LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) - Louisville Mega Cavern may be known for its mega zips or fun attractions, but the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will be using the cavern for a more specific challenge Thursday, Sept. 27.
DARPA is holding a Subterranean Challenge in the Mega Caverns to revolutionize how they operate underground.
The agency is looking for innovative solutions that can help the military and first responders rapidly and remotely map, navigate, and search underground man-made and natural environments including tunnel systems, urban and municipal underground infrastructure and/or natural cave networks.
Through the SubT Challenge, DARPA seeks to advance technologies through both systems and virtual competitions that will outperform current approaches of manually and laboriously mapping and searching subterranean environments.
Teams will compete in three preliminary circuit events and the final event in both systems and virtual competitions. Each circuit event will explore the difficulties of operating in a specific underground environment as teams compete for monetary prizes.
In a press release. DARPA said it hopes teams come up with either physical or digital systems that can help simulate emergency events that could be helped with underground mapping and planning.
The winner of the systems competition will take home $2 million, while the winner of the virtual competition will earn $750 thousand.
For more information, visit the DARPA website.
