The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has launched registration for a new $1 million-prize competition aimed at creating robots to assist astronauts on their expedition to Mars, according to the agency's statement.
“The Space Robotics Challenge is a $1 million prize competition designed to push the boundaries of robotic dexterity. Teams must program a virtual robot, modeled after NASA's Robonaut 5 (R5) robot, to complete a series of tasks in a simulation that includes periods of latency to represent communications delay from Earth to Mars,” the statement published Tuesday reads.
Each team's robot is expected to resolve the aftermath of a dust storm on Mars, aligning a communications dish, repairing a solar array, and fixing a habitat leak, NASA added.
Winners of the competition will be announced in June 2017, according to the space agency.