"We're doing the fundamental research that makes commercial advancements possible," said Matt Travers, a systems scientist in the RI and a co-lead of the team. "The challenges and obstacles faced during this competition will benefit society not just underground but above ground as well."
Team Explorer decisively won Round 1, the Tunnel Circuit, held in August 2019 in the research mine operated by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in South Park Township, outside of Pittsburgh. It placed second in Round 2, the Urban Circuit, held in February 2020 inside an abandoned, never-commissioned nuclear power plant at Satsop Business Park near Olympia, Washington. The Systems Competition for Round 3, the Cave Circuit, was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, the Virtual Competition occurred.
The final round will feature challenges and obstacles from each of the three previous environments: tunnel, urban and cave. The course is kept secret from the teams throughout the competition, and they can only walk the course after the competition. DARPA's teaser video of the final round shows the potential for the course to include a mine, a subway station, stalactites in a cave, ramps, rails and other obstacles. After two preliminary rounds of 30 minutes, teams will have 60 minutes to find as many of the 40 objects as they can in the final round.
"The final round brings it all together," said Steven Willits, the team's lead test engineer. "We will face obstacles we've trained for and ones we haven't, but expecting the unexpected is part of preparation for this event."
The team has tested its robots locally at caves and buildings, including an abandoned hospital in Pittsburgh, the Tour-Ed Mine in Tarentum and Brady's Bend Underground Storage north of the city. It has fixed bugs in its communication, object detection, autonomy, and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) systems. Challenges such as stairs and dust have forced the team to rethink its approach and design new components.
Team Explorer plans to use seven or eight robots in the final competition. It will debut a legged robot to handle stairs and new drones specially designed to fly underground and withstand collisions. The drones' propellers are underneath its body and protected with two guards. Software can sense impact and tell the drone how to respond.
Additionally, the team has improved the robots' object detection systems and increased the level of coordination between the robots. Oregon State University — headed by Geoff Hollinger, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State and a CMU robotics alumnus — has provided critical software for multirobot coordination and object detection.
"It has been a fantastic experience working with this incredible team," said Hollinger. "I'm excited to see how our contributions to the perception and coordination systems will pay off in the final challenge."
While the results of the competition will be known by the end of the weekend, it could take years — even a decade — to see the real impact of the challenge. DARPA organized autonomous vehicle challenges in the mid-2000s and self-driving cars began testing on city streets 10 years later.
"We've made a lot of progress. We've maybe solved 90% of the challenges facing robotics in autonomous, subterranean environments, but I think we'll spend another decade solving the rest," Scherer said.
Team Explorer is one of four teams in the final competition receiving funding from DARPA to develop hardware and software for the competition. Additional support came from several generous sponsors.
"explorer" - Google News
September 13, 2021 at 09:24PM
https://ift.tt/3k9piw5
Team Explorer Prepares for Final Round of DARPA SubT Challenge - Carnegie Mellon University
"explorer" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2zIjLrm
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Team Explorer Prepares for Final Round of DARPA SubT Challenge - Carnegie Mellon University"
Post a Comment