Carrying the Olympic torch has long been known as a tremendous honor. With the PyeongChang Winter Olympics two months away, the torch is making its way around South Korea. Interestingly enough, one of the latest to carry the torch wasn’t human.
Hubo, a robot created by Professor Jun Ho Oh, received the torch from his creator in the city of Daejeon. In order to pass it to the next runner, Hubo was challenged with drilling a hole through a wooden wall made to look like brick. It didn’t seem much of a problem for the KAIST-born humanoid bot.
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The reason for the brick wall demonstration was to demonstrate one of Hubo’s abilities, disaster rescue. It’s designed to be a first-responder bot and the display put on in Daejeon clearly illustrated that.
Hubo won the DARPA Robotics Challenge back in 2015 thanks to its ability to switch back-and-forth between walking and wheeling. By having Hubo carry the torch, Oh hoped to show how far Korea’s robotics industry has come.
You’d better have some deep pockets if you’re thinking of purchasing a robot like Hubo. Oh estimates the cost of the bot as being around $500,000 to $1 million.