As a squat, red-and-black robot nicknamed CHIMP gingerly pushed open a spring-loaded door a gust of wind swooped down onto the track at the Homestead-Miami Speedway and slammed the door shut, eliciting a collective sigh of disappointment from the audience.
The robot, developed by the Tartan Rescue team from the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University, was one of 17 competing in the U.S. military's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Robotics Challenge.
The agency, which funded basic science research for now commonplace technologies like the Internet and global positioning satellites, hopes the competition will spur the development of robots that can work in places too dangerous for humans.
The challenge was launched in 2011 in response to the meltdown of Japan's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant after it was hit by a massive earthquake-spawned tsunami. Nearly 160,000 people were forced to flee the area.
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