Robotics Challenge wraps up, Japanese team takes first place

After leading throughout the competition, Schaft, the Japanese robotics start-up recently purchased by Google, was officially crowned winner of the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials when they ended on Saturday.

Schaft has only been around since 2012, when it spun out of the JSK Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, but it thoroughly dominated the DRC competition. The final scores were as follows:

SCHAFT     27
IHMC ROBOTICS     20
TARTAN RESCUE     18
MIT     16
ROBOSIMIAN     14
TRACLABS     11
WRECS     11
TROOPER     9
THOR     8
VIGIR     8
KAIST     8
HKU     3
DRC-HUBO     3
CHIRON     0
NASA-JSC     0
MOJAVATON     0

Next, the top eight teams should receive continued DARPA funding to prepare for next year’s finals, where the winner will receive a $2 million prize. At least some of the lower-scoring teams should be back as well, and with another year to refine their robots, they’re likely to improve on their performances. Until then, all the details about the event will be posted on theroboticschallenge.org.

[ photo courtesy of DARPA ]