Japanese robot SCHAFT S-One won the qualifying tournament DARPA Robotics Challenge

In the final of the qualifying tournament DARPA Robotics Challenge, which was held on December 20-21, the Japanese team SCHAFT won with the S-One robot, gaining 27 points out of 32 possible. It is noteworthy that this small Japanese startup was recently acquired by Google, which seems to have seriously taken up robotics - in the past year Google has bought eight robot companies, including Boston Dynamics .



SCHAFT S-One is short (1 m 48 cm in height), but a “wide-shouldered” (1 m 31 cm in width) robot weighing 95 kg. It is based on another very successful HRP-2 model. One of the main distinguishing features of a robot is its physical strength. It uses specially designed actuators with very high peak power. They are electric motors combined with capacitors, which are capable of delivering a powerful current pulse at the right moment. In order for the engines to withstand this mode of operation, it is necessary to use hydraulic cooling. This allows the robot to keep balance with confidence and react to sudden shocks no worse than Boston Dynamics hydraulic robots.


One of the early prototypes of SCHAFT weighing 53 kg keeps balance after jolts and jumps up to 44 cm.
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In addition to SCHAFT, the final stage of the DARPA competition, which will be held in December 2014, included seven more teams. Here is a list of finalists:

1. SHAFT (27 points)
2. IHMS Robotics (20 points)
3. Tartan Rescue (18 points)
4. MIT (16 points)
5. RoboSimian (14 points)
6. TRAClabs (11 points)
7. WRECS (11 points)
8. TROOPER (9 points)