Could the planet’s next catastrophe be averted by R2-D2? That’s the idea behind the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a robot Olympiad designed to create autonomous machines that can go where no man can or should go—nuclear disaster sites, minefields, Montauk over Labor Day weekend—and fix all the toxic messes we make. The stakes are $3.5 million. Oh, and possibly the future of mankind.
