The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced its latest challenge, called the Subterranean or “SubT” Challenge. The global competition asks entrants to develop systems that can help humans navigate, map and search in underground locations that are normally too perilous to visit.

“One of the main limitations facing war fighters and emergency responders in subterranean environments is a lack of situational awareness; we often don’t know what lies beneath us,” Timothy Chung, program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO), said in a statement. “The DARPA Subterranean Challenge aims to provide previously unimaginable situational awareness capabilities for operations underground.”

Groups all around the world will compete to solve problems that help people navigate in unknown, treacherous subterranean conditions, where time is of the essence, according to the statement.  Teams can compete in one of two tracks: a Systems track, to develop hardware-based solutions for a physical course, or a Virtual track, to develop software to test on a simulated course, DARPA said.

Credit: DARPA

The final competition, which will take place in 2021, will include three challenges that involve navigating in one of three environments: a network of human-made tunnels, a subterranean municipal-transit system and a network of underground natural caves. The final event will challenge teams to navigate networks that include elements of all three environments. The grand-prize winners will take home $2 million. The deadline to apply is Jan. 18, 2018.

Source (Tia Ghose, “Dig Deep: DARPA Contest Aims to Take People Underground”, LiveScience, 27.12.2017)