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Category: Announcement DoD Communities of Interest: Autonomy Subject: DARPA Announces Subterranean (SubT) Challenge 2021 Due Date: Sept 21- 23, 2021 Government Organization: DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY (DARPA) Description: DARPA Announces Subterranean (SubT) Challenge Final Event Site and Date Teams will compete in Louisville, Kentucky for a chance to win up to $2 million 1/7/2021 Subterranean (SubT) Challenge After three years of development, DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge teams will get the chance to compete in the Final Event being held at the Louisville Mega Cavern in Louisville, Kentucky on September 21-23, 2021. The DARPA SubT Challenge aims to develop innovative technologies that can rapidly map, navigate, and search complex underground environments such as human-made tunnel systems, urban undergrounds, and natural cave networks. Teams compete by demonstrating how their autonomy, networking, perception, and mobility capabilities perform on either physical courses in the Systems Competition or simulated environments in the Virtual Competition. The best performing team in the Systems Competition will be awarded a $2 million prize while the best performing team in the Virtual Competition will be awarded a $750,000 prize. Over the last two years, teams faced a series of preliminary circuit events – the Tunnel Circuit, Urban Circuit, and Cave Circuit – to demonstrate how their solutions address the unique challenges of each subdomain. Teams will now tackle competition courses that include challenge elements from all three subdomains at the same time. “Whether it’s the systems courses that we are building inside the Mega Cavern, or the wildly varying virtual environments we’re designing in the SubT Virtual Testbed, I’m excited to see how all of the SubT Challenge competitors build on the knowledge they gained during the Circuit Events to be successful in the Final Event.” said Dr. Timothy Chung, program manager for the Subterranean Challenge in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. While many competitors are already preparing for the Final Event, new teams still have an opportunity to qualify for the Systems and Virtual Competitions. In order to participate, teams must deploy autonomous robotic systems – either real or virtual – into the competition courses to map, navigate, and search for artifacts of interest. The locations of each artifact must be reported with an accuracy of at least five meters to score a point. The competition courses are intentionally designed to emulate the dangers of rescue efforts in collapsed mines, post-earthquake search, and rescue in urban underground settings, and cave rescue operations for injured or lost spelunkers. BE PART OF THE INNOVATION DARPA encourages participation from multidisciplinary teams from around the world to address the autonomy, perception, networking, and mobility technologies necessary to map subsurface networks in unpredictable conditions. To attract a broader range of participants, the SubT Challenge includes both a physical Systems competition, as well as a software-only Virtual competition. SYSTEMS COMPETITION Teams will develop and demonstrate physical systems to compete in live competitions on physical, representative subterranean courses, and focus on advancing and evaluating novel physical solutions in realistic field environments. VIRTUAL COMPETITION Teams will develop software and algorithms using virtual models of systems, environments, and terrain to compete in simulation-based events, and explore larger-scale runs in simulated environments that explore significantly expanded scenario sizes and durations. Virtual Competition teams will compete remotely via online submissions for each Circuit Event. The final event for Virtual competitors will be co-located and concurrent with the Systems Final Event. For additional information on the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, including how to compete in this September’s event, please visit www.subtchallenge.com Media with inquiries should contact DARPA Public Affairs at outreach@darpa.mil Associated images posted on www.darpa.mil and video posted at www.youtube.com/darpatv may be reused according to the terms of the DARPA User Agreement, available here: http://go.usa.gov/cuTXR. Tweet @darpa PRIVACY ADVISORY This Challenge is conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an Agency of the United States Department of Defense (DoD). DARPA considers all individuals or organizations that register and participate in this Challenge as acting solely in their entrepreneurial capacity. By registering and participating, they are deemed as accepting the rules and regulations associated with federal prize competitions (10 U.S.C. 2374a and 15 U.S.C. 3719) and the Challenge terms and conditions. Links: UNEARTHING THE SUBTERRANEAN ENVIRONMENT SUBTERRANEAN CHALLENGE https://www.subtchallenge.com/ DARPA Subterranean Challenge Team Registration https://www.subtchallenge.com/register.aspx DARPAtv YouTube video: https://youtu.be/HuJGIAjuxLE Website: https://www.subtchallenge.com/ |
DARPA Announces Subterranean (SubT) Challenge 2021
Due Date: September 21- 23, 2021 Description: The DARPA SubT Challenge aims to develop innovative technologies that can rapidly map, navigate, and search complex underground environments such as human-made tunnel systems, urban undergrounds, and natural cave networks. Teams compete by demonstrating how their autonomy, networking, perception, and mobility capabilities perform on either physical courses in the Systems Competition or simulated environments in the Virtual Competition. The best performing team in the Systems Competition will be awarded a $2 million prize while the best performing team in the Virtual Competition will be awarded a $750,000 prize.