South Korea's HUBO Robot

The video above is of HUBO's earlier relative (robotically speaking). The DRC-HUBO and team won the DARPA Robotics Challenge held last weekend. A full article, titled "How South Korea's DRC-HUBO Robot Won the DARPA Robotics Challenge," can be found here on the IEEE Spectrum page. There are videos there of the robot completing each task of the challenge. AMAZING! 

The winning team was from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology or KAIST. Teams from the United States came in second and third.

Below is  a photo of the actual DARPA Robotics Challenge winner, the DRC-HUBO.

The field of robotics provides limitless opportunity for study, research and learning. We are just at the very beginning - really! It involves mechanical construction, electronics, engineering, design, programming, computing and the integration of all those fields! What could be more fun or challenging? We've learned so much and have SO far to go. Take a look! 

This video show that even for the best in the world - this is still not easy and why DRC-HUBO leg/wheel design for stability was a winning combination. “Bipedal walking [for robots] is not very stable yet,” Jun Ho Oh, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology who led the KAIST Team, told IEEE Spectrum. “One single thing goes wrong, the result is catastrophic.” He said a robot with a humanoid form has advantages when operating in a human environment, but he wanted to find a design that could minimize the risk of falls. “I thought about different things, and the simplest was wheels on the knees.” (Again, from the article here on the IEEE Spectrum page)

In the video below, Team KAIST's DRC-HUBO Robot completes the tasks at DARPA Robotics Challenge (20x normal speed). Check out its unique design. DRC-HUBO completed all eight tasks of the DARPA Challenge in the shortest amount of time - just 44 minutes and 28 seconds.