We qualified! – DARPA SubT Challenge – CSIRO December 2018 Update

January 25th, 2019

We qualified! – DARPA SubT Challenge – CSIRO December Update

December was a big month for the CSIRO SubT Challenge Team. A number of key sub-systems were required to come together in preparation for the STIX (SubT Integration Exercise) qualification submission. To qualify we were required to demonstrate a minimum level of autonomous platform mobility, safety, and artefact detection capabilities, submitting video demonstrations of each element by December 21st.

Below you can view a snapshot of some of what we submitted to the DARPA SubT Challenge team as part of our qualification submission.

 

This video shows a tracked platform (one of many modalities to be used in the challenge) with our custom perception payload autonomously navigating across rough ground and through a subterranean environment, whilst detecting and classifying objects. Although not a complete representation of our final solution, this video depicts some of the perception and software development work done by the team over the last 3-months.

Our complete submission also included a demonstration of our Ghost Vison60 quadruped and Emesent’s UAV completing mobility and safety requirements. This submission culminated in our successful qualification for the DARPA STIX event, with the news coming in time to kick-off 2019 with a bang. Our successful qualification means we will be travelling to Idaho Springs, Colorado in April to test our robots in a representative tunnel environment.

The team are all very excited to continue improving on our solution and for the opportunity to travel and test our platforms. The coming months will also see more exciting developments as our hexapod hardware comes online!

Learn more about our participation in the DARPA SubT Challenge here.

For more information, contact us.

This research was developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The views, opinions and/or findings expressed are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.