How a One-Man Team from California Won NASA's Space Robotics Challenge

NASA's Space Robotics Challenge (SRC) took place last month, full of virtual Valkyries wandering around a virtual Mars base trying to fix virtual stuff. Anyone was allowed to participate, and since the virtual nature of the competition means there was no need for big expensive robots that mostly didn't fall over, anyone actually could (and did) participate. Of the 93 teams initially signed up to compete, NASA selected 20 finalist teams based on their performance completing some tasks in the Gazebo 3D robot simulator, and each of those finalists had to program a Valkyrie humanoid to complete a repair mission on a simulated Mars base. The winner of the SRC was team Coordinated Robotics, which also was the only team to manage a perfect run with 100 percent task completion, taking home the US $125,000 top prize plus a $50,000 "perfect run" bonus. "Team" may be a little bit of a misnomer, though, since Coordinated Robotics consists entirely of one dude: Kevin Knoedler.