Theodore von Karman Lecture

While robotic arm applications on Earth have existed for decades, it's only in the last few years that manipulation jobs have moved far outside the factory walls. We now look for arms capable of tasks such as ordinance disposal, underwater operations, and disaster response. It is in this last area that JPL will immediately apply all its lessons learned from the Mars surface missions to a terrestrial application, DARPA's Robotic Challenge ( www.theroboticchallenge.org ). This talk will provide an overview of the challenges of the design and use of Curiosity's Robotic Arm and followed by a description of those same challenges faced by JPL's RoboSimian robot, which will compete in the Robotic Challenge. In particular, we'll look at what makes those robotic systems kissing cousins as well as worlds apart.