150606-N-PO203-239 POMONA, California (June 6, 2015) Dr. Tom McKenna, left, a program officer at the Office of Naval Research (ONR), talks with Dr. Brian Latimer, associate professor at Virginia Tech, about ESCHER, short for Electric Series Compliant Humanoid for Emergency Response, during the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Robotics Challenge (DRC) in Pomona, Calif. Designed, fabricated and assembled by engineering students at Virginia Tech, ESCHER leverages software and design learnings from another project underway at the lab, the ONR-sponsored Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot, or SAFFIR. (U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams/Released)