1970's
1980's   1990's
2000's   2010's

Current News

Robotic Barber Programmed With a Number of Styles
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'

Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'

Caterpillar Electric Mining Loader Not Yet Ready For Moon
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'

Centipede Robots Down On The Farm
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'

Anthropic's Claude AI Creates Legal Citation From Whole Cloth
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'

Students Vie For Lunar Regolith Mining Robot Prize
'About time you got here,' the astronaut said.

'They Erased My Memory' Says Ariana Grande
'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.'

Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?'

Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'

DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'

Robot Hand Creeps Along, Separate From It's Owner
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'

Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'

Korean Exoskeleton Suit F1 Helps You Put It On
'Better late than never.'

Have AI Researchers Given Up On 'Bio-Babies'?
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'

Bunker Busters and Bore-Pellets
'The first revelation of the new Soviet bore-pellets.'

'Spikeless' Brand Swizzle Stick Detects Spiked Drinks
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'

More SF in the News Stories

More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories

Home | Glossary | Invention Timeline | Category | New | Contact Us | FAQ | Advertise |
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™

Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.