The total potential payout for the winner will be $2 million — pocket change for the biggest defense company on the globe. And yet, Lockheed Martin Corp. is leading one of 25 teams in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's annual Robotics Challenge. And it's the only large contractor to do so.
The teams will vie for a chance to win one of three cash prizes totaling $3.5 million at the DARPA Robitics Challenge finals — the second crop of 14 teams, many of which are international, was just added last week. The finals, which will take place June 5-6 at Fairplex in Pomona, California, will require robots to attempt a circuit of consecutive physical tasks, with degraded communications between the robots and their operators.