Team from Centre qualifies for RoboCup finals

We are delighted to confirm that a team of six students from Edinburgh Centre for Robotics (ECR) along with one undergraduate student from Heriot-Watt University has been selected to take part in the final round of the RoboCup Rescue Simulation League - Virtual Robot Competition.

The Heriot-Watt University team, named “Edinbots”, along with a team from Cambridge Robotics, are the only two UK teams who have been selected to participate in the final round. The UK teams will compete with another seven from across the world at the RoboCup finals in Montreal, Canada, this coming June.

The “Edinbots” team is made up of Centre for Doctoral Training students Hugo Sardinha, Siobhan Duncan, Calum Imrie and Vibhav Bharti; ECR Robotics CDT affiliated student Ingo Keller; and undergraduate Computer Science student Sabina Jędrzejczyk.

Hugo Sardinha, team leader, is delighted with the team’s success:

“We are very happy to have qualified for the RoboCup! Since we are such an interdisciplinary team,  it will be a great opportunity to learn from each other as we develop an integrated approach to a Search and Rescue scenario. Since we will be operating in a competitive environment, we are also looking forward to seeing how our strategy compares to that of other teams on a worldwide level, and how each one of us can use what we learn in our own PhD projects.  This is truly a fantastic opportunity on a personal, technical and scientific level, and we can't wait for the competition in June"

The RoboCup Rescue Simulation League was set up after the 1995 earthquake in Kōbe, Japan, in order to further the development of urban search and rescue strategies. Teams are tasked with developing a multi-robot strategy for the search and detection of human victims in an unknown urban environment, either indoor or outdoor. The competition takes place entirely in ROS + Gazebo simulators and points are awarded for correct victim identification and greater coverage of the environment.

In order to qualify for the competition, all teams were required to write an 8-page paper describing how they intend to tackle the rescue situation. Edinbots submitted a strategy based on heterogeneous swarm intelligence, influenced by the research the students are currently undertaking within their own PhD studies.

Dr Patricia A. Vargas, Director of the Robotics Lab at Heriot-Watt University and ECR Outreach and Public Engagement Lead, and Dr Mauro Dragone have acknowledged their students’ success:

“As supervisors, we are extremely proud of our ECR PhD and undergraduate students for having assembled the Edinbots team for this Robocup competition. Robocup is a unique opportunity for our robotics students to test their ideas and to advance this very complex and challenging field of research. We are confident that our “Edinbots” team will be excellent ambassadors for Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and Heriot-Watt University, thus helping to improve our outreach and international presence.”