UAVs Beneath the Surface: Cooperative Autonomy for Subterranean Search and Rescue in DARPA SubT

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68407700%3A21230%2F23%3A00363007" target="_blank" >RIV/68407700:21230/23:00363007 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.55417/fr.2023001" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.55417/fr.2023001</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.55417/fr.2023001" target="_blank" >10.55417/fr.2023001</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

UAVs Beneath the Surface: Cooperative Autonomy for Subterranean Search and Rescue in DARPA SubT

Original language description

This paper presents a novel approach for autonomous cooperating UAVs in search and rescue operations in subterranean domains with complex topology. The proposed system was ranked second in the Virtual Track of the DARPA SubT Finals as part of the team CTU-CRAS-NORLAB. In contrast to the winning solution that was developed specifically for the Virtual Track, the proposed solution also proved to be a robust system for deployment onboard physical UAVs flying in the extremely harsh and confined environment of the real-world competition. The proposed approach enables fully autonomous and decentralized deployment of a UAV team with seamless simulation-to-world transfer, and proves its advantage over less mobile UGV teams in the flyable space of diverse environments. The main contributions of the paper are present in the mapping and navigation pipelines. The mapping approach employs novel map representations — SphereMap for efficient risk-aware long-distance planning, FacetMap for surface coverage, and the compressed topological-volumetric LTVMap for allowing multi-robot cooperation under low-bandwidth communication. These representations are used in navigation together with novel methods for visibility-constrained informed search in a general 3D environment with no assumptions about the environment structure, while balancing deep exploration with sensor-coverage exploitation. The proposed solution also includes a visual-perception pipeline for on-board detection and localization of objects of interest in four RGB stream at 5 Hz each without a dedicated GPU. Apart from participation in the DARPA SubT, the performance of the UAV system is supported by extensive experimental verification in diverse environments with both qualitative and quantitative evaluation.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_ost - Miscellaneous article in a specialist periodical

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

20204 - Robotics and automatic control

Project

Result was created during the realization of more than one project. More information in the Projects tab.

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Field Robotics

ISSN

2771-3989

e-ISSN

2771-3989

Volume of the periodical

3

Issue of the periodical within the volume

January

Country of publishing house

US - UNITED STATES

Number of pages

68

Pages from-to

1-68

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

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