RoboCup 2010 - RoboCup Rescue Team

This paper describes the approach of the team resko@UniKoblenz for the RoboCup Rescue competition 2010. Our mobile system Robbie is based on a MobileRobots Pioneer 3 AT. It is equipped with a four-wheel drive and sonar sensors in the front and in the back. On this platform, an aluminum rack is installed where additional sensors are attached: three color cameras (Philips SPC1300NC), an actively contolled Hokuyo UTM-30LX laser range finder (LRF), a thermal camera, a multi-level thermal sensor and an inclination sensor. The robot can be operated in autonomous and in teleoperated mode. The map building is done by the computer automatically by merging the collected LRF data with the odometry information using a Hyper Particle Filter (a particle filter of particle filters). The automatic victim detection is based on the obtained thermal and color camera images. Robbie was developed and improved at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany) during the last couple of years as a PhD project and in several practical courses. The robot was used by the team resko@UniKoblenz at the RoboCup German Open 2007, 2008 and 2009 in Hannover and at the RoboCup World Championship 2007 in Atlanta (GA, USA), 2008 in Suzhou (China) and 2009 in Graz (Austria). The team achieved the “Best in Class Autonomy Award” in five of these competitions.