Stage Two of DARPA Subterranean Challenge In the Books

Stage Two of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, the Urban Circuit, took place this week at an unfinished nuclear power plant in Elma, Washington. 

Once again, our role was to create and manage the simulation environment for the Virtual Competition.

With 150 points, Team BARCS (for Bayesian Adaptive Robot Control System) took home first place. Team BARCS is made up of individuals from Michigan Technological University and Michigan Tech Research Institute.

Congratulations are also in order to Team Coordinated Robotics and Team Robotika, both of whom participated in both the Systems competition and the Virtual competition. Robotika was specifically cited for using their experience in Virtual to improve their performance in Systems.

Here are a few videos from the winner, Team BARCS. The videos shows the team navigating through a subway tunnel. The challenges include navigating down ramps, and avoiding the subway rails. We’ll update this blog with more concise videos in due course.

Congratulations are also in order for Team CoSTAR, who took home first place in the Systems challenge.

Left systems, right virtual SubT challenge winners!

Left systems, right virtual SubT challenge winners!

Next up is the Cave Circuit, set for August 2020. DARPA will announce the location about three months prior to the start of the event.

More details are available at the official DARPA SubT Challenge website.