DARPA funds Carnegie Mellon team for Subterranean Challenge

A team from Carnegie Mellon University will compete in the systems track of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Subterranean Challenge, a multi-year robotics competition with a $2 million prize in which robots will autonomously search tunnels, caves and underground structures.

The Carnegie Mellon team, including a key member from Oregon State University, is one of seven teams that will receive up to $4.5 million from DARPA to develop the robotic platforms, sensors and software necessary to accomplish these unprecedented underground missions.

The robots will be tasked with rapidly mapping, exploring and exploiting complex underground environments, ranging from spaces so small that humans can only crawl through them to areas big enough to accommodate an all-terrain vehicle. The challenge is designed to provide warfighters and first responders with the capabilities they need to accomplish a variety of missions in caves, tunnels or urban underground facilities, such as subway stations.

"Successfully completing these missions will require multiple robots, including both drones and ground vehicles," said Sebastian Scherer, who will lead the team with Matt Travers, both of CMU's Robotics Institute. "Our team has a wealth of experience in operating robots in mines, enclosed spaces and the wild, and in coordinating the activity of multiple robots."

Travers, a systems scientist in the Robotics Institute, said the CMU team will leverage its expertise in modularity—developing robots that can be rapidly built and reconfigured to adapt to widely varied environments.

"We can't be sure that a four-wheeled platform will always be the right robot for every job, so we need to be ready to add wheels or substitute tracks or even legs," Travers said. "In some environments, small robots might be our only option, while others may demand larger, more robust robots."

Scherer, a senior systems scientist, said communications will be a major challenge underground, and that getting robots to work cooperatively to ensure a space is comprehensively mapped is critical. Geoff Hollinger, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State and a CMU robotics alumnus, has been recruited to the team for his expertise in multirobot systems.

CMU's team also includes Howie Choset, the Kavči?-Moura Professor of Computer Science; Sanjiv Singh, research professor of robotics; Anthony Rowe, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering; and a number of undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral researchers.

"Creating robots that can work in subterranean environments will expand the potential application of robots both underground, such as in mines, and inside structures, such as buildings, ships and aircraft," Scherer said. "The constraints robots encounter in these confined spaces are enormous, so we have our work cut out for us."

Provided by Carnegie Mellon University