The DARPA Robotic Challenge, which recently came to an end in California, hoped that robots can someday help to save lives.

During the competition over 20 teams from across the world built or programmed and controlled a robot through a series of eight tasks in a simulated disaster zone.

In the challenge, created in response to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster, the robots required to drive a car, open a door, cut a hole in a wall, traverse some rubble and climb some stairs, all in under an hour.

The major aim was to encourage the development of robots that could perform search-and-rescue missions in locations too dangerous for humans to enter.

It was told that a team from the Korean university KAIST won the challenge by completing all the tasks within 45 minutes.

As per experts in robotics there are two types of control first is the ‘low-level’ control needed to coordinate the actions of motors. Another is ‘high-level’ control needed to carry out specific goals using the whole system.

The ideal outcome of the DARPA challenge would have been a robot that could complete the challenge autonomously, without any human control. All of the high-level controls were basically performed by human operators via remote control.

The reason high-level autonomy was not more prominent in the competition was the incredible difficulty of creating and operating the hardware needed to perform the tasks, said experts.

Most teams in the competition chose robots with a human-like body shape although the winner extended human capabilities with wheeled knees and rotating waist.

Humanoid robots may have more than 30 joints that can be moved simultaneously, a complexity that is very hard to model computationally.