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Red-Hot Robots

A pause flag is raised during the 2013 Sample Return Robot Challenge.
A pause flag is raised after Team Middleman’s robot "RO-BEAR" started smoking during Level 1 at NASA's 2013 Sample Return Robot Challenge.

A pause flag is raised after Team Middleman’s robot “RO-BEAR” started smoking during Level 1 at NASA’s 2013 Sample Return Robot Challenge at Institute Park, Wednesday, June 5, 2013, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Mass. Nine teams are competing for a $1.5 million NASA prize purse. Teams are required to demonstrate autonomous robots that can locate and collect samples from a wide and varied terrain, operating without human control. The objective of this NASA-WPI Centennial Challenge is to encourage innovations in autonomous navigation and robotics technologies. Innovations stemming from the challenge may improve NASA’s capability to explore a variety of destinations in space, as well as enhance the nation’s robotic technology for use in industries and applications on Earth.

Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls