Yet another year, yet another RoboCup ... and arguably the second most successful I've been involved with!
(The MOST successful would have to be our first place in what is now the Standard Platform League in 2003 ;-P )

This time, RoboCup was held in the beautiful city of Graz in Austria and once again I was a member of "Team CASualty", an entry in the RoboCup Rescue Robot League. With two robots, we managed to pick up 3 awards!

Our four-wheeled robot, Emu, came first in the "Best-In-Class Autonomy" category. This was awarded for the robot that was best able to autonomously navigate through various parts of the arena - that is, drive by itself, without a human operator - and to build a map of the area through which it traveled. These areas included areas that had non-flat flooring and areas that were strewn with loose blocks and planks of wood.  

We also won the "Innovative Operator Interface" award for our ability to use autonomy to assist the operator by allowing one operator to control multiple robots. Through the course of the competition, we were able to gain an advantage by sending one robot ahead in self-driving autonomous mode whilst the operator dealt with another robot.  

Our second robot, Negotiator, came second in the "Best-In-Class Mobility" category. This was awarded for the robot that was best able to traverse the rough terrain in the arena - both in terms of being able to get to simulated victims and identify their important signs of life as well as in terms of how fast the robot could move through the terrain.

 I was the robot operator for the team as well as programmer for the low level robot interface (which allows the computer to actually control the robot's motors) and for autonomy (the logic that tells the robot where to go based on what it sees).

The members of the core development team were:

• Raymond Sheh (UNSW) - Robot Operator, Software for autonomous behaviour and low level interface (ME! :-D )
• Dr. Adam Milstein (UNSW) - Software for autonomous mapping and display
• Matthew McGill (UNSW) - Software engineering, user interfaces and general software infrastructure
• Rudino Salleh (UNSW) - Hardware
  

We were also supported by:

• Dr. Nathan Kirchner (UTS) - Hardware support
• Reza Farid (UNSW) - General support
• John Zaitseff (UNSW) - Administration
  

And of course we were lead by:

• Prof. Claude Sammut (UNSW)
• Dr. Bernhard Hengst (UNSW)

A huge thanks to everyone who made this possible and especially to the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (CAS) who funded this research and the organisers of the competition from the RoboCup Federation , the National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA) and the Technical University of Graz !