DARPA gives 17 teams a chance to compete to change subterranean warfare

DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge Urban Circuit is looking to change the nature of subterranean warfare, and as of last week, 17 teams have qualified to demonstrate breakthroughs and solutions to existing problems.

Operating underground is, by its nature, highly challenging for humans. Both soldiers and first responders are often ill-equipped to engage in such settings, be they man-made tunnels, under urban sprawls, or investigating natural cave networks. DARPA sought to challenge multidisciplinary teams–schools, organizations, and companies are all participating–to approach this difficult terrain from two angles: Virtual and Systems-based.

Both fields seek breakthrough technologies to enhance autonomy, perception, networking, and underground mobility.

The Systems Competition allows teams to deploy autonomous ground and aerial systems to identify and map as many artifacts as possible across two competition courses, with 20 artifacts in all. Artifacts, in this case, are merely items representing things that could be encountered in urban underground environments. On the other hand, the Qualified Virtual side of the competition involved submissions of esports style ideas to map, navigate, and search through various underground scenarios. They will be given robot models and a variety of sensors to do so.

The competitions will not run concurrently. The 11 teams participating in the Systems competition will run from Feb. 18-27, while the eight teams participating in the Virtual competition (two are competing in both challenges) will run from Jan. 23-30.

Only self-funded teams are eligible for prizes in these circuit events. Of those, Systems teams can achieve $500,000 for first place, $250,000 for second place and $100,000 for third place, whereas Virtual teams can win $250,000, $150,000 and $100,000, respectively. All qualified teams will be eligible for prizes in the competition’s culminating event in August 2021.