This week, students and engineers from around the world will descend on Southern California for two days of good old-fashioned robot mayhem.

A total of 25 teams will compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, a competition to design robots that could one day help respond to a natural or man-made disaster. The competition, hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the military's R&D branch, is open to the public and takes place June 5 and 6 in Pomona, California.

The winning team will take home $2 million. The runner-up and third-place teams will receive $1 million and $500,000, respectively