NASA's new $1 million Space Robotics Challenge to prepare robots for Mars journey

Evan Ackerman for IEEE Spectrum:  Last year at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, NASA announced a new challenge for humanoid robots: the Space Robotics Challenge (SRC), which will “prepare robots for the journey to Mars.” Just like the DRC, the first stage of the SRC will consist of a virtual challenge, run in the Gazebo simulator, followed up by a physical challenge using NASA’s R5 Valkyrie robots.

As of yesterday, NASA has opened registration for the SRC, and we’ll take a look at the format of the competition, the challenges that teams will need to complete, and what they can take home for winning.  Cont'd...

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Boston Dynamics Webinar - Why Humanoids Are the Future of Manufacturing

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Join us November 18th for this Webinar as we reflect on what we've learned by observing factory floors, and why we've grown convinced that chasing generalization in manipulation—both in hardware and behavior—isn't just interesting, but necessary. We'll discuss AI research threads we're exploring at Boston Dynamics to push this mission forward, and highlight opportunities our field should collectively invest more in to turn the humanoid vision, and the reinvention of manufacturing, into a practical, economically viable product.