Event Overview:
DARPA’s Subterranean (SubT) Challenge seeks to better equip warfighters and first responders to explore uncharted underground environments that are too dangerous, dark, or deep to risk human lives. Three Circuit Events have led to this Final Event at the Louisville Mega Cavern September 21-24, 2021. Participating teams will deploy autonomous systems to map, navigate, and search underground tunnel, urban, and cave spaces. Teams earn points by correctly identifying artifacts placed within those environments.
Eight teams will participate in the Systems Competition with real robots, and 10 Teams in the Virtual Competition, deploying autonomous systems to map, navigate, and search underground spaces. Teams earn points by correctly identifying artifacts placed within those environments.
- Systems teams’ physical robots will need to quickly navigate unfamiliar underground environments in search of common items including backpacks, cell phones, trapped survivors, and even invisible gas.
- Virtual Competition teams submitted autonomy software solutions for exploring simulated underground worlds in search of similar items and their runs will be broadcast in tandem with the Systems Competition.
$5 million in prizes is at stake in the final competition, including a $2 million 1st place prize in the Systems Competition and a $750,000 1st place prize in the Virtual Competition.
SubTv
Watch highlights of the competition Sept. 21-24
Event Blog
| September 19 After three years of preparation, including three Circuit competitions, eight Systems teams have arrived on site here in Louisville, Kentucky Mega Caverns from around the world for the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge Final Event. The competitors are moving into team garages, putting finishing touches on robots, and getting a first look at the staging area where their robots will soon disappear on a subterranean search that tests technical innovations and could lead to a $2-million prize. Make sure to watch SubTv starting September 21 for our Finals kickoff show, where you can get up to speed on this Challenge’s history and what’s in store later this week (https://www.subtchallenge.com/SubTv.html). |
| September 20 Each SubT Challenge Final Event Systems team has now completed its trek to the course staging area and taken a peek into the entrance. They've received safety prep talks, instructed onsite handlers about any of their robot's special handling requirements, and checked equipment. The preliminary rounds start bright (well, as bright as it can get deep in a cavern) and early Tuesday morning. We've also been watching finishing touches being put on the SubTv broadcast production preparations. You can start watching Tuesday afternoon, with an introduction to the SubT Challenge Final event airing from 2:00-3:00PM EDT. SubTv will also broadcast a produced overview of each prior day’s action beginning on Wednesday. |
| September 21 Eight teams brought their robots, of all shapes and sizes, to the starting gate of the DARPA SubT Challenge Final Event course today. This time the robots stepped, rolled, or flew through the entrance into the unknown. It provided teams with a first electronic glimpse of DARPA’s maze of tunnels, urban underground, and natural cave structures. Each run lasted a harrowing half-hour, as teams watched the scoreboard and cheered when it recorded items found on this super high-tech scavenger hunt. Today’s runs provided a warm up, but scores will also help determine the lineup for Thursday’s prize round. It will all happen again tomorrow, but with a completely re-configured course. Watch SubTv on Wednesday for today’s action and results. |
| September 22 Yesterday’s Preliminary Round in the SubT Challenge Finals involved lots of excitement, a few surprises on the scoreboard, and even crashes. You’ll want to watch the recap for details, but Team CERBERUS ended the first day of the Preliminary Round on top, with Team CSIRO Data61 holding second, and Team Explorer rounding out the top three in the Systems Competition. In the Virtual Competition Dynamo is taking an early lead after the first three worlds, followed by CTU-CRAS-NORLAB in second and Coordinated Robotics in third. See the full leaderboards below. After lots of overnight adjustments in which the Systems Teams built upon lessons learned from initial course explorations, it was all repeated today. Tune in to Thursday’s SubTv broadcast to see the action. Leaderboards   |
| September 23 What a great day! It was wonderful to see teams competing, cheering for each other, and even cooperating a bit in the garages during the final prize round of the SubT Challenge. The 30-minute preliminary runs came to an exciting conclusion yesterday, including some come-from-behind scoring, that solidified today’s schedule. Leaderboards for the initial rounds in both the Virtual and Systems Competitions are below. Since the time for artifact hunting in the final Systems course increased to an hour, today’s action began early and ended late. Now everyone is looking forward to Friday’s live webcast on SubTv 9:30AM-12:45PM EDT. There will be a watch party here at the Mega Cavern where teams, and the rest of us, will find out who won the $5 million in prizes! Leaderboards   |
| September 24 What an exciting conclusion to the SubT Challenge Final Event! We were able to see Prize Round highlights during a SubTv watch party today before it was announced that CERBERUS won the Systems Competition and Dynamo was victorious in the Virtual Competition, taking home $2 million and $750,000 respectively. Second place in Systems went to CSIRO Data61, which did the last run of yesterday. Though CSIRO Data61 didn't know it at the time, they were up against the already strong score of 23 points racked up by CERBERUS just a few hours earlier. However, as the time clock ticked down, the pace of CSIRO Data61's artifact finds picked up and they also scored 23 points just before time expired! The tie breaker was determined by which team got their last score first during the hour-long run, and that was CERBERUS. MARBLE rounded out the top three with a score of 18 for a $500,000 prize. We also got to see the virtual teams take on the final course. Dynamo, a self-funded team of one, came out on top with a score of 223 in the Virtual Competition with both CTU-CRAS-NORLAB (215) and Coordinated Robotics (212) close behind. The top three Virtual teams were awarded $750K, $500K, and $250K respectively. Humans on the teams also got a chance to go into the course and explore the areas only their robots had seen until today. The final leaderboards are below. Leaderboards   |