System for multi-robotic exploration of underground environments CTU-CRAS-NORLAB in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge
This work addresses safety and efficiency in search-and-rescue for underground scenarios, but it is incremental as a field report on a specific contest entry.
The paper tackles the problem of multi-robotic exploration in GPS-denied underground environments for search-and-rescue operations, reporting that their system achieved third rank in DARPA SubT Challenge rounds and outperformed all non-DARPA-funded teams.
We present a field report of CTU-CRAS-NORLAB team from the Subterranean Challenge (SubT) organised by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The contest seeks to advance technologies that would improve the safety and efficiency of search-and-rescue operations in GPS-denied environments. During the contest rounds, teams of mobile robots have to find specific objects while operating in environments with limited radio communication, e.g. mining tunnels, underground stations or natural caverns. We present a heterogeneous exploration robotic system of the CTU-CRAS-NORLAB team, which achieved the third rank at the SubT Tunnel and Urban Circuit rounds and surpassed the performance of all other non-DARPA-funded teams. The field report describes the team's hardware, sensors, algorithms and strategies, and discusses the lessons learned by participating at the DARPA SubT contest.