Robots on the jobsite advancing in construction

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's 'Robotics Challenge' competition was the first such effort by the agency at exploring how engineers could apply the repetitive and algorithm-driven advantages of modern robotics to the varied unpredictable environments of disaster zones Along with real-world working situations, such as construction jobsites. DARPA, a division of the US Department of Defense, focused on funding the development of emerging technologies, announced the challenge after the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan. A robot from the Japan-based SCHAFT team was the highest-scoring entry in the competition, which scored 27 out of the 32 points awarded in the tests. Some of the other teams looked at DARPA's short, one-year lead time for the contest and chose to focus on a robot for specific tasks, rather than a robot that performed multiple tasks. The top-scoring teams from the December competition made efforts to improve their creations for the next round of trials to be held in December 2014 or in early 2015.