Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, September 24, 2021 – CERBERUS won the Systems Competition and Dynamo topped the leaderboard in the Virtual Competition as roboticists and engineers from eleven countries participated in the Final Event of the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge this week at the Louisville, Kentucky Mega Cavern. With $5 million in total prize money at stake, the Systems and Virtual winners won $2 million and $750,000, respectively.
The Systems Competition involved physical robots and the Virtual Competition took place in simulated underground worlds. Four of the teams competed in both competitions. Teams in the Systems Competition developed a wide variety of robotic systems to advance and evaluate novel mapping and navigation solutions for application in realistic field environments, such as human-made tunnels, urban underground settings, and caves. Teams in the Virtual Competition developed software and algorithms using virtual models of systems, environments, and terrain to compete in simulation-based events, and explore simulated environments.
About Team CERBERUS
Team CERBERUS is an international consortium that includes the University of Nevada Reno (UNR), ETH Zurich, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the University of California Berkeley, the University of Oxford, Flyability, and the Sierra Nevada Corporation. The Team Lead is Professor Dr. Kostas Alexis of NTNU’s Department of Engineering Cybernetics, who acquired the grant that funded this effort when he was a faculty member at the University of Nevada, Reno, and has maintained this role since. Team leadership also includes Professor Dr. Marco Hutter (Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich), Professor Dr. Roland Siegwart (Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich), Professor Dr. Mark Mueller (UC Berkeley), Professor Maurice Fallon (Oxford), Adrien Briod (Flyability), Professor Dr. Eelke Folmer (UNR), and Sierra Nevada Corporation’s company leaders. CERBERUS stands for “CollaborativE walking & flying RoBots for autonomous ExploRation in Underground