Raymond's Homepage
| Well, we weren't the champions but 3rd place, for a 5 month old team, isn't bad! Update: We're on TV! See the news page for more! In 2005 I was once again part of RoboCup, this time in the Rescue Robot League! The aim of the competition is to test robot assisted search-and-rescue technologies. Teams field robotic systems that can enter a disaster arena about the size of a small house, find victims, determine their state of health and return with a map of victims and significant landmarks that is good enough to send human rescuers in with. Any human teleoperation is performed from a different room - in fact, during the competition, every morning the arena is moved around and messed up and team members aren't allowed to see the arena until after their run is complete!    I was the driver of our robot, CASTER, for all of the competitive runs, I was also one of the main hardware and software developers (in fact, most of the work on the robot and associated software was performed by myself and Dr. Waleed Kadous from The ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems). A number of publications resulted from our entry, please click on my Publications link in the menu for details! Here is the short report on our team: ============================ CAS demonstrated its applied research into robot assisted search and rescue on the world stage through its involvement with the RoboCup Rescue Robot League competition. The Rescue project aims to promote and demonstrate relevant research in areas that include robotics for urban search and rescue, algorithms for sensing, mapping and victim identification, multi-robot co-ordination and autonomous behaviours and exploration. Team CASualty, consisting of CAS members from UNSW and UTS, achieved considerable success in its first attempt by coming 3rd overall in the 2005 competition, held in Osaka, Japan. The field included 26 entrants from many of the world's finest robotics research centres. The entry showcased some of the strengths in CAS in terms of hardware, mapping, sensing, algorithms and software. Team CASualty fielded two robots for the competition. CASTER, a tracked, advanced mobility robot, was equipped with state-of-the-art sensors and software for victim identification, 3D mapping and teleoperation. CASTER's ability to map, access and assess victims in very difficult terrain played a large part in the team's success. A wheeled, differentially driven robot, HOMER, was also presented. Though not deployed in the competition, demonstrated forward-looking techniques for autonomous navigation and map-building. The team is currently preparing for the 2006 competition in Bremen, Germany. It is envisaged that a co-operative team of autonomous and semi-autonomous advanced mobility robots, equipped with mechanisms, sensors and software currently under development, will further demonstrate the strengths of CAS in this area. ============================ We have a (under construction!) website here! |
