The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) hosted the Subterranean Challenge (SubT) from September 2018 to September 2021 and featured teams of industry and academic organizations from several countries competing to autonomously explore various types of subterranean environments and report back the locations of objects of interest to rescuers (fire extinguishers, personal protective equipment, trapped people, etc.) using a heterogeneous fleet of robots. I was a senior member of Team MARBLE, which placed 3rd in the SubT Final Circuit Event. More info on SubT
This work was sponsored by the DARPA Tactical Technology Office (TTO).
Perception for Terrain-Aware Navigation
For the SubT Cave and Final Circuit events (Feb 2020 - Sept 2021), I worked on a traversability and stair mapping pipeline for terrain-aware planning. This method utilized geometric classification methods on dense pointclouds for integration into an occupancy map. Semantic occupancy maps were shared amongst the robot fleet for collaborative and safe exploration. This work will be published in Journal of Field Robotics (2022).
Precision Object Localization
For the SubT STIX, Tunnel, and Urban Circuit events (Sept 2018 - Feb 2020), I worked on a robotic object localization pipeline. This pipeline was tasked with localizing objects to within 5 meters with respect to an absolute reference frame from up to 1 kilometer away. It consists of 3 primary components: absolute reference frame alignment, vehicle odometry, and object detection/localization. This work is published in Journal of Field Robotics (2021).