CERBERUS in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge

Tranzatto, Marco; Miki, Takahiro; Dharmadhikari, Mihir; Bernreiter, Lukas; Kulkarni, Mihir; Mascarich, Frank; Andersson, Olov; Khattak, Shehryar; Hutter, Marco; Siegwart, Roland; Alexis, Kostas

doi:10.1126/scirobotics.abp9742

Cited by 112 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This also plays a role in determining whether communicating has a positive impact on the state of the robot system [105,106], and is also studied as an online decision problem [107], and an optimization problem that considers when/what to communicate [108]. Recent developments in subterranean robots operating under severe communication constraints have also explored the strategy of developing/maintaining communication "backbones" for explorer robots to continue on frontiers [109,110], and of explicitly splitting communication pathways by plan and priority [111].…”

Section: Plan-aware Communicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical Review of Communications in Multi-robot Systems

2022

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Purpose of Review This review summarizes the broad roles that communication formats and technologies have played in enabling multi-robot systems. We approach this field from two perspectives: of robotic applications that need communication capabilities in order to accomplish tasks, and of networking technologies that have enabled newer and more advanced multi-robot systems. Recent Findings Through this review, we identify a dearth of work that holistically tackles the problem of co-design and co-optimization of robots and the networks they employ. We also highlight the role that data-driven and machine learning approaches play in evolving communication pipelines for multi-robot systems. In particular, we refer to recent work that diverges from hand-designed communication patterns, and also discuss the “sim-to-real” gap in this context. Summary We present a critical view of the way robotic algorithms and their networking systems have evolved, and make the case for a more synergistic approach. Finally, we also identify four broad Open Problems for research and development, while offering a data-driven perspective for solving some of them.

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Section: Plan-aware Communicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical Review of Communications in Multi-robot Systems

2022

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“…On the other hand, high-end sensors and robots are utilized in extreme conditions, such as the exploration of the underground environments in the competitions funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), called the “DARPA Subterranean Challenge”. The last winning team [ 25 ] developed a team of robots to explore the three challenges of the competition: the “Tunnel Circuit”, the “Urban Circuit”, and the “Cave Circuit”, using their robot and exploration systems [ 26 , 27 , 28 ].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous Exploration of Unknown Indoor Environments for High-Quality Mapping Using Feature-Based RGB-D SLAM

Eldemiry

Zou

et al. 2022

Sensors

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Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system-based indoor mapping using autonomous mobile robots in unknown environments is crucial for many applications, such as rescue scenarios, utility tunnel monitoring, and indoor 3D modeling. Researchers have proposed various strategies to obtain full coverage while minimizing exploration time; however, mapping quality factors have not been considered. In fact, mapping quality plays a pivotal role in 3D modeling, especially when using low-cost sensors in challenging indoor scenarios. This study proposes a novel exploration algorithm to simultaneously optimize exploration time and mapping quality using a low-cost RGB-D camera. Feature-based RGB-D SLAM is utilized due to its various advantages, such as low computational cost and dense real-time reconstruction ability. Subsequently, our novel exploration strategies consider the mapping quality factors of the RGB-D SLAM system. Exploration time optimization factors are also considered to set a new optimum goal. Furthermore, a Voronoi path planner is adopted for reliable, maximal obstacle clearance and fixed paths. According to the texture level, three exploration strategies are evaluated in three real-world environments. We achieve a significant enhancement in mapping quality and exploration time using our proposed exploration strategies compared to the baseline frontier-based exploration, particularly in a low-texture environment.

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“…For mission autonomy, the robot relied on CompSLAM [30] for localization and mapping, with high-level exploration planning provided by GBPlanner [31]. Further details about the hardware and software architecture are provided in [32].…”

Section: A Experimental Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

LiDAR-guided object search and detection in Subterranean Environments

Patel

Waibel

Khattak

et al. 2022

2022 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR)

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Detecting objects of interest, such as human survivors, safety equipment, and structure access points, is critical to any search-and-rescue operation. Robots deployed for such time-sensitive efforts rely on their onboard sensors to perform their designated tasks. However, as disaster response operations are predominantly conducted under perceptually degraded conditions, commonly utilized sensors such as visual cameras and LiDARs suffer in terms of performance degradation. In response, this work presents a method that utilizes the complementary nature of vision and depth sensors to leverage multi-modal information to aid object detection at longer distances. In particular, depth and intensity values from sparse LiDAR returns are used to generate proposals for objects present in the environment. These proposals are then utilized by a Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera system to perform a directed search by adjusting its pose and zoom level for performing object detection and classification in difficult environments. The proposed work has been thoroughly verified using an ANYmal quadruped robot in underground settings and on datasets collected during the DARPA Subterranean Challenge finals.

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CERBERUS in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge

Cited by 112 publications

References 13 publications

A Critical Review of Communications in Multi-robot Systems

A Critical Review of Communications in Multi-robot Systems

Autonomous Exploration of Unknown Indoor Environments for High-Quality Mapping Using Feature-Based RGB-D SLAM

LiDAR-guided object search and detection in Subterranean Environments

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