Brenda Marie Rivers
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has chosen nine multidisciplinary teams to develop approaches to explore underground environments as part of DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge.
Participants will aim to produce technology platforms in the areas of autonomy, perception, networking and mobility for potential use by first responders and warfighters, DARPA said Wednesday.
SubT is composed of a $2M “systems†competition that will focus on the development and demonstration of physical technologies in real-time settings and a $750K “virtual†competition that will seek physics-based environments and simulation models.
Each team must provide an entry for the tunnel systems, urban underground and natural cave networks sub-domains before the final round, which will combine the three subterranean environments.
Michigan Technological University and Scientific Systems Company will compete under the virtual track.
The systems track teams are:
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
- iRobot, doing business as Endeavor Robotics
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
- University of Colorado
- University of Nevada
- University of Pennsylvania
Self-funded parties are also invited to compete for both tracks in each of the contest’s sub-groups.
