Humanoid robots DARPA hopes will save human lives

Roberto Pfeil/AP

The Pentagon today announced a robot competition, putting out a call for the type of full-service bot that could go into a dangerous emergency situation, perform multiple tasks and complete a mission. "The primary goal of the DARPA Robotics Challenge program is to develop ground robotic capabilities to execute complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments," explains the full program description . DARPA will award a $2 million prize to the team that pushes robotics to this next level, where these machines can do more than one repeated task -- something robotics has yet to produce -- which would come in handy in Fukushima type emergency situations.

More than just a simple machine programmed to do one thing, these robots have to think and work more like humans, who are built and programmed to do lots of things all in one go. We can therefore expect humanoid robots to come out of this competition that look something like these already humanesque creations.

Read more about these human-like robots in action today at the Atlantic Wire.