U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was treated to a firsthand look at a life-size robot known as Atlas earlier this week, where it has been deemed to be the most recent experiment by the Pentagon’s high-tech researchers. We first talked about Atlas last year, only to have it undergo an inglorious debut as it broke its ankle in October 2013. Well, thankfully the Atlas robot did not experience any snafus this time around in the presence of a VIP.
At the moment, the 187cm tall Atlas is one of the entrants in a contest that will pit the wits of researchers who have been tasked to come up with a man-like lifesaving machine, and thi is no doubt the brainchild of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Part of the criteria of the competition would see the robots navigating through rough terrain as well as enter buildings, and it was thought up of right after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011. While real world robots are still far away from what Hollywood has depicted, at least this seems to be a step in the right direction.
Well, we do hope that progress can be made in the right direction where the Atlas is concerned, and hopefully more lives will be saved down the road.
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