Students qualify for DARPA Robotics Challenge
A team of five masters students from the Department of Informatics is one of only 13 teams to qualify for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, seeing off competition from over 100 other teams. DARPA, the United States defense research agency known for their self-driving car grand challenge, recently launched a new challenge: the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC). The aim of the DRC is to create and control a humanoid robot to transverse and operate in an environment designed for humans. With recent events such as the Fukashima disaster, DARPA hopes to have robots capable of performing search, rescue, and repairing tasks in places too dangerous for human workers.
The King's Informatics team has entered the virtual controls track of the DRC competition, the winners of which will be awarded a million dollar humanoid robot, the ATLAS robot by Boston Dynamics. The virtual controls track focuses on methods and algorithms to control a robot’s movements and decision making to navigate and manipulate its way through various situations. Considering humanoid robots have existed for decades, and natural walking and manipulation has barely been achieved, this is no easy task. Any organization capable of entry to the DRC competition gains international recognition for their innovative abilities.
The only team from the UK to enter, the King's College London DRC team consists of five MSc students from the Department of Informatics (David Baxter, Rushabh Deepak Doshi, Polys Georgiou, Fabio Carvalho Guedes and Karmsheel Ramsugit), co-supervised by PhD students and academic staff from the department. Through their hard efforts and dedication, the team overcame multiple obstacles such as having a small team and low resources. With only two computers powerful enough to run the simulations and control schemes, the team spent hundreds of hours in the lab and were the first to qualify according to the DARPA robotics challenge scoreboard. In the next stage of the challenge in June, the King's Informatics team will be competing against organisations such as MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and NASA.
The DRC experience so far has been an incredibly positive one for everyone involved, as the following comments demonstrate.
I worked in a small team focused on locomotion. Our skills and experience really complemented each other to push the project forward. I was surprised that what we could accomplish working together was far superior to that which we could have independently.
- David Baxter, MSc student
Taking part in the DRC has helped me learn how to work as a team for tackling difficult problem statements such as the DRC 2013, by modularising the process and help achieve the desired task in a given amount of time by putting in hard work along with knowledge.
- Rushabh Doshi, MSc student
The members of this team were dedicated, focused, and rose to the challenges that faced us. The students and their PhD mentors worked hand in hand to solve the most difficult problems in robotics: locomotion and manipulation. From pacing around the lab to calculating zero moment points, the evolution of the team’s problem solving process led us to achieve our goals.
- Allen Jiang, PhD student mentor
It was another learning experience for me. The way PhD and masters students took responsibility, developed team spirit, and gave their best dedication to accomplish goals while enjoying science, gave me new insights into leadership in science based projects.
- Thrish Nanayakkara, team advisor
Dr Thrish Nanayakkara, senior lecturer in the Centre for Robotics Research in the Department of Informatics, advised the team regarding the robot locomotion, manipulation, and vision. Professor Maria Fox of the Planning Group in Department of Informatics advised the team about robot planning.