Hasta La Ideas

We’ve got a few months yet until December, when DARPA will hold their 2013 Robotics Challenge, but that hasn’t stopped the MIT team from releasing an “unboxing” video of their Atlas robot, delivered from Boston Dynamics. And while we had a chuckle at the Atlas robot’s previously aired automotive difficulties, and previously mentioned some elements of this year’s challenge, the unboxing vid prompted us to take a closer look at what DARPA’s got in mind for 2013—and it’s pretty nutty. Inspired by the unfortunate events at Fukushima, robot entrants in this year’s competition have got a ridiculously difficult road ahead of them.

Task 1 requires the robot to drive a utility vehicle through a primitive obstacle course. Doesn’t seem too bad, right?

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