RoboCupRescue – Rescue Robot League

Objective

The RoboCupRescue Robot League is an international league of teams with one objective: Develop and demonstrate advanced robotic capabilities for emergency responders using annual competitions to evaluate, and teaching camps to disseminate, best-in-class robotic solutions.

Approach

The league hosts annual competitions to 1) increase awareness of the challenges involved in deploying robots for emergency response applications such as urban search and rescue and bomb disposal, 2) provide objective performance evaluations of mobile robots operating in complex yet repeatable environments, and 3) promote collaboration between researchers. Robot teams demonstrate their capabilities in mobility, sensory perception, localization and mapping, mobile manipulation, practical operator interfaces, and assistive autonomous behaviors to improve remote operator performance and/or robot survivability while searching for simulated victims in a maze of terrains and challenges.

Competition Vision

When disaster happens, minimize risk to search and rescue personnel while increasing victim survival rates by fielding teams of collaborative mobile robots which enable human rescuers to quickly locate and extract victims. Specific robotic capabilities encouraged in the competition include the following:

  • Negotiate compromised and collapsed structures
  • Locate victims and ascertain their conditions
  • Produce practical sensor maps of the environment
  • Establish communications with victims
  • Deliver fluids, nourishment, medicines
  • Place sensors to identify/monitor hazards
  • Mark or identify best paths to victims
  • Provide structural shoring for responders

These tasks are encouraged through challenges posed in the arena, specific mission tasks, and/or the performance metric. Demonstrations of other enabling robotic capabilities are always welcome.

Schedule – Saturday April 20

Finals start at 13:00