Summary of Team IHMC's virtual robotics challenge entry

Abstract

This paper presents a high level overview of the work done by Team IHMC (Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition) to win the DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC), held June 18-20 2013. The VRC consisted of a series of three tasks (driving a vehicle, walking over varied terrain, and manipulating a fire hose), to be completed in simulation using a model of the humanoid robot Atlas. Team IHMC was able to complete all of these challenges multiple times during the competition. The paper presents our approach, as well as a bird's-eye view of the major software components and their integration.