Swiss Roll Machine along the way are tests of the hero's strength, molding his/her character through pain and suffering. Glory, when achieved, is bittersweet, as it comes heavy with loss, usually of loved ones, family or companions. In tragic sagas, the hero pays with his/her life in the end so that others may be free.

"These are all perceptual challenges that we have to teach our robot," he says. Oh and the other researchers have until next year to teach their robots these tasks. During the actual challenge, DARPA folks will be throwing a lot of curves at the competitors, like messing with their communications. You'd expect a lot of radio interference if you were working in a damaged nuclear reactor or in a collapsed building after a terror attack.

Nicholas Radford of the NASA team from the Johnson Space Center says it's just like planning to send a robot into space. "A lot of our research at NASA JSC for the last 10 years has focused primarily on how we deal with systems in remote locations with crappy communication," Radford says. Advantages Of The Human Form The NASA Johnson entry is derived from the . There's one on the International Space Station right now.

It's pretty humanoid looking. Radford says, in this challenge, the human form has lots of pluses because the contest focuses on human-built, industrial environments. But the human form has its limitations. So another entry takes a backward evolutionary step. The "RoboSimian" from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has the advantage of being able to grasp things with all four limbs, like a chimp.