The Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) platform DARPA currently provides for the DARPA Robotics Challenge has a battery life of just 10 to 20 minutes.
For Track 1, teams will develop technologies to be tested with the GFE platform during the second live Robotics Challenge competition to be held December 2014.
The explicit goal of the M3 Actuation program is to improve power longevity by 20-fold, affording the GFE in the range of 3 to 6 or 7 hours to complete the multi-tasked Robotics Challenge.