Abstract: The DARPA Robotics Challenge, which was motivated by nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, consisted of increasingly demanding two competitions, DRC trail and DRC final, over two years. The goal was to accelerate progress in robotics for humans and mitigate the impacts of natural or man-made disasters. The DRC Finals competition challenged participating robotics teams and their robots to complete a difficult course of eight tasks relevant to disaster response, among them driving alone, walking through rubble, tripping circuit breakers, turning valves and climbing stairs.

   25 teams from worldwide participated in this demanding challenges but only three of them completed the mission in the specified time limit, one hour. Even the first place winner, team KAIST, took 44 minutes to complete. Many teams struggled a lot in operating their robots. Most of the robot experienced real ‘disastrous’ situation as falling down before entering the disaster scene or during the tasks. Some of them were from mechanical failure, the others were from operator’s mistakes or from bipedal walking difficulties, etc. 

   Prof. Jun Ho Oh will review the DRC final process and discuss about what the difficulties were, what happened and what we learned from the challenge. He will also explain some details and winning strategy about the robot ‘DRC Hubo’.

   "This is the end of the DARPA Robotics Challenge but only the beginning of a future in which robots can work alongside people to reduce the toll of disasters," - Arati Prabhakar, DARPA Director - 
 

Biography: Prof. Jun Ho Oh received his B.S. and M.S. degree from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea in 1977 and 1979, respectively. After short working at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute as a researcher from 1979 to 1981, he received Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering in the field of automatic control at U.C., Berkeley in 1985. He is now a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering and the director of Humanoid robot research center(Hubo Lab) at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). 

   He performed many industry and government research projects in motion control, sensors, microprocessor applications, and robotics, etc. He is especially interested in mechatronics and system integration.  In the recently ten years, he completed unique humanoid robot series KHR-1, KHR-2, Hubo and Hubo 2. And he also developed Albert Hubo and Hubo FX-1. Recently, he leaded team KAIST and won Darpa Robot Challenge final as first place at Pomona, Ca, USA in 2015.  He is currently studying to improve the performance of humanoid robot for faster and more stable walking, robust robot system integration and light weight design, etc. He is a member of ASME and IEEE. And he also is the member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea.