DARPA Subterranean Challenge: Multi-robotic exploration of underground

Tomas Svoboda (CMP Prague, Czech Republic)

Abstract:

The Subterranean Challenge (SubT) is a contest organised by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In the challenge, teams of mobile robots have to detect, localise and report positions of specific objects spanning from mobile phones to survivors, in an underground environment. The talk will discuss multi-robot heterogeneous exploration system of our CTU-CRAS team, which scored the third rank in the Tunnel Circuit round, surpassing the performance of all other non-DARPA-funded competitors and also most of the DARPA-funded teams. Tunnel Circuit took place in two old coal mines near Pittsburgh. The whole SubT competition has just started, several rounds are still ahead us, culminating in fall 2021 in an all-terrain challenge. The talk will thus also detail a few interesting research challenges yet unsolved.