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Warwick students take rescue robot to RoboCup Rescue Championship in Germany

Rescue robotUniversity of Warwick students are poised to take their “rescue robot” to the RoboCup Rescue Championship in Germany next week. The students developed their robot in a team project bringing together Engineering  and Computer Science students at the University of Warwick and the team are taking part in the 9th RoboCup German Open in Magdeburg (April 15-18 2010).

The robots are designed to crawl over and through difficult terrain or such as destroyed buildings in search of trapped survivors. The German competition will put the robot through its paces in a simulated disaster environment which requires robots to demonstrate their capabilities in mobility, sensory perception, planning, mapping, and operator interfaces, while searching for simulated victims in difficult environments. 

The Warwick team think they have a competition winning trick with their rescue robot as they have constructed it with a robot arm which has “4 degrees of movement”. This gives that arm more turning flexibility than even the head of an owl and allows the arm to turn and weave in tight situations and change its orientation without having to move the whole robot. The team also has a second rescue robot under development which will have its own mapping capabilities using LiDAR technology (Light Detection and Ranging).

The team’s academic project Director is Professor Ken Young from WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group) at the University of Warwick. He says:

“This project gives our students hand on experience of solving a real world engineering problem. Not only will they learn practical lessons such as how to integrate leading technology to create a practical working solution they may also come up with their own truly innovative ideas that could be taken up by technology companies and make the students even more sought after as employees of high tech engineering firms.”

Full rescue robot team

Notes for Editors: The teams sponsors include The Maxon Motors, Harwin Interconnect Design & Manufacture,  ITCM – (Innovative Technology for Custom Machinery) Warwick Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (University of Warwick), WMG (University of Warwick), University of Warwick School of Engineering, Computer Science Department University of Warwick,  and RGPhoto.

For further information please contact:

Peter Dunn, Head of Communications, University of Warwick 
Tel:  024 76 523708 Mobile 07767 655860 p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk

PR33  9th April  2010