Heterogeneous Robot Teams With Unified Perception and Autonomy: How Team CSIRO Data61 Tied for the Top Score at the DARPA Subterranean Challenge

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean Challenge (SubT Challenge) was designed for competitors to develop and deploy teams of autonomous robots to explore difficult unknown underground environments. Categorized 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 predefined artifacts 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 eight 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.