Zim wins robotics challenge

Zimbabwe has won a gold medal at the Global Robotics Challenge in Geneva, Switzerland.

In the Olympic-style competition, high school students devise solutions to 21st century problems using science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem).

More than 180 countries participated.

This year’s theme was carbon capture, a nascent technology in which excess heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is sucked out of the sky and sequestered, often underground, to help fight global warming.

The Department of Defense’s strategic plan calls for the Joint Force to conduct humanitarian, disaster relief, and related operations. Some disasters, due to grave risks to the health and wellbeing of rescue and aid workers, prove too great in scale or scope for timely and effective human response.

The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) seeks to address this problem by promoting innovation in human-supervised robotic technology for disaster-response operations.

The primary technical goal of the DRC is to develop human-supervised ground robots capable of executing complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments.

Competitors in the DRC are developing robots that can utilize standard tools and equipment commonly available in human environments, ranging from hand tools to vehicles.

To achieve its goal, the DRC is advancing the state of the art of supervised autonomy, mounted and dismounted mobility, and platform dexterity, strength, and endurance.

Improvements in supervised autonomy, in particular, aim to enable better control of robots by non-expert supervisors and allow effective operation despite degraded communications (low bandwidth, high latency, intermittent connection).

Zwnews