The last round of a four-year federal contest to build robots that help medics sort the wounded after a disaster gets underway Thursday at Disaster City, the TEEX training ground near College Station.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency lists Nov. 5-13 for the systems competition of its Triage Challenge finals, with an awards ceremony on Nov. 13. DARPA describes the site as a purpose-built testbed and says teams will work in darkness, smoke and fire, over uneven ground and through buildings and rubble.
What the teams have to do
Triage is the rapid sorting of injured people so the most urgent get care first. In the finals, uncrewed aircraft and ground vehicles must find casualties, spot life-threatening injuries, judge how alert each person is, read heart and breathing rates from a distance and pass what they learn to human medics.
The course has two lanes. The first is a series of scored "gates" that test each skill on its own, from locating casualties within a 15-minute scenario to a five-minute initial triage check.
Teams that clear the gates at full autonomy move to a second lane where machines and medics work together, scored on how many severely injured casualties are treated in time and how accurately people are flagged for evacuation.
DARPA's finals page lists a $1.5 million grand prize for the autonomous systems category, with a separate $1 million top award in a data competition that predicts which patients will need life-saving procedures. The agency says award eligibility depends on whether a team is self-funded or backed by DARPA.
