TORC leads Team ViGIR in the DARPA Robotics Challenge

Blacksburg, VA (PRWEB) October 22, 2012

TORC Robotics announced that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Team ViGIR – Virginia-Germany Interdisciplinary Robotics Team for the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) http://www.torcrobotics.com/drc. The technical goal of this revolutionary challenge is to develop ground robots that can support complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments typical of disaster response scenarios. The program motivated by the Fukushima disaster will challenge teams to develop robotic software and hardware capabilities to support first responders. The DRC is a multi-year, multi-phase challenge where research teams from across the world will compete against each other for a $ 2M prize. Team ViGIR will develop advanced humanoid robotics software and a novel Human-Robot Interface that will enable sliding autonomy for the Boston Dynamics Petman/Atlas humanoid robot.

No stranger to competitive robotics, Team ViGIR consists of researchers from TORC Robotics, Technische Universit