IUB Rescue Robots participate in "RoboCup 2005"

The annual RoboCup World Championship takes place this year in Osaka, Japan from July 12th until July 18th 2005. Mobile robots can be highly valuable tools in urban rescue missions after severe disasters like earthquakes or after daily incidences like accidents with hazardous materials. RoboCup features a special competition to test these robots in a simulated disaster area.

[ Jul 11, 2005]  For this purpose, the American National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a special arena based on data from real catastrophes. IUB is among the 25 teams that out of over 40 pre-registered teams qualified for the Rescue Robots League. The IUB team is led by Andreas Birk and Stefano Carpin, Professors of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

The rescue arena design poses many challenges for mobile robots. Beginning with the need to negotiate the difficult terrain in the arena with rubble, voids and instable structures, the arena spans over several levels, which must be accessed via stairs and ramps. System design is just one of many problems which must be solved. The robots must also be equipped with quite some autonomous intelligent behaviors such as active perception of victims and cooperative exploration capabilities to be truly useful.

Rescue robots can be used to inspect collapsed structures, to assess the situation and to search and aid victims. There are many engineering and scientific challenges in this domain. Rescue robots not only have to be designed for the harsh environmental conditions of disasters, but also require advanced capabilities like intelligent behaviors to free them from constant supervision by operators.

In addition to the participation in this league, the IUB team will also demonstrate together with four other research institutes a newly developed simulator, which allows a relatively realistic study of the behavior of the real robots.

Detailed information on RoboCup 2005

Rescue Robots at IUB At IUB, research on rescue robots began in 2001. The work at IUB ranges from the complete in-house design of the mechatronics of the robots to the development of autonomous intelligent behaviors like the capability of the robots to detect victims on their own and to learn a map of their environment which can guide rescue workers to the victims. more info »