NIST arenas used for urban search and rescue robot competition - News Briefs - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Jan, 2002

The NIST reference arenas for evaluating the performance of search and rescue robots were shipped to Seattle, WA, in early August for use in the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence mobile robot rescue competition, which was held jointly with RoboCup Rescue. The competition is meant to stimulate progress in robot research by providing concrete, repeatable, measurable challenges in sensing, navigation, planning, human-robot interaction, mobility, and other technologies required for successful mobile robots. Robots explore the three different sections that simulate a collapsed building, locate as many victims and hazards as possible, and communicate their findings (preferably with a map) to a human supervisor within 25 min. Victims are represented by mannequin parts, clothing, movement, sound (cries for help, banging), and heat signatures. The arenas provide three different levels of difficulty in navigation, traversability, and spatial layout.

Over the course of 3 days, four teams competed officially and half a dozen different organizations gave demonstrations of their robots going through the arenas. None of the teams accumulated enough points to place, but two qualitative awards were given out. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Award was given to Swarthmore College for demonstrating the most AI functionality. The platform award was given to Sharif University of Iran for their original tracked vehicle.

The main designer of the arenas, a NIST engineer, was asked to chair the RoboCup Rescue event next year, which will be held in June in Japan. The RoboCup organizers plan to recreate the NIST arenas at each country where the competition is held and leave them behind permanently to stimulate progress. RoboCup Rescue is a new event within the overall RoboCup competition framework. RoboCup is an international effort to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be examined and integrated. The first problem focus area has been robotic soccer. Wildly popular world-wide, there are more than 3000 researchers from 35 countries participating in robotic soccer matches currently. Due to the Kobe earthquake, Oklahoma City bombing, and other disasters, the RoboCup community selected the search and rescue mission as their second application domain, one with significant potential societal benefits.

CONTACT: Elena Messina, (301) 975-3510; elena.messina@nist.gov.