Many of us dream of building robots that do cool things when we’re young but not all of us follow through. We all have different reasons for not pursuing what once seemed like pretty awesome dreams, and if you still happen to hold on to some of them, then DARPA has a great opportunity for you. If your robot is good enough the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is going to pump taxpayer dollars in your idea.
It can be said that DARPA is one of the cooler U.S. government agencies since it works on all kinds of futuristic technologies for the military, so it does understand robots and sees the potential that they have to offer, which is why DARPA has teamed up with Open Source Robotics Foundation and BIT Systems to come up with the Robotics Fast Track program.
The program is open to anyone and everyone who has an idea of what a robot should be, it could even be a simple doodle on a notepad, if you want to you can submit it to the Robotics Fast Track website. If your robot passes through the initial screening and it makes sense to them, you will then be called in to draw up a contract after which funding will be provided to bring that robot to life.
DARPA does point out that your doodle will get an edge if it concerns robots that are better suited to space or maritime environments since the agency is particularly interested in developing robots for those environments. Even if your idea gets rejected the RFT team will reach out to applicants and explain why their project was turned down so that they can make the required tweaks and submit it again if they feel like it.
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