RoboCup Rescue

RoboCup Rescue is one of the competition leagues that make up the yearly RoboCup event.

Robocup is a robotics event that aims to stimulate robotics technology and to inspire people to get involved in robot development. To get people interested in a playfull way, the event uses competitions, demonstrations and educational games.

In this particular RoboCup Rescue League, teams from all over the world compete for the best robot for Search & Rescue missions. The idea behind the RoboCup Rescue games is to discover the different challenges involved in Search & Rescue operations, provide feedback of the usability of robots in disaster areas and to encourage teams to share experiences and learn from them.

RoboCup Rescue has two sub-leagues:

• Rescue Robot
• Rescue Simulation

Rescue Robot 

In the Rescue Robot League, the main objective is to design and build a robot that is capable of assisting human rescue teams in evaluating a disaster area, making a rescue plan and help during the actual rescue mission.

The following capabilites will be tested:

• • Mobility
  • Sensory Perception
  • Localization
  • Mapping
  • Mobile Manipulation
  • Practicality of the operators interface
  • Capability of assistive autonomous behavior
  • Robot Survivability

Arenas

In order to test these capabilities of the robots involved, a disaster site has been simulated that consist of several color-coded areas. Each of these areas, or arenas, contains a specific challenge that has to be dealt with.

• Yellow Arena: In this arena, robots that are capable of autonomous navigation and victim identification need to cross a maze of hallways and rooms with an uneven floor.
• Orange Arena: This arena is for robots that are capable of autonomous or remote controlled navigation and victim identification. In addition to uneven floors it contains obstacles such as stairs or ramps.
• Red Arena: Here, the robots capable of autonomous or remote controlled navigation and victim identificationneed to navigate a complex area with difficult terrain to test the robots advanced mobility.
• Blue Arena: Robots that are capable of mobile manipulation need to place simple objects while navigating through complex terrain.
• Black/Yellow Arena: In this area a radio failure is simulated to force the robot to navigate autonomously through difficult terrain.
• Black Arena: The robots need to be capable of searching and investigating a vehicle that has collapsed or broken down.
• Simulated Victims: The robots need to be able to find victim simulations by viewing through acces holes at various heights and locations.
• Aerial Arena: This arena is designed to test the capability of small aerial vehicles with varying degrees of autonomy. They need to be able to vertically take-off and land and perform certtain tasks that involve obstacle avoidance, line following and stationary flight.

Rescue Simulation

The Rescue Simulation competition revolves around disaster evaluation, planning and execution of the rescue operation in a simulated disaster scenario.

The ultimate goal for the Simulation League is to develop robotsystems capable of scanning the disaster area, map it and evaluate the situation accuratly to minimize the risk of danger for the rescue teams.

Then, the right team needs to be assembled and directed while exchanging information between the coordinators and the rescue teams.

The Simulation has two main tasks:

• to develop simulators that can create simulation infrastructures and imitate realistic situations that can occur during disasters.
• to develop intelligent robots and software programs with certain capabilities that can act as individuals in these simulated disaster scenarios.

Simulators

Simulators that need to be developed are:

- Traffic simulators, to enforce traffic rules, simulate traffic movement, speed and direction including traffic jams.

- Fire Simulators, to simulate fires. They take into account the propagation of fire related to the properties of buildings, wind direction, and water content.

- Civilian Simulators, to simulate the behaviour of civilians such as movement along roads.

Apart from this, software programs (called "agents") are developed to act as Police Forces, Fire Brigades, and Ambulance Teams each with their own behavior and capabilities.

Other RoboCup Leagues:

RoboCup Soccer

RoboCup@Home

RoboCup Junior

RoboParty