CSIRO Data61 Team finished 2nd in the DARPA SubT Challenge!

The CSIRO Data61 Team, formed by CSIRO, Emesent and Georgia Tech have finished second in the DARPA SubT Challenge! This is the world’s most important and recognised robotics competition! The team was very close to winning, but a tie breaker at 23 points with Team CERBERUS (NTNU, ETH Zurich, Oxford, UC Berkeley, University of Nevada, Reno, Anybotics, Flyability) gave the Australian led Team an outstanding runner-up place.

Experts from around the world have spent the past three years pushing the boundaries of autonomous robotic technology to map, navigate and search environments as part of the Subterranean challenge, run by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). With teams eliminated from the competition each year, only eight remained to contest in the DARPA SubT Challenge final event that happened last week Louisville, KY, USA.

Breakthroughs discovered through the DARPA Challenge have the potential to push real-world applications forward, including improving safety and enhanced efficiency in local mining sectors, and promising significant potential in agriculture and manufacturing.

Despited being based in Australia for the final competition, CSIRO’s Australian team members provided as much support as they could via telepresence. US-based representatives and partners Emesent and Georgia Tech were on the ground for this exciting moment.

The Team also received the Award for Most Accurate Report and received $1m USD for the runner-up position.

CSIRO Media release

Robotics experts led by Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, have beaten teams from NASA JPL/MIT/California Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Mellon University to claim second place in a world leading robotics competition dubbed the ‘Robot Olympics’.