Over the course of four days, 11 teams participated in simulated search and rescue missions , with early lessons learned that could have big implications for the military, first responders, and even space exploration. Future events in the Subterranean Challenge will include an Urban Circuit, where robots will explore complex underground facilities, and a Cave Circuit, where the robots will operate in natural caves.
That’s what the teams and their robots are preparing for, and I can’t imagine they’d want it any other way. The DARPA Subterranean Challenge aims to explore new approaches to rapidly map, navigate, and search underground environments. The DARPA Grand Challenge of 2004…

Dini Malhi.

But that’s the point, because the SubT challenge is DARPA-hard. How autonomous robots in the underground scavenger hunt pick up points for their teams Photo: iStock. The challenge, funded by the US's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, aims to explore new approaches to rapidly map, navigate, and search underground environments. Explorer is one of seven teams that will receive up to $4.5 million from DARPA to develop their hardware and software for the competition. Currently underway is the DARPA Subterranean Challenge (SubT) systems competition for urban circuits streamed live on YouTube now through Wednesday, February 26th. The DARPA Subterranean Urban challenge included two different courses that were designed to represent complex urban underground infrastructures. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice. Program results included: ... an application which ultimately won the most recent DARPA Subterranean Challenge Competition, the Urban Circuit. The tunnel circuit, the first of three environments planned over the next two years, was part of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. The DARPA Subterranean Challenge aims to explore new approaches to rapidly map, navigate, and search underground environments. The primary goal of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge is to discover innovative solutions that can rapidly and remotely map, navigate, and search complex environments, including humanmade tunnel systems, urban and municipal underground infrastructure, and natural cave networks. It calls for teams to address the mobility, perception, autonomy and networking technologies necessary to explore, map, and search subsurface networks in unpredictable conditions. The DARPA Subterranean or “SubT” Challenge aims to explore new approaches to rapidly map, navigate, and search underground environments. The competition spans a period of three years. The virtual models are envisioned to feature vehicles with varying traits and methods in locomotion to assist robots in the challenge.
Subterranean (SubT) Challenge Systems teams are trekking toward the Urban Circuit after competing in the Tunnel Circuit, the first scored event of DARPA’s high-tech underground contest. In alignment with the goals and details of the DARPA SubT challenge, CERBERUS aims to achieve superior performance results in the competition events.