RoboCup Rescue Robot League

The RoboCupRescue Robot League made several important strides this year toward fielding advanced robotic technologies to support emergency responders performing urban search and rescue missions. Many of the twenty-six teams hosted in Osaka demonstrated capabilities built upon specific successes of previous year’s implementations, and continued to push the state-of-the-art of small robots operating within unstructured environments (see Figure 1). Improvements in robot perception, navigation, mapping, and remotely teleoperative interfaces were demonstrated in updated arenas designed to challenge emerging capabilities and encourage innovative and practical solutions. The overall strength of this year’s teams inspired growing confidence that robots can and will play a critical role in disaster response within the next few years.