South Korean robot ‘terminates’ Google-backed rivals
POMONA, Calif. — A humanoid robot built by engineers in South Korea beat out robots backed by Google (GOOGL), Amazon.com (AMZN) and top U.S. technology schools to win the $2 million grand prize in the Darpa Robotics Challenge (DRC) on Saturday. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) sponsored the Darpa Robotics Challenge to spur the development of robots that can save lives after natural and man-made disasters. Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown in 2011 was a call to action for the competition. Robot DRC-Hubo from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and its spinoff company Rainbow completed all eight assignments in a simulated disaster-response mission in less than 45 minutes. A robot named Running Man from the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC) came in second to claim the competition’s $1 million prize. Running Man, built by Google-owned Boston Dynamics, finished the eight…