DARPA's Latest Challenge Focuses on Robots Helping Fight Disasters

As opposed to causing them, like science fiction warns us about

The DARPA Robotics Challenge kicks into high gear today as the organization announces the top teams that will be competing to create robots that can prevent the compounding of human peril in manmade and natural disasters.

Spurred by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in which the "Fukushima 50" ventured into a nightmare scenario to prevent a nuclear meltdown, DARPA is seeking robotic substitutes so that one individual's life is not weighed against dozens or more of others'.