A Major American City, 30 Years in the Future

Under the yellow sky, full of sulfurous smoke and stinging particles, the robot runs with the easy, loping pace of a wolf. From its baseball cap to its sneakers, it is dressed to blend with the crowd, through which it deftly threads, dodging and weaving, rarely altering its speed. To casual observers—or panicked ones—there is little to distinguish the compact, athletic figure from the mass of people on the wreck-strewn highway except this: It runs toward the fires and explosions instead of away.

Soon it is clear of the mass of fleeing humanity and passes only stragglers to assess (for threat or medical need) and entangled vehicles (empty or occupied by the dead or dying). Though its arms possess the strength of the Jaws of Life, and its software—behind its chest plate, where a human heart would beat—contains the diagnostics of a combat surgeon, the robot is driven by a mission awareness that won't allow it to linger long with the wounded. Still, the sound of agony draws it like a magnet; it pauses to administer morphine to a teenager pinioned in an ancient Tesla. As the bot withdraws the hypodermic, a sudden blast blows off its ball cap, and a wall of superheated gas incinerates its clothing. Stripped now to titanium and graphite, it moves on at a calculated walk, its melting sneakers making a sucking sound as it traverses the blistered asphalt.

Other robots, differently configured, are also converging on the city center. They rendezvous, share data, conceive a plan to herd the fires away from priority zones. As they work, they send information—about temperature, levels of radioactivity, the presence of viruses—and they formulate further plans. Had they memories—memories of experience such as we possess—they might recall that they've met before. Their ancestral parts, their prototypes, anyway, have met before, competed, in California in their salad days. DARPA days. Primitive, feeble, barely able to screw in a lightbulb! How they might laugh at that era of templates and point clouds and battery limitations. But the bots are not troubled by such memories. Instead, they merely work, neither knowing nor caring that it might be some weeks, or months, or years, before they can signal the all clear. In the meantime, their work done, they idle in a kind of machine hibernation, conserving power, waiting without fear, without impatience.…

Southern California, June 2015

ere, now, on day one of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, the little humans in the crowd are the opposite of patient. Overstimulated, brainy children—future roboticists, perhaps—they half-pack the stands at the Los Angeles County fairgrounds, chanting “Go, robots, go!” as the first four competitors enter the open-air arena. In just a few short minutes, against a backdrop of rusty corrugated iron and dusty windows reminiscent of a 1950s sci-fi-movie set, the robots will navigate the course like giant praying mantises cast in community theater. Five Jumbotrons will offer fans close-ups and instant replays as the robots wrestle with various Mr. Fix-It tasks, clear debris, or walk on a jumble of concrete blocks. It's a little like the Roman Colosseum, but with bizarre humanoid machines instead of gladiators, masterpieces of engineering that are still battling their own limitations as much as one another.

Twenty-three robotics teams from seven nations are here in Pomona, California, competing for $3.5 million in federally funded prize money dangled by DARPA. (Full name: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.) Despite its buzz-cut reputation, the agency is putting on a pretty good show here at the DRC Finals. There's a festival atmosphere, with a tech expo outside the stadium, under dozens of white tents. And though the purpose of the event is grim enough—to test robotic technology for emergency disaster relief at the Three Mile Islands, Chernobyls, and Fukushimas of the future—the competition format is kind of hilarious.