DARPA, the American agency commonly known for its hilarious supervillain-esque laser projects and weaponized dolphins, took time out of its wacky military inventions schedule to hold its Robotics Competition in Miami, Florida, where a humanoid robot from Japanese company Schaft, Inc. took top prize.
The bot is considered the greatest humanoid robot ever built, with the prototype taking the top spot in four of eight tasks – terrain, ladder, debris and hose. You might recognize three of those four as obstacles you definitely wouldn’t want a violent military robot to be able to negotiate, so it’s good that the Schaft bot is primarily meant as a rescue robot for working in disaster areas unsafe for human rescue workers to enter.
Visually, it’s easy to see the robot is a product of Japan, as it seems clearly inspired by various mecha anime and, while it’s currently intended for rescue purposes, it looks frighteningly easy to replace the multi-purpose arms with dual chainguns.
Check out a video of Schaft performing the task challenges here:
Source: Kotaku