Disaster Robots Needed

After the slow start the first rescue and firefighting robots from USA and Germany are on its way to Japan to assist rescue teams especially at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. According to the Japanese government the crisis might be continue for weeks or months before the damaged reactors will be under control. 

In the light of the emergency robot disaster in Japan the need of a new research and development strategy for robotics is obvious. When human workers in high-tech Japan are the best solution do the dirty and dangerous job, there must be something wrong. After billions of yen, dollar and euro invested in robotics research and prototyping isn't it time again to rethink needs, goals and funding of robotics research and development? The transfer of scientific knowledge into robotic solutions for the safety and benefit of citizens and society is urgent. The risk of natural and nuclear disasters remains high and might even increase by urbanization, climate change and technological complexity.

Demand of Disaster Robots
Urbanization continues as the construction of new nuclear power plants all over the world. According to the 2010 World Disasters Report (WDR) over half the world’s population now live in cities for the first time and more people than ever before live in slums. Urban poverty and disaster risk are often closely intertwined and the links between urban poverty and disaster risk will be increased by climate change.
The report states that the root cause of why so many people are affected by urban disasters is that a billion people live in poor-quality homes on dangerous sites with no hazard-reducing infrastructure and no services. In any given year, over 50,000 people can die as a result of earthquakes and 100 million can be affected by floods and the worst-affected are most often vulnerable city dwellers.

Disaster Robots of the Future 

Credit: WMR, University of Warwick

Next generation rescue robot solution will heavily depend on the scientific knowledge and engineering creativity of a new generation robotics students, who think out-of-the-box, innovate and share their findings via open and social media. They compete globally with great ambitions and much fun, laying the ground for smarter and more competitive technology and successful businesses.

Robocup Rescue World Champions 
One example of ambition and creativity are the students from the Warwik Mobile Robotics Group at the University of Warwick, UK. Their ambition for the 2011 European Robocup Rescue competition in Magdeburg, Germany, are high with the goal of retaining the European championship and to qualify for and enter the Robocup Rescue World Championships 2011.
To win again the team has improved the six tracks rescue robot, that won the European rescue championship at RoboCup in Germany last year, with the motion controller Kinect that saves significant sums compared with Lidar laser sensors. If they can beat their competitors with the Xbox add-on, will an exciting challenge.
Check out the presentation video below.


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The RoboCupRescue Robot League is an international league of teams with one objective: develop and demonstrate advanced robotic capabilities for emergency responders using annual competitions to evaluate, and teaching camps to disseminate, best-in-class robotic solutions.

RoboCup 2011 Istanbul Turkey July 4-10, 2011

The RobotCup 2011 will be held in Istanbul, Turkey July 4-10,

The 15th annual RoboCup International Symposium will be held in conjunction with RoboCup 2010. The Symposium represents the core meeting for presentation and discussion of scientific contributions to a variety of research areas related to all RoboCup divisions (RoboCupSoccer, RoboCupRescue, RoboCup@Home, and RoboCupJunior). Its scope encompasses, but is not restricted to, research and educational activities within the fields of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

The First RoboCup comptetition was held August 23 - 29, 1997 at IJCAI-97 - International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Nagoya, Japan. 38 teams from 11 countries participated and over 5,000 spectators attended. In 2010 RoboCup was held in Singapore and attracted 500 teams from 40 countries and over 3000 participants. The graph below illustrates the successful development of RoboCup, the most ambitions robot competition in the world.


The ultimate goal of the RoboCup Initiative is "a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win the soccer game, comply with the official rule of the FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup."

The Top Robot Teams 2010 (part 1)

German B-Human, a collegiate project at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Bremen and the DFKI research area Safe and Secure Cognitive Systems, became world champion in the Standard Platform League for the second time after 2009. The team also got awarded the RoboCup Best Paper Award 2010. 


The NimbRo TeenSize Team from University Bonn won the Humanoid Teen Size League tournament and was also voted Best Humanoid from the team leaders of the entire Humanoid league (34 teams), and the president of the RoboCup Federation.


First robotics back heel kick!
For the second year in a row Darmstadt Dribblers won the title in the Humanoid Kid-Size League. The strikerrobot Bruno is one of the fastest robots in his class with a maximum walking speed of more than 40cm/s. He is the first (and so far only) robot that manged to score a goal with a fully autonomous back heel kick in a competition.


The RoboCup@home winner 2010 was the eR@sers Team from the Tamagawa University, the University of Electro-Communications at Tokyo and National Institute of Information and Communications Technology at Kyoto.


The Rescue Robot League Winner 2010 was iRAP_Pro Team from King Mongkut's University of Technology, Thailand.

French Robot Ballet at World Expo 2010

One of the robotics highlights at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai was the robot ballet performed by 20 synchronized Nao robots of French Aldebran Technolgies. The 8 minutes dance involved information exchanges between the NAOs by WiFi or infrared signals. The robots were not remote-controlled, but able to "think" and act together.

Aldebaran Robotics Nao Robot Show in France Pavilion Shanghai Expo 2010
Video credit: Aldreba

The Nao robots are also playing at Robocup, the world´s largets robotics competition, that was held 2010 in Singapore. In July 2007, Nao was nominated as the official platform for the standard league by the RoboCup Organizing Committee, and successor to Sony’s Aibo robot dog.

New Robot League

A robot called Nao from the French company Aldebaran Robotics has been selected by the RoboCup Organisation Committee to replace the Sony Aibo in the Standard Platform League, as of the 2008 edition of the competition.

The new humanoid robot includes voice recognition, vision, speech synthesis, "emotional expressions", a WiFi connections, and will is based on Linux. Nao stands 22 inches high and has 23 degrees of freedom. The exterior shell of the robot was created by Parisian designers Thomas Knoll and Erik Arlen. The robot's shell can be customizable by the user. The robot supports URBI (Universal Real-time Behavior Interface) scripting language.