The DARPA Subterranean Challenge was designed for competitors to develop and deploy teams of autonomous robots to explore difficult unknown underground environments. Categorised in to human-made tunnels, underground urban infrastructure and natural caves, each of these subdomains had many challenging elements for robot perception, locomotion, navigation and autonomy. These included degraded wireless communication, poor visibility due to smoke, narrow passages and doorways, clutter, uneven ground, slippery and loose terrain, stairs, ledges, overhangs, dripping water, and dynamic obstacles that move to block paths among others. In the Final Event of this challenge held in September 2021, the course consisted of all three subdomains. The task was for the robot team to perform a scavenger hunt for a number of pre-defined artefacts within a limited time frame. Only one human supervisor was allowed to communicate with the robots once they were in the course. Points were scored when accurate detections and their locations were communicated back to the scoring server. A total of 8 teams competed in the finals held at the Mega Cavern in Louisville, KY, USA. This article describes the systems deployed by Team CSIRO Data61 that tied for the top score and won second place at the event.

翻译：DARPA地下挑战赛旨在推动参赛队伍开发并部署自主机器人团队，以探索未知的复杂地下环境。赛事分为人造隧道、地下城市基础设施及天然洞穴三类子区域，每个子区域均对机器人感知、运动控制、导航及自主性提出了诸多挑战性要素，包括：通信降级、烟雾导致的低能见度、狭窄通道与门道、杂乱环境、不平整地面、湿滑松软地形、楼梯、边缘悬空结构、滴水及动态移动障碍物（如阻塞路径的移动物体）等。在2021年9月举行的最终赛事中，赛道涵盖了全部三类子区域。任务要求机器人团队在限定时间内完成"寻宝式"搜索，识别多种预设目标物。机器人进入赛道后，仅允许一名人类监督员与其通信。当机器人向评分服务器准确回传检测结果及其位置信息时，即可获得积分。最终决赛在美国肯塔基州路易斯维尔市的Mega Cavern地下空间举行，共有8支团队参赛。本文详细阐述了CSIRO Data61团队在该赛事中部署的系统——该团队最终以并列第一的成绩荣获亚军。