Korean Robot Takes Home $2M Prize in DARPA Challenge

POMONA, Calif. ­– A robotics team from South Korea took home the $2 million first-place prize in a competition this weekend to design robots that could aid humans in a natural or man-made disaster.
During the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, which took place here Friday and Saturday (June 5 and 6), the winning team's DRC-HUBO robot finished all eight tasks in less than 45 minutes. The winning bot had a humanoid design that could transform itself into a wheeled kneeling position for faster, more stable movement.
The Running Man robot from Florida's Institute for Human and Machine Cognition claimed second, finishing all the tasks in just over 50 minutes. Team Tartan Rescue's CHIMP robot came in third, completing all the tasks in just over 55 minutes. The second and third place teams took home $1 million and $500,000, respectively.