The Tartan Rescue Team from Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center ranked third among teams competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials this weekend in Homestead, Fla., and was selected by the agency as one of eight teams eligible for DARPA funding to prepare for next December’s Finals.

The team’s four-limbed CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform, or CHIMP, robot scored 18 out of a possible 32 points during the two-day Trials. It demonstrated its ability to perform such tasks as removing debris, cutting a
hole through a wall and closing a series of valves.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is sponsoring the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) to spur development of robotic technologies that could be used to respond to natural or man-made disasters in environments engineered for humans, such as the Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis of 2011.

Sixteen teams competed at the Trials. DARPA on Saturday announced it would enter into funding negotiations with Tartan Rescue and seven other teams, who tallied the highest scores during the Trials. Gill Pratt, DARPA’s program manager for the DRC, said the agency has $8 million budgeted for the teams and intends to spread the money evenly between them.