The Defense Advanced Research Projects

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the military. DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major effect on the world, including computer networking, as well as NLS, which was both the first hypertext system, and an important precursor to the contemporary ubiquitous graphical user interface.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 's Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) is over and the agency has announced the winning teams that are receiving not just a cash prize, but a real, life-size, humanoid robot to compete in the challenge's next round.

DARPA announced the winners today (June 27). They are:

Team IHMC, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola, Fla. (52 points)
WPI Robotics Engineering C Squad (WRECS), Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass. (39 points)

MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. (34 points)
Team TRACLabs, TRACLabs Inc., Webster, Texas (30 points)
JPL / UCSB / Caltech, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. (29 points)
TORC, TORC / TU Darmstadt / Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va. (27 points)
Team K, Japan (25 points)
TROOPER, Lockheed Martin, Cherry Hill, N.J. (24 points)
Case Western University, Cleveland, Ohio (23 points)
The purpose of the VRC is to advance the frontier of robots so that they can replace humans in disaster situations, or as DARPA program manager Gill Pratt said at a news conference before the contest, "To make our society — and that means society around the world — more resilient to both natural and manmade disasters.