The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) needs help building more energy efficient robots. DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) project, a robot-based program that launched last year, has issued a notice for research proposals to improve all aspects of robot creation and operations. DARPA wants to see a 2,000 percent improvement in the efficiency of power transmission and use in robots, in order to increase mobile platform range and endurance.
“By exploring multiple aspects of robot design, capabilities, control and production, we hope to converge on an adaptable core of robot technologies that can be applied across mission areas,” said Gill Pratt, DARPA program manager, in a release. “Success in the M3 Actuation effort would benefit not just robotics programs, but all engineered, actuated systems, including advanced prosthetic limbs.”
The Defense Department has high expectations for robots that can disarm roadside bombs, drive into industrial disaster areas and shut off valves leaking toxic substances, and robots that can carry heavy equipment over rocky terrain to increase warfighter travel range. The only problem is current robots are inefficient and expend a lot of energy.
“Humans and animals have evolved to consume energy very efficiently for movement,” DARPA wrote in the release. “Bones, muscles and tendons work together for propulsion using as little energy as possible. If robotic actuation can be made to approach the efficiency of human and animal actuation, the range of practical robotic applications will greatly increase and robot design will be less limited by power plant considerations.”
The program will run on two tracks. The first track entails developing high-efficiency actuation technology that will allow robots similar to the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) platform to have twenty times longer endurance than the DRC GFE when running on untethered battery power. Similar robots currently have between 10 to 20 minutes of use. The second track will involve improving the efficiency of robots that are both larger and smaller than applicable to the DRC GFE platform.
The participants in both tracks will share their designs at the first DRC live competition in December 2013. Robots from the first track will be demonstrated but not compete at the second DRC competition in December 2014.
