Autonomous Rovers to Compete for $1.5 Million NASA Prize

[Buster's Uncle]

Autonomous Rovers to Compete for $1.5 Million NASA Prize
By Megan Gannon | SPACE.com – Mon, Jun 3, 2013..

 
NASA is ready to award $1.5 million in prizes next week for robotic rovers that can skillfully navigate mock alien terrain and collect samples all by themselves.

Today's robots exploring extraterrestrial landscapes, like the Mars rover Curiosity, have some autonomous capabilities, but they are largely dependent on directions from their handlers on Earth. NASA hopes a little competition will help spark innovations in autonomous navigation that could be used on future missions.

Eleven teams are set to participate in the space agency's 2013 Sample Return Robot Challenge, which takes place from June 5 to 7 at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Mass.

The rovers in the contest will have to pass rigorous testing to earn prize money. To get through Level 1, the robots will have 30 minutes to search for and retrieve an undamaged mock geological sample — such as a shoe box or tennis ball — that has previously been identified by the robot's computer, NASA officials said. The rovers that can complete that task successfully will move on to Level 2, in which the robots will have to autonomously return at least two undamaged samples to their starting platform within two hours.

Awards will be doled out based on the difficulty of the samples collected, with prizes ranging from 100,000 to $1.5 million, according to NASA.

In last year's challenge, no prize money was awarded. Only one team of six had met the requirements after robot inspections, and that rover failed to make it through Level 1. But NASA officials are hopeful that this year the competition will be fiercer.

"We have a lot of new competitors signed up," Sam Ortega, program manager of Centennial Challenges, which is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said in a statement. "Improving this technology will be a huge boon, not just to NASA and space exploration, but also for countless applications here on Earth."

The list of returning teams includes SpacePRIDE of Graniteville, S.C.; Survey of Los Angeles; Wunderkammer of Topanga, Calif.; Intrepid of Lynnwood, Wash.; and the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

The newbie competitors are: Fetch of Alexandria, Va.; Middleman of Dunedin, Fla.; Mystic Late Robots of The Woodlands, Texas; Team AERO of Worcester, Mass.; the Autonomous Rover Team of the University of California at Santa Cruz; and Kuukuglur of Estonia.

http://news.yahoo.com/autonomous-rovers-compete-1-5-million-nasa-prize-191054285.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Fetch! Robot retrievers compete in $1.5 million NASA contest
By Daniel Lovering | Reuters – 4 hrs ago..

Five-year-old Brady Chapman watches a robot from Kuukulgur team from Estonia compete in NASA's 2013 Sample Return Robot Challenge at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts June 5, 2013. REUTERS/Brian Snyder


The Kuukulgur team from Estonia, including Anti Heinla (top C), prepares their robots to compete in NASA's 2013 Sample Return Robot Challenge at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts June 5, 2013. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

BOSTON (Reuters) - Eleven robots faced off in a Massachusetts field on Wednesday, showing off their ability to independently track down objects in a hunt for $1.5 million in prize money at a NASA-sponsored contest aimed at speeding technological development.

In the first day of a three-day event, robots designed by teams from the United States, Canada and Estonia set out from a platform in a 2-acre (0.8 hectare) park at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, to search among rolling hills, rocks, trees and a gazebo to find geologic samples.

They operated without human control, with the goal of encouraging advancements in autonomous navigation and robotics technologies, NASA officials said.

"Improving this technology will be a huge boon, not just to NASA and space exploration, but also for countless applications here on Earth," including industrial purposes, Sam Ortega, program manager of Centennial Challenges, said in a statement.

The Centennial Challenges program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is part of the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which develops hardware for future missions.

Robots in the contest will be required to retrieve samples in a range of shapes and sizes, from shoe-box-like forms to objects resembling tennis balls. Prizes range from $100,000 to $1.5 million, depending on the complexity of the samples retrieved.

Organizers chose the park setting to provide real-world challenges to the robots.

At last year's event, also held at Worcester Polytechnic, no prize money was awarded because the one robot that qualified for the contest failed to collect the required samples in the allotted time.

Robots entered in the contest can weigh no more than 80 kilograms (176 pounds) and measure up to 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) square.

The program caters mostly to citizen inventors, but also small businesses and universities that have developed robots, Ortega said. Cash prizes can be awarded to U.S. citizens only, he said, but the non-monetary "guts and glory" reward remained a strong motivator for entrants, he added.

While NASA does not claim any right to the intellectual property of the winning robots — it encourages winners to start businesses, for example — the agency would like access to it as part of the competition, he said.

Technological innovations that emerge through the contest could help NASA designers overcome challenges in creating robots used in five to 10 years, Ortega said.

http://news.yahoo.com/fetch-robot-retrievers-compete-1-5-million-nasa-184103001.html