DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals June 5-6

[JesseK]

I thought there was supposed to be a ladder at the end, not stairs. When I first read the challenge years ago, I thought 'yea! that'll push the frontier in mobility!'. Did they change that at some point, or am I misremembering?

Disasters have a wonderful history of taking out stairs. Robots can't exactly take stairs with them to climb something. If a robot finds stairs in-situ it can't move them to where it wishes they were. If stairs are detached they usually break up into pieces and therefore can't be re-used. If a single stair is missing most robots simply fall through the stairs. If stairs are slippery they're basically impassible for a robot, especially if the railing is gone. If stairs are partially submerged, then it's basically game over for most robots, even if they're waterproof and float. In the world of moving up and down, stairs are to FRC arms as ladders are to FRC elevators: both work, but the simpler version is remarkably more effective in the vast majority of scenarios.

Maybe next year's FRC game should include a ladder climbing function, but without the arbitrary silliness of the 2013 rules. That'll show DARPA there's no need to water down the challenge. Maybe the ladder is contained behind a barrier, and the only way to get into the zone is to duck through a hole, or something.

Alex, I'm with you on the quadrupeds. They can tackle stairs and ladders equally with ease.