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Open Source Robotics Foundation has picked an IBM company, SoftLayer Technologies, to co-host the first cloud-based robotics challenge for the development of software that allows a simulated robot to perform first responder tasks.
About 100 teams worldwide participated in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-sponsored competition through SoftLayer’s remote access technology, IBM announced Thursday.
The competitors participating in the DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge were asked to develop software that would allow a robot to perform activities in a disaster response situation.
IBM said that Open Source Robotics Foundation selected its subsidiary because it was the only provider that could “shorten the communication loop between machines to 1k/second, thereby offering the power and speed necessary for complex robotics simulation.”
For the competition, each team was given five connected servers from SoftLayer’s API and two high-end NVIDIA dual Intel Sandy Bridge servers.
Winners of the virtual competition will move on to the next round where the software will be applied to physical robots.
The VRC is part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, launched in 2012.
