Welcome to Raymond's Website!

Videos taken/compiled by me: 

During this year's RoboCup Rescue event, I managed to also take some photos and videos (although nowhere near as many as in past years - for some reason I kept extra busy this year). I know some of you have been waiting for these, here they are! Note that these are low resolution for-web versions. Unless otherwise noted, these videos are all Copyright (c) 2009 Raymond Sheh and published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Please contact me for high resolution versions. 

Timelapse of arena destruction - Adam Jacoff (the head of RoboCup Rescue) did mention that the best way we could thank Michael Hofbaur (the local chair and the guy who was in charge of building the arena) was to help him tear it down as quickly as possible!

A timelapse of arena destruction, played in reverse order is available from here. Looks somewhat more interesting, in a somewhat strange way! I've also got a timelapse of the practice and some of the competition runs for the finals, see here! See if you can find yourself and your robot ... 

We've also put together a composite video of best-in-class mobility run (we came equal 1st in the actual run with 8 points and 2nd in overall best-in-class mobility!). Note that we stripped out pretty much all of the sensors and computers from the stock RoboticFX Negotiator robot - to the point that I had to drive it through its original base station with a single forward-facing camera! In-arena video taken by Claude Sammut. This video is Copyright (c) 2009 Team CASualty, All Rights Reserved.

(High res version here)

Videos taken by other members of Team CASualty: 

More videos of our robots in action! These videos are Copyright (C) 2009 Team CASualty, All Rights Reserved. 

• Our two robots moving off from the start line together. Fast forward to 0:40 for a rather cute section! 
• Emu staring at the camera whilst Negotiator drives past in the background. 
• Negotiator appearing and disappearing through the terrain.
• Negotiator doing some rather odd movements to get onto a platform and find a victim (in a hole).
• Our finals run!
  

More videos and photos to come, watch this space! :-) 

OK so I'm a bit late on this one ... my excuse is that I just came off a 12 hour flight from Frankfurt ;-) 

Yesterday, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) interviewed me as part of a story on our success at this year's RoboCup! Head on over to the website of the PM Program at http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2618328.htm for the audio and http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/06/2618470.htm for the transcript!

You'll need to excuse the "umms" in that interview ... I had only been awake for about 20 minutes when the ABC called! 

Whilst we're on media things, UNSW TV (the UNSW YouTube channel) has published a short segment on my work with rescue robots! This was filmed a couple of months ago (hence the reference to the competition "in a couple of months" in the video) ... see here!

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 !

My first ever book, "Watch for Robots", is now ready for sale! In it, you'll find some of my best photos from the last two years of Rescue Robotics events - from the Response Robot Evaluation Exercse (#3) at the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue training facility in August 2006 through to the 4th Rescue Robotics Camp at the Istituto Superiore Antincendi in Rome in September 2007. You'll also find descriptions of all the 36 robots featured plus the various events.  

"Watch for Robots" is available in both softcover and hardcover. The current list price (before shipping) is $39.95USD for the softcover and $51.95USD for hardcover.

To order your copy, please visit http://WatchForRobots.raybot.net or click the book icon below.

Perfect as a gift for anyone interested in robots, technology and photography! ;-)

Watch for Robots

A Glimpse at the Early Childhood of Rescue Robotics

By Raymond Sheh

Book Preview

(Did Google drop you here when you were actually looking for the 2009 Rescue Robotics camp? The 2009 camp is to be held in Thailand, see http://thailandrescuerobot.org/workshop/ for details!)

The Fourth Annual Rescue Robotics Camp, 2007

at Istituto Superiore Antincendi, Rome, Italy

Another October, another Rescue Robotics camp! This year the camp was held almost 4 weeks early to coincide with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's International Workshop on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics, both hosted by Istituto Superiore Antincendi, about 6KM south of Rome. I was fortunate enough to be invited back to help out at the camp, where I was mainly attached to the Flying Robots practical. I also presented our paper on terrain feature extraction to the SSRR workshop. Oh, and I took almost 5,000 photos! :-)

If you're looking for more photos from the event, have a look at http://rrc07.raybot.net/ !

We had a great showing with practical sessions about robot simulators with NIST, walking robots with the University of Pennsylvania, flying robots with Ascending Technologies, shapechanging advanced mobility robots with Chiba Institute of Technology and Tohoku University and 3D mapping and modelling with the University of Rome "La Sapienza"!

Once again the great organisation effort by the teams from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" under Professor Daniele Nardi, the National Institute for Standards and Technologies under Adam Jacoff and International Rescue System Institute under Professor Satoshi Tadokoro paid off.

As this year's camp was held much earlier than usual, we could not be accommodated at the Institute ... I ended up at the Hotel Pace Elvezia, a short walk from Piazza Venezia in the middle of Rome ... and boy am I glad I ended up there! I got to see a lot more of Rome than I did in the past simply by taking detours to and from the metro station each day ... I should go through the 2,700 photos I took around Rome (not including the 2,000 or so photos I took during the actual events!) soon and put some of them up - in the meantime I've got a few up at my Flickr page! :-)

More robots! After the 2006 Response Robot exercise at the Maryland Task Force 1 training facility, NIST kindly invited me to another exercise, this time at the Texas Engineering Extension Service's Brayton Fire Training Field, for another chance to be on the other side of the fence (usually I'm operating the robot, this time I got to be the evaluator!). Once again I was on the ramp test - where the robots had to drive a fixed pattern on a sloping platform with different types of surfaces and we timed how long it took for each robot. And of course, I got to meet up with a whole pile of old friends (including good ol' Brutus, the search canine, brought to the event by handlers Tom and Lee Haus) and made a pile of new ones! Thanks for the great time!  

I got heaps of photos as well! See http://nistrobots-june07.rsheh.raybot.net/ :-)

Wheee! 14 flights, 12 stops, 5 official events, 4 universities, 2 hire cars, 1 really good holiday and many many new friends ... how is this for a trip? Between the 15th of June and the 27th of July I managed to squeeze all of these in:

1. Fly to College Station, Texas (via Los Angeles and Dallas Fort Worth) for the NIST/DHS Response Robot Evaluation Exercise #4
2. Fly to Corvallis, Oregon (via Dallas Fort Worth) for the International Conference on Machine Learning at Oregon State University
3. Drive to Rockaway Beach (booked an "economy car" via Hertz and got a Prius with all the fruit!) for lunch with a good friend
4. Fly to Atlanta (via Dallas Fort Worth - where we got stuck for 24 hours due to bad weather!) for the Robotics: Science and Systems conference, RoboCup 2007 and the RoboCup Symposium at Georgia Tech
5. Fly to Tampa, Florida to visit the Center for Robot Assisted Search and Rescue at the University of South Florida - and to meet up with friends!
6. Drive to Fort Myers to get a jump on the traffic and visit the summer residences of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (and fix their penny crusher!)
7. Drive to Key West, Florida, watching the sun set on the way (ya, we mistimed it, we were going to try and get there for the sunset)
8. Drive to Cape Canaveral to visit the Kennedy Space Center!
9. Drive to Orlando for DisneyLand and Universal Studios!
10. Fly to Las Vegas via Dallas Fort Worth to see the Grand Canyon and Cirque du Soleil's production of "O"!
11. Fly to Los Angeles to see Hollywood!
12. Fly to San Jose to meet some friends, visit Google, Stanford University, NASA Ames and the Golden Gate Bridge

Let's just say after all that I was pretty exhausted ... but it was great fun! Now to dig up all those photos ... per-event blog entries to come ... maybe ... yes I know, I haven't updated in 8 months or so, this is the backlog ;-)

Ah so it's Christmas again for another year!

For the first time in a long time, I went to a Carols by Candlelight event about a week ago ... I was especially amused at the following adaptation of "Jingle Bells" to the Australian way of life!

Dashing through the bush
In a rusty Holden ute
Kicking up the dust
Esky in the boot
Kelpie by my side
Singing Christmas songs
It's summer time and I am in
My singlet, shorts and thongs

CHORUS:
OH! Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells
Jingle all the way
Christmas in Australia
On a scorching summer day, Hey!
Jingle bells, Jingle bells
Christmas time is beaut!
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a rusty Holden ute

Engine's getting hot
Dodge the kangaroos
Swaggy climbs aboard
He is welcome too
All the family is here
Sitting by the pool
Christmas day, the Aussie way
By the barbeque!

CHORUS

Come the afternoon
Grandpa has a doze
The kids and uncle Bruce
Go swimming in their clothes
The time comes round to go
We take a family snap
Then pack the car and all shoot through
Before the washing up

CHORUS

Unfortunately, not even a reasonable amount of Google-fu was able to find an original author of this variant (it does appear on a pile of websites but none claim to be the original author nor do they cite to the original author) so until I find out more I'll need to credit it to that prolific bard, "Anonymous". Of course if anyone has a verifiable lead on who the actual author is, please do drop me a note!

I think I'll leave it there for a while so the non-Australians reading this can be thoroughly confused before posting some clarifications! ;-P

UPDATE: Thanks to Craig Howie from CSE/UNSW for letting me know who the original author was! These lyrics were written by Colin Buchanan in 1992 (www.colinbuchanan.com.au). He did an ABC story on this in 2002, see http://www.abc.net.au/backyard/stories/s740561.htm for details!

So, in talking to people from the US, one thing that sometimes comes up is how big Texas is (eg. the phrase "As big as Texas" or, as I've heard at least once, "Texas: It's bigger than France") ... and the inevitable Alaskan comeback (Alaska being over twice the size of Texas). One thing that I keep coming up against is that a lot of people don't seem to realise how big Australia really is (and get all surprised when I say it takes 5 hours to fly from Sydney to Perth) - being somewhat closer to the equator I guess the land mass isn't as stretched out on a map. 

So I jumped on Wikipedia and had a look ... here are some interesting land areas that (in my experience) often come up in discussions on this topic (all in km squared, multiply by 0.3861 for miles squared).

Now I make the point that I'm not saying the Australian Antarctic Territory is equivalent to Alaska, the former having no permanent population and thus no government or legislature, but a lot of people don't realise that this area is still "officially" Australia (according to Wikipedia it's a true Australian territory - presumably like the Northern Territory is part of Australia, although due to international agreements Australia doesn't actually exercise sovereignty over the AAT) - Australia even issues postage stamps for this area. But yes, Texas is bigger than France. Just. :-)

Oh and for those who are confused about Kalgoorlie and Murchison-Eyre, an Australian Electoral Division is represented by one member of the Australian federal (national) parliament whilst a Western Australian Electoral District is represented by one member of the Western Australian state parliament.