• Menu
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

banner logo

University of California, Berkeley Mechanical Engineering

MENUMENU
  • Prospective Students
  • Industry
  • Contact us
  • Give Now
  • About
    • From the Chair
    • Honors and Rankings
    • Visitor Information
    • Equity and Inclusion
    • 150 Years of Women in ME
    • Make a Gift
    • Contact us
  • People
    • Faculty
      • Faculty by Research Area
      • Faculty Books
    • Staff
      • Administrative
      • Facilities
      • Financial
      • Information Technology
      • Student Services
      • Student Machine Shops
    • Community Spotlight
    • External Advisory Board
    • Open Positions
      • Lecturer Positions
    • Visiting Scholars
  • Undergraduate
    • Degree Requirements
    • Curriculum Flowchart
    • ME + Business
    • ME/MSE Joint Major
    • ME/NE Joint Major
    • Aerospace Engineering Minor
    • ME Minor
    • Fifth Year B.S./M.S. Program
    • Simultaneous Degrees
    • Advising
      • Semesterly Advising
      • Faculty Adviser Assignments
      • Faculty Office Hours
      • Forms
      • Career Planning Maps
    • Admissions
      • Applying to Engineering
      • The Application
      • Junior Transfers
      • Credit from Exams
      • Financial Resources
      • Drake Scholarship
      • Visit Us
    • ME Courses
      • Technical Electives
      • Design Electives
        • Design Course Transition
      • Tentative ME Course Schedule
      • Quantitative Science
      • Humanities & Social Sciences Courses
      • Undergrad Course Syllabi
      • ME DeCal Courses
    • Undergraduate Research
      • Credit for Research
      • Research Samples
    • Awards and Scholarships
      • Past Prize Winners
    • Student Academic Resources
      • Student Life Resources
    • Jobs and Internships
    • Program Objectives and Outcomes (ABET)
  • Graduate Programs
    • Ph.D. & D.Eng.
    • Master of Science
    • Master of Engineering
    • Fifth Year B.S./M.S. Program
      • Degree Requirements
      • 5th Year Masters Program Handbook
    • Special Programs
    • Admissions
      • M.S., Ph.D., D.Eng. & CWO Application
      • MEng Application
      • 5th Year Masters Admissions
      • Application Tips
      • Fees and Financial Support
      • Readmission / Change of Major
    • Graduate Resources
      • Graduate Handbook
      • Graduate Forms
      • Prelim Exams
      • Research Areas and Major Fields
      • Major Field Advisors
      • Grant Writing
      • Grad Division Resources
      • MEGSCo
      • COE Graduate Guide
    • GSI/Reader Information
      • GSI/Reader Forms
    • Course Information
      • Tentative ME course schedule
    • Graduate Course Syllabi
  • Research
    • Research Areas and Major Fields
    • Faculty by Research Area
    • Laboratories
    • Research Centers
  • Resources
    • Student Academic Resources
    • Graduate Resources
    • Student Life Resources
      • ME Student Groups
    • Virtual Career Panel Series
    • Equity and Inclusion
    • Jobs and Internships
    • Room Reservations
    • Key Requests
    • Mail & Office Administration
    • Financial Services
    • IT Services
    • Safety Information
    • Sexual Violence & Sexual Harassment Prevention
    • Faculty & Staff Resources
  • ME Shops
    • Shop Training
    • Services Provided
    • Shop Equipment
    • Student Electronics Shop
    • Shop Safety
  • Coronavirus Resources
  • News
    • Alumni Newsletter
    • Mechanical Engineering Seminars
    • Events
    • Videos
MENUMENU
  • About
    • From the Chair
    • Honors and Rankings
    • Visitor Information
    • Equity and Inclusion
    • 150 Years of Women in ME
    • Make a Gift
    • Contact us
  • People
    • Faculty
      • Faculty by Research Area
      • Faculty Books
    • Staff
      • Administrative
      • Facilities
      • Financial
      • Information Technology
      • Student Services
      • Student Machine Shops
    • Community Spotlight
    • External Advisory Board
    • Open Positions
      • Lecturer Positions
    • Visiting Scholars
  • Undergraduate
    • Degree Requirements
    • Curriculum Flowchart
    • ME + Business
    • ME/MSE Joint Major
    • ME/NE Joint Major
    • Aerospace Engineering Minor
    • ME Minor
    • Fifth Year B.S./M.S. Program
    • Simultaneous Degrees
    • Advising
      • Semesterly Advising
      • Faculty Adviser Assignments
      • Faculty Office Hours
      • Forms
      • Career Planning Maps
    • Admissions
      • Applying to Engineering
      • The Application
      • Junior Transfers
      • Credit from Exams
      • Financial Resources
      • Drake Scholarship
      • Visit Us
    • ME Courses
      • Technical Electives
      • Design Electives
        • Design Course Transition
      • Tentative ME Course Schedule
      • Quantitative Science
      • Humanities & Social Sciences Courses
      • Undergrad Course Syllabi
      • ME DeCal Courses
    • Undergraduate Research
      • Credit for Research
      • Research Samples
    • Awards and Scholarships
      • Past Prize Winners
    • Student Academic Resources
      • Student Life Resources
    • Jobs and Internships
    • Program Objectives and Outcomes (ABET)
  • Graduate Programs
    • Ph.D. & D.Eng.
    • Master of Science
    • Master of Engineering
    • Fifth Year B.S./M.S. Program
      • Degree Requirements
      • 5th Year Masters Program Handbook
    • Special Programs
    • Admissions
      • M.S., Ph.D., D.Eng. & CWO Application
      • MEng Application
      • 5th Year Masters Admissions
      • Application Tips
      • Fees and Financial Support
      • Readmission / Change of Major
    • Graduate Resources
      • Graduate Handbook
      • Graduate Forms
      • Prelim Exams
      • Research Areas and Major Fields
      • Major Field Advisors
      • Grant Writing
      • Grad Division Resources
      • MEGSCo
      • COE Graduate Guide
    • GSI/Reader Information
      • GSI/Reader Forms
    • Course Information
      • Tentative ME course schedule
    • Graduate Course Syllabi
  • Research
    • Research Areas and Major Fields
    • Faculty by Research Area
    • Laboratories
    • Research Centers
  • Resources
    • Student Academic Resources
    • Graduate Resources
    • Student Life Resources
      • ME Student Groups
    • Virtual Career Panel Series
    • Equity and Inclusion
    • Jobs and Internships
    • Room Reservations
    • Key Requests
    • Mail & Office Administration
    • Financial Services
    • IT Services
    • Safety Information
    • Sexual Violence & Sexual Harassment Prevention
    • Faculty & Staff Resources
  • ME Shops
    • Shop Training
    • Services Provided
    • Shop Equipment
    • Student Electronics Shop
    • Shop Safety
  • Coronavirus Resources
  • News
    • Alumni Newsletter
    • Mechanical Engineering Seminars
    • Events
    • Videos
ME banner

Team CERBERUS Wins DARPA Subterranean Challenge

You are here: Home / News / Team CERBERUS Wins DARPA Subterranean Challenge

Team CERBERUS won the DARPA Subterranean Challenge and a $2,000,000 prize reward that comes along! Team CERBERUS is an international consortium involving the University of Nevada Reno (prime contract), ETH Zurich, NTNU, University of California Berkeley, University of Oxford, Flyability, and Sierra Nevada Corporation. The Team Leader is Prof. Dr. Kostas Alexis – of NTNU’s Department of Engineering Cybernetics – who acquired the grant when he was a faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno, and has maintained this role since. The team leadership further involves Prof. Dr. Marco Hutter (Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich), Prof. Dr. Roland Siegwart (Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich), Prof. Dr. Mark Mueller (UC Berkeley), Prof. Maurice Fallon (Oxford), Adrien Briod (Flyability), Prof. Dr. Eelke Folmer (UNR), and Sierra Nevada Corporation’s company leaders.

CERBERUS stands for “CollaborativE walking & flying RoBots for autonomous ExploRation in Underground Settings” and throughout the three years of the project developed a team of legged and aerial robots capable of autonomously exploring diverse subterranean environments such as underground mines and tunnels, metropolitan sub-surface infrastructure, and natural cave networks. After successfully going through the Tunnel Circuit and the Urban Circuit of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, Team CERBERUS qualified for the Final Event (the “Cave Circuit” planned for early 2020 was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic).

In the Final Event, DARPA designed an environment involving branches representing all three challenges of the “Tunnel Circuit”, the “Urban Circuit” and the “Cave Circuit”. Robots had to explore, search for objects (“artifacts”) of interest, and report their accurate location within underground tunnels, infrastructure similar to a subway, and natural caves and paths with extremely confined geometries, tough terrain, and severe visual degradation (including dense smoke).

Team CERBERUS deployed a diverse set of robots with the prime systems being four ANYmal C legged systems. In the Prize Round of the Final Event, the team won the competition and scored 23 points by correctly detecting and localizing 23 of 40 of the artifacts DARPA had placed inside the environment. The second team, “CSIRO Data61” also scored 23 points but reported the last artifact with a slight further delay to DARPA thus the tiebraker was in favor of Team CERBERUS. The third team, “MARBLE” scored 18 points.

The DARPA Subterranean Challenge was one of the rare types of global robotic competition events pushing the frontiers for resilient autonomy and calling teams to develop novel and innovative solutions with the capacity to help critical sectors such as search and rescue personnel and the industry in domains such as mining and beyond. The level of achievement of Team CERBERUS is best understood by looking at all the competitors in the “Systems Competition” of the Final Event. The participating teams including members from top international institutions, namely:

  • CERBERUS (Score = 23): University of Nevada, Reno, ETH Zurich, NTNU, University of California Berkeley, Oxford Robotics Institute, Flyability, Sierra Nevada Corporation
  • CSIRO Data61 (Score = 23): CSIRO, Emesent, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • MARBLE (Score = 18): University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Denver, Scientific Systems Company, University of California Santa Cruz
  • Explorer (Score = 17): Carnegie Mellon University, Oregon State University
  • CoSTAR (Score = 13): NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, MIT, KAIST, Lulea University of Technology
  • CTU-CRAS-NORLAB (Score = 7): Czech Technological University, Université Laval
  • Coordinated Robotics (Score = 2): Coordinated Robotics, California State University Channel Islands, Oke Onwuka, Sequoia Middle School
  • Robotika (Score = 2): Robotika International, Robotika.cz, Czech University of Life Science, Centre for Field Robotics, Cogito Team

We congratulate all members of Team CERBERUS and we are proud of this incredible and historic achievement! Most importantly, we are excited to be part of this amazing community pushing the frontier of resilient robotic autonomy in extreme environments.

Previous Post: « ‘Extremely cutting-edge’: UC Berkeley scientists revive frozen heart tissue
Next Post: Berkeley Engineering Launches Aerospace Major »

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Alumni Newsletter
  • Mechanical Engineering Seminars
  • Events Calendar
  • Videos

Upcoming Events

    No events listed.

  • Contact
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Nondiscrimination
  • UC Berkeley
  • Berkeley Engineering
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2023 UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering · All Rights Reserved ·