In The News: Department of Mechanical Engineering

51³Ô¹ÏÍøÍòÄÜ¿Æ´ó was among 23 of the world’s best robotics teams competing in the 2015 U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Challenge Finals, an elite competition of robots and their human supervisors, on June 5-6 at the Fairplex in Pomona, California.


From the very beginning of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals, it was obvious that driving was going to be a problem for the robot contestants. The very first robots to take the field this past Friday at the Fairplex in Pomona, California showed up without their modified Polaris utility vehicles. These machines were hoofing it, using their own legs to gradually make their way down a dirt strip meant to simulate part of a disaster zone too perilous for humans. It turned out to be pretty perilous for robots, too. By not even getting into the cars, these teams were already conceding defeat in the two-day Pentagon-funded competition.





When you ask 51³Ô¹ÏÍøÍòÄÜ¿Æ´ó robotics professor Paul Oh how long his laboratory took to create, he can’t help but laugh.

The little girl squirmed in her mother’s arms inside a lab at the 51³Ô¹ÏÍøÍòÄÜ¿Æ´ó, her American flag-themed dress contrasting with the hammers, rulers and other engineering equipment that surrounded her.