| What is RoboCup?
RoboCupTM is an international research and education initiative. Its goal is to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be examined and integrated. |
RoboCupRescue
Disaster rescue is one of the most serious issues involving very large numbers of heterogeneous agents in a hostile environment. The intention of the RoboCupRescue project is to promote research and development in this significant domain by involving multi-agent team work coordination, physical robotic agents for search and rescue, information infrastructures, personal digital assistants, standard simulator and decision support systems, evaluation benchmarks for rescue strategies and robotic systems that are all integrated into a comprehensive system in future. RoboCupRescue is divided into two leagues.
RoboCupRescue Robot League
Robots explore a specially constructed disaster site, including mannequins with various signs of life, such as waving hands, shouting noises and heat, hidden amongst stairs, platforms and building rubble. The robots, some under human control, must find and approach the victims, identify their signs of life and produce a map of the site showing where the victims are located. The aim is to provide human rescuers with enough information to safely perform a rescue. Each team is scored based on the quality of its maps, the accuracy of the victim information and the number of victims found.
RoboCupRescue Simulation League
The league is composed of three competitions: the virtual robot competition, the agent competition, and the infrastructure competition.
In a virtual robot competition run, a team of simulated robots has to explore, map and clear a block-sized disaster area, featuring both carefully modeled indoor / outdoor environments. Robots and sensors used in this competition closely mirror platform and devices currently used in physical robots.
The Agent competition involves scoring competing agent coordination algorithms on different maps of the RobocupRescue simulation platform. The challenge in this case involves developing coordination algorithms that will enable teams of Ambulances, Police forces, and Fire Brigades to save as many civilians as possible and extinguish fires in a city where an earthquake has just happened.
The Infrastructure competition involves evaluating tools and simulators developed for the simulation platform and for simulating disaster management problems in general. Here, the intent is to build up realistic simulators and tools that could be used to enhance the basic RobocupRescue simulator and expand upon it.
fischertechnik ROBO TX Explorer Kit
The fischertechnik ROBO TX Explorer Kit allows you to build a minimum of 6 models. Explore unknown areas, measure distances, follow tracks, show driving directions by means of blinking signals, recognize colors, measure temperatures, avoid obstacles without touching them, recognize day and night, turn headlights on and off automatically and trigger an alarm etc. The ROBO explorer sensors can do all of this and lots more: The NTC resistor, the photoresistor, the new ultrasonic distance sensor, the infrared and color sensor and the specially developed track sensor. Thanks to two power motors and the crawler drive even almost impassable terrain can be explored and traveled on. With the rescue robot, which is contained as a model, the construction set provides the ideal basis for participation in the Robocup.
