DARPA Subterranean Challenge
In a quest to drive development for groundbreaking technologies of the future, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) invites individuals, academic institutions, and public and private organizations from across the globe to compete in a series of challenges that push the limits of today’s cutting-edge technologies. Over the course of 4 years, the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, or SubT Challenge for short, asked competitors to build teams of robots capable of autonomously mapping, navigating, and searching some of the most technologically challenging environments that we experience today—the underground domain, including tunnels, caves, and urban environments—with a goal of creating actionable situational awareness that could help save lives in a first-response scenario where every second counts.
I was engaged via Next/Now to produce a bespoke, guaranteed-accuracy, data-driven broadcast graphics system capable of uniting DARPA’s proprietary competition server system with industry standard broadcast production equipment. The system generated not only the Heads-Up-Display that served as the master overlay for all competition footage, (including scoring information, a game clock, mini-maps, and more), but also generated Scorecards, Leaderboards, and Lower Thirds on-the-fly in a live-to-air environment, all with greater precision, interoperability, and flexibility than can be achieved with current industry-leading sports graphics systems.
In addition, my team created several hours of pre-rendered animated video content, including the Show Opener and Teaser with original music, broadcast transitions, animated robot infographics, team modules, a holographic course flythrough, and more.
As the Producer, I was responsible for developing a critical production path while coordinating and overseeing the collective efforts of our Design, 3D Art, and Development Teams to manifest this graphics system. I spearheaded the design of the overall system architecture and operator interface, and provided art direction for pre-rendered and live-generated content design.
Over the course of 8 days at the Final Event, deep underground in the Louisville Mega Cavern in Louisville, KY, I directed and participated in operation of the graphics system alongside the world-class production team, all while responding to changes and feature additions in real time on-site in a live competition environment.
Click here to learn more about the SubT Challenge.
Click here to watch the broadcasts and see footage from the competition.