Valkyrie is a humanoid robot. It is the discovery of the Johnson Space Center's and is submitted to the DARPA Robotics Challenge. The challenge is a long-term competition that will give $2 million as a reward to the team that will best develop a robot. The robot that will have the best ability to function as a rescue robot in a disaster zone will be considered as the winner.

The competition is scheduled to take place on December 20-21 at the Homestead Miami Speedway in Florida.

The robot is of 6'2" in height and weighs about 276 lbs. It is fitted with cameras in its head, abdomen, and knees, and sonar in its middle. It is operated by battery that is fitted in its backpack. Mr. Radford says, "We really wanted to design an appearance for this robot that when you saw it, you're going to be like, wow, that's - that's awesome".

In June, 26 robotics teams had participated in the first round of the competition, named the Virtual Robotics Challenge. For the second round, 17 teams will compete in the real world competition.

Six of these teams, including NASA's Johnson Space Center, are competing in Track A of the trials. This means that they will be using robots of their own design. Valkyrie will be pitted against the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab's RoboSimian Robot, Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Rescue Robot, Virginia Tech's Thor Robot, and others.