Darpa Goes Underground for Its Most Daring Robot Extravaganza Yet

On Thursday, Darpa gathered roboticists in the Louisville Mega Cavern, in Kentucky, and gave them a mission: Design robots to navigate a grueling subterranean course of tunnels and caves, some of the most unforgiving environments on Earth. This event, which will begin next year, is a fundamentally different Darpa beast than the Darpa beasts that came before it. First the advanced tech agency ran the Grand Challenge, a desert race between autonomous vehicles that helped jumpstart the self-driving car revolution. Then it oversaw the Robotics Challenge, in which humanoid robots tried to open doors and drive carts, but mostly fell on their faces. The technical challenges with both were monumental, but the environments were relatively tame.