Robohub.org
 

On stage at the DRC: While organizers create a disaster zone, competitors go for comedy


by
04 June 2015



share this:
detritus

Source: DRC Blog.

The DRC is all about pushing robotics technology forward. It’s all about creating a community devoted to innovation. And as it comes down to the finale on Friday and Saturday, it will also be about theatre. When spectators take their seats in the Grandstands at the Fairplex on Friday and Saturday, they will see a quartet of virtually identical Finals Courses, or what Kathy Wadham, director of creative programming for Fairplex, thinks of as stage sets. “Anything that needs to be turned into something else, or created here, we do that,” said Wadham during a backstage tour of the concocted disaster zones the robots will have to navigate over and through.

Momentum toward these DRC finals-courses/stage-sets began picking up several months ago when DRC organizers met with Wadham to explain how the courses had to be laid out, so four robots could test their humanitarian assistance skills in parallel. “They said, ‘We have a vision, can you do it?’” Wadham recalled. Those initial meetings led to detailed specifications and drawings and then it was up to Wadham to translate those abstractions into four essentially identical sets that would put the most sophisticated humanoid robots on the planet through some of the most challenging tests they have ever faced.

drc_link

“I didn’t want it to look cartoonish,” Wadham said. “I wanted it to look real.” And that explains why she had an aha! moment one day as she was doing some rounds on the grounds beyond the Grandstands. She looked up at the roofs of the old horse barns on the premises and she knew she had found the perfect material for the walls of her DRC sets—corrugated tin that had been aging and rusting for 40 years. It was a fitting artistic epiphany, given that the DRC is the Triple Crown of robotics.

Walham

Source: DRC Blog.

“We went through our scrap piles to find the doors and the electrical switches,” she said. Those same piles were a gold mine for creating the debris fields in front of the steel staircases on the left side of each set. Each junk heap is an assemblage of rooftop turbine vents (some with long-abandoned birds’ nests inside), gas line piping, beat up steel drums, water heater vessels, and sundry other pieces of detritus. “Some of the stuff was not rusted enough at first,” she said. “So we have a person who rusts and weathers it and makes it look old.”

For some of the details on the set, Walham went shopping. She found the incandescent bulbs for the dingy metal mesh fixtures online and purchased decals of gauges for the square electrical cabinets from a store specializing in retro design.

“We create places,” says Wadham. “That’s what we do.” The precisely dilapidated settings Walham and her Fairplex coworkers ultimately built—each with somewhat different piles of rubble strewn around the periphery but by necessity identical in the areas where the competing robots must traverse—are sure to transport DRC spectators to the earthquake, tsunami or hazerdous industrial zones in which we all hope robots will one day provide life-saving assistance.


Robotica Comedia

Human beings rarely squander an opportunity for comedy. That tendency is holding true in Building Nine of the Fairplex in Pomona, where the DRC teams are preparing their robots for the big race days on Friday and Saturday.

Team THOR members couldn’t stop themselves from adding a doll head and some tattoo sleeves, not to mention a little UCLA bling, to their THOR-RD robot.

Team THOR members couldn’t stop themselves from adding a doll head and some tattoo sleeves, not to mention a little UCLA bling, to their THOR-RD robot. Source: DRC Blog.

Team VALOR didn’t forget to pack a garden gnome—for a test bed they set up in their garage bay—along with a grab bag of props for their robot ESCHER. One more thing: a baby shoe on a stick, here in the hands of team member and graduate student John Seminatore, has proven to be a useful and gentle engineering tool for prodding ESHER’s joints.

Team VALOR didn’t forget to pack a garden gnome—for a test bed they set up in their garage bay—along with a grab bag of props for their robot ESCHER. Source: DRC Blog.

One more thing: a baby shoe on a stick, here in the hands of team member and graduate student John Seminatore, has proven to be a useful and gentle engineering tool for prodding ESHER’s joints. Source: DRC Blog.

One more thing: a baby shoe on a stick, here in the hands of team member and graduate student John Seminatore, has proven to be a useful and gentle engineering tool for prodding ESHER’s joints. Source: DRC Blog.

Team Grit makes a Western fashion statement atop its quadruped robot, Cog-Burn. Source: DRC Blog.

Team Grit makes a Western fashion statement atop its quadruped robot, Cog-Burn. Source: DRC Blog.



tags: , , ,


DARPA Robotics Challenge The DRC is a competition of robot systems and software teams vying to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters.
DARPA Robotics Challenge The DRC is a competition of robot systems and software teams vying to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters.





Related posts :



Livestream of RoboCup2025

  18 Jul 2025
Watch the competition live from Salvador!

Tackling the 3D Simulation League: an interview with Klaus Dorer and Stefan Glaser

and   15 Jul 2025
With RoboCup2025 starting today, we found out more about the 3D simulation league, and the new simulator they have in the works.

An interview with Nicolai Ommer: the RoboCupSoccer Small Size League

and   01 Jul 2025
We caught up with Nicolai to find out more about the Small Size League, how the auto referees work, and how teams use AI.

RoboCupRescue: an interview with Adam Jacoff

and   25 Jun 2025
Find out what's new in the RoboCupRescue League this year.

Robot Talk Episode 126 – Why are we building humanoid robots?

  20 Jun 2025
In this special live recording at Imperial College London, Claire chatted to Ben Russell, Maryam Banitalebi Dehkordi, and Petar Kormushev about humanoid robotics.

Gearing up for RoboCupJunior: Interview with Ana Patrícia Magalhães

and   18 Jun 2025
We hear from the organiser of RoboCupJunior 2025 and find out how the preparations are going for the event.

Robot Talk Episode 125 – Chatting with robots, with Gabriel Skantze

  13 Jun 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Gabriel Skantze from KTH Royal Institute of Technology about having natural face-to-face conversations with robots.

Preparing for kick-off at RoboCup2025: an interview with General Chair Marco Simões

and   12 Jun 2025
We caught up with Marco to find out what exciting events are in store at this year's RoboCup.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence