A group of South Koreans have outperformed other contestants in the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge Finals to take home the $2-million first place prize money.

Team Kaist from Dajeon bagged the first place with their DRC-Hubo robot, which was one of the entries in the contest held at Pomona, California's Fairplex.

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For the last three years, the winning South Korean team have researched and developed a robot that can respond to disaster conditions, which are dangerous to people. The DRC-Hubo robot was successful in completing the tasks, which included an obstacle course in line with disaster response, within 45 minutes.

The contest, sponsored by the U.S. DARPA, started in 2011 right after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima-Daiichi in Japan. At the time, workers endured too much radiation as they attempted to vent hydrogen from overloaded reactors. This inspired DARPA to create a competition to inspire the development of a robot that is capable of doing such vital, emergency tasks.

Twenty-three international teams competed in the Robotics Challenge with 12 contestants coming from the United States alone. Other countries that participated are Japan, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, and South Korea. The competition involved having the robots perform eight tasks, which mimicked real scenarios that they would possibly meet in emergency situations. The robots were timed while doing these tasks. Accoridng toPHYS.ORG, the robots had to complete the obstacle course that involved driving, going through rubble, and climbing stairs, among others.

Other teams who made it were Team IHMC Robotics from Pensacola, Florida, who ranked second and went home with $1 million for their robot called Running Man. Robot CHIMP of Tartan Rescue from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, designed by Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center, won $500,000 at third place.

The competition was streamed live for viewers worldwide while sites like YouTube featured video clips of the robots performing the tasks. Their performances were even tweeted out.

According to Gill Pratt of DARPA as reported via abcNEWS, these big robots are made of metal and at first glance, those who saw them were afraid, but as they performed their tasks, you could hear people groan with sympathy each time they fell. The crowd also cheered when they completed a task.

TagsSouth Koreans won $2M, South Korea Team won, South Korea robot, South Korea robot won, south korea win robot challenge, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge, DRC-Hubo robot, Robotics Challenge 2015