The DARPA Robotics Challenge Was A Bust | Popular Science.
It’s been close to a month since the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) wrapped up. That’s time enough to face facts. The biggest and most well-funded international robotics competition in years was a failure.
That doesn’t feel good to write. The DRC was a huge undertaking, spanning years and costing millions. The competition had a noble goal—the development of robots that can better respond to disasters—and it attracted many of the world’s smartest and most accomplished roboticists.
Bummer but saying it was a failure and a bust isn’t fair, this is how learn and improve.
Halloween season is here! Check out all the posts, gift guides, and more!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!
Join over 38,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord
CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org
New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — NewProducts Featuring Adafruit RP2350 22-pin FPC HSTX to DVI Adapter for HDMI Displays!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Adafruit Grand Opening, Profile MicroPython Memory and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi — Classic editor
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
Adafruit IoT Monthly — Garden Lights, Bluetooth 6.0, and more!
Maker Business – Adafruit Daily — A look at Boeing’s supply chain and manufacturing process
Electronics – Adafruit Daily — When do I use X10?
Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at
AdafruitDaily.com !
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I have to say I disagree pretty strongly with the idea that the competition was a failure. DARPA’s motive for these competitions is to push the technology forward, and it certainly succeeded there. To focus on the mechanical limitations of the current generation misses the point. The machinery is only part of the technology that goes into a robot.
8 of the teams were using more-or-less "off the shelf" Atlas robots and put their primary efforts into advancing the state of the art in software.
Dr. Russ Tedrake and the MIT team in particular were pushing the envelope for autonomous operation. Prior to the competition, Dr. Tedrake invited the high school robotics teams that I coach to present their Atlas robot with some surprise tasks for practice. Their robot was able to complete 3 of the 4 tasks with no modifications or re-programming.
What a terrible, short-sighted article. Do the authors (and yourselves, for posting a link to it) really believe that it was such a bad thing that there were a lot of failures?
Failures are how we learn.