Robotic exploration of underground environments is a particularly challenging problem due to communication, endurance, and traversability constraints which necessitate high degrees of autonomy and agility. These challenges are further exacerbated by the need to minimize human intervention for practical applications. While legged robots have the ability to traverse extremely challenging terrain, they also engender new challenges for planning, estimation, and control. In this work, we describe a fully autonomous system for multi-robot mine exploration and mapping using legged quadrupeds, as well as a distributed database mesh networking system for reporting data. In addition, we show results from the DARPA Subterranean Challenge (SubT) Tunnel Circuit demonstrating localization of artifacts after traversals of hundreds of meters. These experiments describe fully autonomous exploration of an unknown Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied environment undertaken by legged robots.
@article{arxiv.1909.09662,
title = {Mine Tunnel Exploration using Multiple Quadrupedal Robots},
author = {Ian D. Miller and Fernando Cladera and Anthony Cowley and Shreyas S. Shivakumar and Elijah S. Lee and Laura Jarin-Lipschitz and Akhilesh Bhat and Neil Rodrigues and Alex Zhou and Avraham Cohen and Adarsh Kulkarni and James Laney and Camillo Jose Taylor and Vijay Kumar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.09662},
year = {2020}
}