Photo credits: Studio Number One (SNO)

On March 8, International Women’s Day (IWD) we celebrate the political, socioeconomic and cultural achievements of women and the women right’s movement towards gender equality. “Whilst the social and political rights of women are greater in some places than others, there is no country where gender equality has been achieved” says Mary Evans, professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science in her book “The persistence of gender inequality” (Polity Press 2017). In 2022 this situation has not changed either globally or at the European level as indicated in the EU Gender Equality index for 2020 where the average of the EU is 67.4% and the maximum is Sweden with 83.8%. Although there has been a clear commitment from the European Union on gender equality (specially in innovation and science), there are still structural forms of inequality that must be challenged and changed. It is not the aim of this article to analyse or comment on those, but to show what is being done and is available, especially in the European Union, for us to contribute as individuals and as a community towards gender equality in the field of robotics.

Any journey starts with a first step, so I asked Maja Hadziselimovic, member of the Board of Directors of euRobotics and active United Nations (UN) Generation Equality champion of women and girls in STEM, how a person (no matter the gender) can contribute to gender equality. She told me “There are three actions you can take to be part of Generation Equality: Empower women and girls in science; raise awareness about gender equality and raise the visibility of women in science”. So, let’s explore different activities linked to those actions.

Maja Hadziselimovic (Photo Credits: Marijana Bicvic / UN Women)

Empower women

Although inequalities still exist, the EU has a well-established regulatory framework on gender equality and has made significant progress over the last decades. In March 2020, the European Commission published the EU Gender Equality Strategy for 2020-2025, setting out their commitment towards “a Union where women and men, girls and boys, in all their diversity, are free to pursue their chosen path in life, have equal opportunities to thrive, and can equally participate in and lead our European society.”

Thus, it is not surprising that the EC is making an eligibility criterion for all public bodies, higher education institutions and research organisations to have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) in order to participate in Horizon Europe. Those looking for extra information on GEPs, can take a look at the work of EU-H2020 project SPEAR (Supporting and Implementing Plans for Gender Equality in Academia and Research) which provides the SPEAR’s compass guide, to help you draft and implement gender equality measures in your Research Performing Organisation (RPO); and GEARING ROLES: Gender Equality Actions in Research Institutions to traNsform Gender ROLES with examples of implementation of GEPs in universities and research organisations, because ensuring effective implementation and avoiding resistance is not always easy.

Empowering women can also be done outside the EC sphere, at a national or local level. This is the case with the work of Ana-Maria Stancu, CEO of Bucharest Robots, founder of the association E-Civis, and member of the Board of Directors of euRobotics. She has a personal and professional mission to empower women and girls in the field of robotics in Romania: “One of the hashtags we are using in our work in Romania is #vinrobotii (robots are coming). We are not using this as a threat, but as a reminder that the robots are here and will develop further. So far, what I can see in my day-to-day work is that women are generally perceived as outsiders in this industry. Every time I talk to a potential client or public authority, the general discussion is led by me, but the minute they have a technical question, they unconsciously turn to my male colleagues. The main problem I see is that most of them do this unintentionally – which makes it even more problematic. It means that this perception is deeply rooted in people’s minds.” This probably sounds familiar to you and gender bias can be found in different fields. A good read in this regard is the book of “Invisible Women” (Chatto & Windus 2019) by Caroline Criado Perez.

Ana-Maria Stancu (Photo Credits: Scuola di Robotica)

Ana-Maria underlines how is important to be persistent in bringing women into the field of robotics: “There is no doubt that the robotics industry will see a tremendous growth in the very near future and will need lots of specialists. We have to make sure that this development will not include only men but will also reflect the activity of women. I believe this day – International Women’s Day – should be a reminder that we have to do more for more women in technical fields like robotics.”

To make sure women are not left behind in the robotics industry, Ana -Maria promotes robotics classes to all children and encourages girls to participate. The E-Civis association also organises robotics and programming summer schools just for girls, so they can learn in a pressure-free environment. From her experience in teaching programming and robotics in public schools in rural areas, she has no doubt that “girls are as interested as boys in this field. Every child loves robots! Let’s use this love to teach and encourage all of them to build them!”

Programming summer school for girls by E-Civis (Photo credits: E-Civis)

For those who do not have the time or opportunity to be involved in mentorship or for this level of commitment, there is one activity that all of us can do in our everyday life, this is to fight micro-aggressions, correct unconscious bias, and avoid what Rebecca Solnit calls “mansplaining” in her book “Men Explain Things To Me” (Haymarket Books, 2014), and provide a sexist-free workplace. An easy and hilarious read for women and men that offers different tools to fight sexism in the workplace is “Feminist Fight Club” by Jessica Bennet (Harper Wave, 2016). Of course, there is a multitude of excellent research papers, policy reports and books you can read, and just having a coffee and listening to or supporting your female colleagues can be already of great help.

If you are a member of euRobotics, I would like you to encourage your female colleagues or employees to present themselves as candidates for the next elections. Our research board is screaming for some women power!

Raise awareness on gender equality

Integrating the gender dimension in research ensures that researchers question gender norms and stereotypes and address the evolving needs and social roles of women and men. It is a matter of improving scientific excellence and increasing the number of women in science, research and innovation. Networks and portals born as FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects, are still in place nowadays to raise awareness on gender equality, provide training and share knowledge. This is the case of GENDERACTION, GE Academy: Gender Equality Academy, GENDER-NET PLUS and GENPORT.

Since 2013, the European Commission publishes every three years the “She Figures” report that monitors the state of gender equality in research and innovation in Europe. The ERA Progress report also monitors the implementation of the objectives set by the EC: gender equality in scientific careers, gender balance in decision making and integration of the gender dimension in R&I.

As an individual you can publicly show your support to gender equality. You can join the Women’s Day march in your city or raise awareness in your social media or your workplace. You can download women’s rights posters and square images by Studio Number One for free here. Be part of the wave of change today.

Raise visibility of women in science

In 2014 a new grassroots community was started to support women in robotics across the world – the Women in Robotics network. Since 2020, the network founded by Andra Keay and Sabine Hauert has grown exponentially and become a non-profit organisation in the U.S. This global community supports women working (or interested in working) in the field of robotics. Their activities include local networking events, outreach, education, mentoring and the promotion of positive role models in robotics. They also publish every year the “list of women in robotics you need to know” on Ada Lovelace Day (13 October). Why not to join the network today? https://womeninrobotics.org/

On International Women’s Day (8 March) The European Commission celebrates the #EUWomen4future campaign and the EU Prize for Women Innovators with a seminar co-hosted by Commissioner Mariya Gabriel and President Roberta Metsola. The event highlights women’s professional achievements in culture, education, sport and science. You can attend the event online here and still use the hashtag.

Women in Robotics publication on Ada Lovelace’s Day. (Photo credit: Women in Robotics)

This article shows a peak of a long list of projects, activities and work concerning gender equality in the area of science and technology (mainly in the EU), and some specifically in robotics. We are in a period of changes, of “Me too”, of breaking ceilings and structural inequality, of building the future we want for our sisters, our daughters, our partners, and most important of all, for ourselves. Don’t be afraid to be challenging, don’t be afraid to be loud.

Team HEARTS’s robot Pepper. Photo credits: European Robotics League

The smart city of Milton Keynes hosted the first edition of the European Robotics League (ERL)- Smart Cities Robotic Challenge (SciRoc Challenge).  Ten European teams met in the shopping mall of Centre:mk to compete against each other in five futuristic scenarios in which robots assist humans serving coffee orders, picking products in a grocery shop or bringing medical aid. This robotics competition aims at benchmarking robots using a ranking system that allows teams to assess their performance and compare it with others.  Find out the winning teams of the SciRoc Challenge 2019…

The ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge

The European Robotics League (ERL) was launched in 2016 under the umbrella of SPARC- the Partnership for Robotics in Europe. This pan-European robotics competition builds on the success of the EU-funded projects: RoCKIn, euRathlon, EuRoC and ROCKEU2. The SciRoc Horizon 2020 project took over the reins of the league in 2018, bringing in the expertise from  the University of the West of England, Bristol, the Advanced Center for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC), the Association of Instituto Superior Técnico for Research and Development (IST-ID), the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), euRobotics aisbl, Politecnico di Milano, the Open University, the Sapienza University of Rome, the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. The SciRoc consortium carefully designed the new biennial ERL Smart Cities Robotics challenge where robots from all three ERL leagues (Consumer, Professional and Emergency Service Robots) come together to interact with a smart infrastructure in a familiar urban setting.

Daniele Nardi, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Sapienza University of Rome and Head of the Technical Committee of the SciRoc Challenge, explains that the project consortium chose the topic of smart cities because “Robotics competitions in a smart city are projected into the future, since it is likely that smart cities will be among the first places populated by robots”.  Professor Nardi adds that they structured the competition through a series of episodes, each of them being a specific technical challenge for a robotic system and at the same time representing a situation that would be typically encountered in a smart city populated with robots.

(Top) Pepper robot taking the elevator. (Middle) TIAGo robot checking an order.(Bottom) TeamBAthDrones Research testing. Photo credits: European Robotics League

Benchmarking through competitions

Benchmarking has been and still is a hot topic in the robotics community. How can we compare robots’ and robot systems’ performance? In 2013, the RoCKIn and euRathlon projects started exploring and developing a benchmarking methodology for robotics competitions. But, why benchmark robots through competitions? The answer from Matteo Matteuci, Assistant Professor at the Politecnico di Milano and one of the researchers behind the development of the ERL benchmarking methodology, is clear: “competitions are fun, they put you in realistic situations outside of your own lab”.

The European Robotics League approach to benchmarking is based on the definition of two separate, but interconnected, types of benchmarks: Functionality Benchmarks (FBMs) and Task Benchmarks (TBMs). A functionality benchmark evaluates a robot’s performance in specific functionalities, such as navigation, object perception, manipulation, etc. Whereas, a task benchmark assesses the performance of the robot system facing complex tasks that require using different functionalities. Matteucci comments “We have gone from a big once in a while costly competition to frequent, sustainable and repeatable competitions in a regional net of laboratories and hubs. The ERL is a big open lab running tournaments during the whole year. The competitions are structured in a way that makes them repeatable experiments you can compare.” In the case of the Sciroc Challenge he adds “it is somehow in the middle of the two, it’s a bigger event made up of small tasks in a public venue. Each task benchmark requires different functionalities, but it is more based on one than the others. For example, the episode of the elevator is mostly focused on HRI but also requires navigation and perception. The door is a mobile manipulation task but requires navigation and perception. SciRoc can be seen as a dry run of possible benchmarks that can be later introduced into the ERL local tournaments. In the case of the “Through the door” episode set up, it’s going to be deployed within 6 months in the facility of EUROBENCH project in Genova for benchmarking humanoid robots.”

(Top) Team CATIE Robots. (Bottom) Team b-it-bots robot arm platform. Photo credits: European Robotics League

The SciRoc challenge has also introduced a new term to the European Robotics League terminology: “the Episode”. Matteucci explains that this term refers more to the set up than to a category of benchmark. “The episode provides a narrative for the general public. SciRoc is a robotics event in the middle of a city in contact with people, so people are more interested in the story and perspective than the pure engineering benchmarking part. That’s why we came up with the short stories in the context of the smart cities.”

The ERL local tournaments have specific TBMs and FBMs for each of the leagues. With the purpose to align the ERL tournaments with the new SciRoc challenge, the leagues had to integrate new benchmarks. This was the case of the ERL Consumer Service robotics league, that takes place in a home or domestic environment.  Pedro Lima, Professor in Robotics at IST university of Lisbon and Head of the Technical Committee of the ERL Consumer league explains that “the tasks the robots have to perform in the apartment (navigate around the house, detecting and picking objects, etc.) are very similar to the ones they have to perform in the shopping mall. We made changes in some of the TBMs to be more in line with the requirements of the coffee shop environment. Also, the task of opening a door is not new for the ERL Consumer league, but in the “through the door” episode the door has a handle to add complexity and also encourage humanoid robots to participate.”

(Top) Team SocRob’s robot Monarch. (Bottom) Public watching robots delivering coffee orders. Photo credits: European Robotics League

SciRoc Challenge 2019 winners

The ERL Smart Cities Robotic challenge finals took place during the weekend and many visitors could see the robots successfully perform different complex tasks.

The awards ceremony was held at the Centre:MK competition arena on Saturday afternoon. Matthew Studley, SciRoc project coordinator, welcomed everyone and opened the ceremony. Then followed a short speech by Enrico Motta, Director of SciRoc Challenge 2019, thanking teams and sponsors Milton Keynes Council, Centre:mk, PAL Robotics, OCADO Technology, COSTA Coffee, Cranfield University and Catapult.

The winners of the SciRoc Challenge 2019 in each episode are:

Deliver coffee shop orders (E03)

1. Winner: Leeds Autonomous Service Robots
2. Runner up: eNTiTy

Take the elevator (E04)

1. Winner: Gentlebots
2. Runner up: eNTiTy

Shopping pick and pack (E07)

1. Winner: b-it-bots
2. Runner up: CATIE Robotics

Through the door (E10)

1. Winner: b-it-bots

Fast delivery of emergency pills (E12)

1. Winner: TeamBathDrones Research
2. Runner up: UWE Aero

Public choice Award: Most social robot

1. Winner: eNTiTy

For  information on teams’ scoring, visit the websites of the European Robotics League and SciRoc Challenge.

(Top) Leeds Autonomous Service Robots. (Middle) Team b-it-bots. (Middle-bottom) TeamBathDrones Research. (Bottom) Gentlebots and eNTiTy. Photo credits: European Robotics League

Epilogue

This summer our colleague and friend Gerhard Kraetzschmar passed away. Gerhard was Professor for Autonomous Systems at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, RoboCup Trustee and Head of the ERL Professional Service Robots league. He believed robotics competitions are an excellent platform for challenging and showcasing robotics technologies, and for developing skills of future engineers and scientists. I am sure his legacy will inspire new generations of roboticist, the same way that he inspired us.

Get involved in robotics competitions, they are much more than fun.

See you all at SciRoc Challenge 2021!

Missed coverage of the teams participating in SciRoc Challenge? Find it here.

TeamBathDrones Research’s aerial robot. Photo: European Robotics League

The European Robotics League (ERL) presents the SciRoc Challenge, a new robotics competition on smart cities that occurs every two years in a European city. Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 framework programme, the first SciRoc challenge takes place in the city of Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. In the context of smart shopping, robots interact with the Milton Keynes Data Hub (MK:DataHub) in a shopping mall. They update stock lists, take customers’ orders or find out the location of a person in need. On the third day of the competition, teams continued competing in the five different episodes and the public could see the first trials in the emergency category. The aerial teams were ready to start delivering autonomously the first-aid kit to the mannequin placed inside the flying arena!

Emergency

The Smart Cities Robotics challenge has three categories: human-robot interaction & mobility, manipulation and emergency.  The emergency category is inspired by the European Robotics League Emergency Service Robots. Due to the constraints associated with the competition taking place inside a shopping mall, the SciRoc consortium designed the episodes only for the aerial domain.

The Fast delivery of emergency pills (E12) episode focuses on tasks addressed by small vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aerial robots in indoor spaces where Global Positioning System (GPS) coverage is not guaranteed.

Episode (E12): Fast delivery of emergency pills

The Fast delivery of emergency pills (E12) episode aims at pushing the state of the art in the context of Smart Cities and last-centimeter delivery, focusing on autonomous capabilities and indoor navigation for aerial robots. This episode benchmarks some of the key functionalities autonomous aerial robots require to operate in indoor environments, such as localisation, trajectory planning and obstacle detection and avoidance.

The main functionalities of this episode are autonomous navigation in GPS-denied environments and autonomous obstacle detection and avoidance. Another functionality necessary for completing the episode is to carry and deliver objects in specific locations.

Teams have 20 minutes to complete this episode in which an aerial robot must deliver a first-aid kit with a medication to a person that is feeling unwell. A referee, in the role of a medical manager, attaches the first-aid kit to the aerial robot. The robot must then request the estimated location of the person to the data hub and fly autonomously to it as fast as possible, whilst detecting and avoiding obstacles on the way. Once it arrives to the location it must land nearby the person, detach the first-aid kit and return to the starting point.

(Top) UWE Aero and TeamBathDrones Research’s testing before their competition trials. (Bottom) Aerial robot approaching the delivery area. Photo: European Robotics League

The European Robotics League (ERL) Emergency Robots competition already proposed the challenge of a drone-based delivery for emergency situations. The teams participating in ERL Emergency 2017 in Piombino and ERL Emergency 2019  in Seville,  showcased accurate and fast delivery capabilities in an outdoor realistic post-disaster scenario. The task benchmarks of Episode E12 were aligned with the ones of the ERL Emergency league competition and adapted to an indoor environment without access to GPS coverage.

“While drone-based delivery of items has been a popular topic in recent years with a lot of media attention, they all assume that the aerial platform will be operating in outdoor obstacle-free spaces. Outdoor operation for aerial robots based on GPS can be generally assumed due to the existence of low-cost commercial products offering mature performances in a wide variety of applications. Despite this, emergencies may take place in any scenario, and there is no guarantee of a communication infrastructure or even access to GPS” explains Francisco J. Perez Grau, Senior Researcher at the Advanced Center for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) and lead member of episode E12 technical committee.

The obstacles in the competition arena are those normally present in a shopping mall, such as plants, tables, chairs, shelves, lights and banners. These objects can be disposed in two different configurations, one easy and one hard, so the difficulty of the episode can gradually be increased. In the easy configuration there are only vertical obstacles between the take-off and delivery locations. This means that aerial robots should be able to reach the person’s location by performing 2D navigation at a constant height. In the case of the hard configuration where there are vertical obstacles, but also objects on the ground and hanging from the ceiling, the aerial robots must perform true 3D navigation.

(Top) Sketch of a possible episode E12 arena set up. (Bottom) Competition arena at the Centre:mk. Photo: European Robotics League

MK Data Hub Interaction
Milton Keynes, the city hosting the ERL Smart Cities Robotics challenge, is equipped with the MK:DataHub, a data acquisition and management infrastructure consisting of live sensors that provide information about different aspects of the functionalities of the city, such as transport, environment, energy, water, etc.. The data gathered by the aerial robots in this episode is communicated to the MK:DataHub infrastructure to contribute to the smart city data platform.

“The robot must interact with the MK Data Hub to know the location of the person that needs the medication. The robot also communicates its own position and status, for example, going to the customer location, dropping the firs-aid kit, going back to the starting point, etc. All this information exchanged with the data hub is displayed on a screen for the public and also to the referees’ displays so they can see if the data is correct or not, and validate it” explains Martino Mensio, Research Assistant at the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) and one of the referees of episode E12.

(Top) Display with the information for the public. (Bottom) SciRoc Management-Episode 12 interface for referees. Photo: European Robotics League

The aerial teams

The teams participating in episode E12 are UWE Areo and TeamBathDrones Research, both from the United Kingdom. UWE Aero is a rookie team in the ERL competitions, while TeamBathDrones already participated in ERL Emergency 2019 local tournament in Seville.

The aerial platforms used in this episode are powered by electricity and for safety reasons, they are limited to a maximum diagonal size of 80cm. On the first day of the competition, the SciRoc referees assessed the robot’s compliance with the rules and performed the safety checks. Teams have been testing their robots in the flying arena and started today the competition runs to qualify for the final.

“The tasks in SciRoc are more difficult than the ones in other competitions such as MAAXX Europe. For example, the obstacle avoidance task is not in MAAXX and the localisation is more complex as it needs to be very accurate” explains Jordan Cormack, PhD student at UWE Bristol and team leader of UWE Aero. Conrad Brindle, student of aerospace engineering also at UWE Bristol, adds “one of the challenges has been finding a space like this arena to test our drone. It is relatively safe to test localisation and obstacle avoidance with a land robot in a lab, but in the case of the aerial robots they require a flying arena with specific infrastructure. This week we have been also developing, not only testing.”

(Top) Team UWE Aero testing waypoints. (Bottom) UWE Aero’s aerial robot. Photo: European Robotics League

For detailed information in this episode including the evaluation criteria, check the  SciRoc Rulebook – episode E12

Don’t miss tomorrow’s Day Four recap on the SciRoc challenge finals.

Missed coverage of previous day? Find it here.

Team bi-it-bots KUKA platform for the shopping pick and pack episode. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

The ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge 2019 takes place from 17-21st September in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. Funded by the European Commission under the SciRoc Horizon 2020 project, this new challenge of the European Robotics League (ERL) focuses on the role of robots in smart cities. The competition includes five different episodes or scenarios under three categories: human-robot interaction & mobility, emergency and manipulation. On the second day of the competition teams kept working on improving their scores to secure a place in the finals.

Manipulation
The SciRoc episodes under this category require robots to achieve manipulation tasks, applying some of the task benchmarks (TBMs) of the ERL Professional and the ERL Consumer Service Robots leagues. The episodes are open to robots able to navigate, and equipped with arms and/or effectors for the manipulation of objects. The episodes in which teams can participate are: Shopping pick and pack (E07) and Through the door (E10).

Episode (E07): Shopping pick and pack
This episode sponsored by Ocado Technology addresses the problem of delivering customised orders in a grocery shop. The customer uses an app on a tablet to select a limited number of items and makes an order. The system processes the order and sends it to the robot that will collect the items from the shop shelves and put them into a delivery area.

The main functionality tested in this episode is mobile manipulation of an autonomous robot, although it also requires object perception.

Team bi-it-bots testing. Photo: European Robotics League

In the latest years, mobile manipulation has become a problem of interest among researchers due to the variety and complexity of challenges and robot capabilities that are involved.

“Different objects need different type of grasping. There is not a universal type of grasping, so robots must know which grasp to use in each case. For this episode we chose a range of packaged products, from deformable objects such as a pack of seeds to reflective objects like a jar of honey or a metallic tube of tomato puree. On the shelves there are rows of the same product, this makes it more challenging for the robot to grab the object without damaging it or the ones surrounding it. It is also important that the robot is capable of understanding if it failed to achieve the task, requiring it to try again” comments Roberto Capobianco, lecturer at the Sapienza University of Rome and lead member of the technical committee of Episode E07.

The competition arena reproduces a grocery shop. It has shelves with products and a delivery area. The role of the robot in this context is to support and provide customers with the deliveries they ordered. It also can assist the shop staff by connecting to the data hub and automatically updating the list of products, take care of stock or check if the shelves need to be refilled.

“Ocado was interested in this episode from the very beginning and contributed actively to the rulebook. They helped us design the layout of the arena to make it realistic and at the same time closer to their idea of how a smart grocery shop could be in the (near) future” explains Capobianco.

(Top) TIAGo robot picking a tube of tomato puree. (Bottom) Team CATIE Robots testing the picking task. Photo: European Robotics League.

Due to the complexity of the manipulation tasks, only two teams participate in this episode: CATIE Robotics and b-it-bots.
“Yesterday we tested successfully the navigation and taking orders tasks. Today we are focusing on the second part of the episode, which involves detecting the different objects, grabing them and putting them in the red boxes. We expect the robot to be able to complete the full sequence tomorrow” says Clement Pinet, software engineer at CATIE and team member of CATIE Robotics.

Episode (E10): Through the door
This episode aims at evaluating the capability of an autonomous robot to interact with a hinged door. Hinged doors are common in human environments and probably, one of the pieces of engineering most closely matched to human capabilities and limitations. This means that they are easy to use for a standard person but can be difficult or impossible to operate for those who do not match that standard criteria. For instance, people with disabilities, small children, animals and mobile machines such as robots.
“In a long-term view, robots will live together with people in their houses and work in a human environment. It is important that robots can manage things that are common for us, one of those things are doors. If you have a robot at home to assist you, it should be able to open the door to go from a room to another without your help. This episode is interesting for society for this reason, and for researchers because it is a complex manipulation task. The robot has to manipulate an object that has multiple mobile elements that need to be moved at the same time. When we open a door, we move the handle and at the same time we move the door.” explains Giulio Fontana, research engineer at Politecnico di Milano, and lead member of the technical committee of Episode E10.

The main functionality tested in this episode is interaction with physical objects, although navigation and mapping are also required to complete the tasks.

The robots must identify the door, approach it, open it and go through it. In each run the configuration of the handle, the torque (e.g. simulating a small rock behind it or a big box) and the colour of the surface may change; pushing teams to find a more general approach to the problem.

(Top) The Toyota HSR robot attempts to grab the door handle. (Bottom) Team b-it-bots setting up to participate in the episode “Through the door”. Photo: European Robotics League

Minh Nguyen, master student at the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and team member of b-it-bots comments “The complexity is solving this problem in a general way. There are many sensors involved in the task of opening a door: vision, tactile, force torque, etc. and humans have a background knowledge of how to open doors or operate them. We have been interacting with different types of doors all our life. Getting information from the interaction between the robot and the door will help us to better integrate all the different aspects necessary for opening it.”

The “Through the door” episode is funded by EUROBENCH Horizon 2020 project with the aim to contribute and consolidate a benchmarking methodology for human-centred robots such as prostheses, exoskeletons and humanoids. Researchers and engineers behind the Modular Active Door for RObot Benchmarking (MADROB) have developed a task benchmark (TBM) that can also be used within the benchmarking at competitions of the European Robotics League.

“For the SciRoc challenge we use only the motion control part. The sensor part is tailored to the requirements of EUROBENCH and is not used in this competition” says Fontana.

Martino Migliavacca, CEO of Nova Labs, a spin-off of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics laboratory of Politecnico di Milano and partner in MADROB, explains how the sensors on both sides of the door work. “We measure with sensors the distance to the floor, so we can know if the robot has gone through the door or not. In this image you can see the signal of a sensor located above the door handle, the drop on the signal means that a robot or a person has gone through the door.”

Signal from a door sensor. Photo: Nova Labs

The two teams competing in this episode use commercial robotics platforms. The team Leeds Autonomous Service Robots participated with a PAL Robotics TIAGo robot, while the team b-it-bots participated with the current RoboCup@Home domestic standard platform: the Toyota HSR.

Team Leeds Autonomous Service Robots. Photo: European Robotics League

For more information on the episodes including the evaluation criteria, check the SciRoc Rulebook – episode E07 and SciRoc Rulebook – Episode E10.

Don’t miss tomorrow’s Day Three recap on emergency drones in urban environments.

The ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge (SciRoc Challenge) includes five different episodes around the topic of smart shopping. Ten teams from five different countries have travelled to Milton Keynes, UK, to participate in this unique biennial event that brings together the three European Robotics League (ERL) competitions: consumer, professional and emergency.

SciRoc challenge adds the new concept of episodes to the ERL benchmarking methodology. An episode aims at targeting one or two functionalities (tested during a specific ERL Functionality Benchmark, FBM) within an operational context. For instance, delivering coffee orders or taking an elevator. In order to complete an episode, the robot might also be required to integrate other functionalities commonly used in a social environment, such as navigation or speech recognition.

Teams participate in one or more episodes during the week, and the best two will classify for the finals on Saturday.

Human-Robot interaction and Mobility
The SciRoc challenge is organised in three categories, being one of them the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and mobility. The episodes of this category involve robots able to show social behaviours, such as verbally interacting with (human) customers or navigating respecting proxemics, in line with the ERL Consumer Service league. Any robot, wheeled or legged, with navigational and verbal communication can participate in the two episodes available in this category: Deliver coffee shop orders (E03) and Take the elevator (E04)

Episode (E03): Deliver coffee shop orders
In this episode sponsored by COSTA Coffee the robot assists the staff of a coffee shop by taking care of the customers. The robot must recognise the status of all tables (i.e. Need serving, Already served, Needs cleaning, and Table ready), take orders, report the number of free tables, and deliver objects such as food and beverages to and from the customers’ tables.

Deliver coffee shop orders set up. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

“The question I had in mind when designing the episode of Deliver coffee shop orders was: how could a robot best assist humans in a shop? We are not talking about taking their job, but to help them. For example, a catering robot can assist human servers at peak hours by handling the manual works at a fast pace and reducing the customer response time” explains Meysam Basiri, Researcher at Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST) and member of the technical committee of episode E03.

The main functionalities evaluated in this episode are people perception and object perception. However, the episode also requires other functionalities such as navigation and speech recognition.

Team Gentlebots setting up the TIAGo robot for taking orders. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

The robot has 15 minutes to execute sequentially and without any interruption three phases: 1) recognising the status of all the tables and report it, 2) serving an order and 3) greeting and guiding a new customer to the table.
As HRI is not the main focus of the episode, the selection of the menu orders has been left open for the teams to decide. They can simply ask the customers to communicate the item numbers through speech, use QR codes, click the items in a display, etc.

Robots will also report their position in the shop, the table status and the orders to the smart MK data hub; this way the referees and the person at the counter will have access to the information in real-time.

The four teams competing in this episode are SocRob, Gentlebots, eNTiTy and Leeds Autonomous Service Robots. All the teams participate with the PAL Robotics TIAGo platform, except SocRob, that participates with the Monarch platform from IDmind.

Carlos Azevedo, PhD student and team member of SocRob comments, “This robot was developed to interact with children with cancer in a hospital. The group of researchers of the MONARCH project asked the kids to draw a robot and used the drawings to design the robotics platform. Therefore, it is not very tall and has that kind of cute face. People seem to empathise easily with the robot, which makes easier human-robot interaction“. He adds that the team has specifically developed for the coffee shop episode an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to establish conversation with the customers “we thought it would be more interesting to start a human-like conversation when the robot doesn’t, for example, understand a menu order. Sorry, did you ask for A or for B?”

Team SocRob and their Monarch robot platform. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

Although today some of the teams experienced unexpected problems with their software, the referees are confident that their performance will improve in the next days.

Episode (E04): Take the elevator
In this HRI & mobility episode, the robot must take the elevator together with regular customers of the shopping mall to reach a service located on another floor. The robot must enter and exit the elevator at the right floor in the presence of people and interact with the MK data hub to know the floor it needs to go. Due to safety reasons and with the purpose of showing to the public how interactions inside the elevator are happening, the episode takes place in a realistic mock elevator.
The main functionality tested in this episode is navigation respecting proxemics, and it also requires other functionalities like spoken dialogue beyond command and people detection.

Take the elevator set up. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

Luca Iocchi, Assistant Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, and lead member of Episode E04 technical committee explains that in this episode there is a focus also on the social aspect. The robot needs to negotiate the space with humans inside the elevator, so it may need to use human social protocols. “When we take the elevator with other people, we do our best to find a comfortable space in that confined environment. That negotiation of space requires social communication. In this context, a robot needs to use these social protocols to achieve its goal. If there is missing information, ask the human. One important, and novel, element of this competition is that the customers are volunteers with no technical knowledge, and they are also involved in the evaluation of the robots”.

(Top) Image from the camera inside the elevator. (Bottom) Volunteers act as customers and interact with the robots. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

This episode has a Human-robot Interaction questionnaire as part of the performance evaluation and scoring. The questionnaire has been developed by Lu Wang, PhD student at Sapienza University of Rome, and member of the technical committee of episode E04; with the external collaboration of Mary Ellen Foster, Senior lecturer on Human-Robot Interaction at the University of Glasgow, UK. “We developed this questionnaire to evaluate users’ perceptions in a real context. We investigated previous work done in this type of questionnaires and filmed an experiment in a similar context to the one of the episode. We asked users to select from a list of behaviours which ones they saw. From their answers we designed what is now the HRI questionnaire we are using in episode E04” explains Lu Wang.

The efforts to generate this questionnaire and the episode rulebook are now part of the scientific paper “Developing a Questionnaire to Evaluate Customers’ Perception in the Smart City Robotic Challenge” that will be presented at the 28th Edition of the IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man 2019).

Teams members, referees and volunteers. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

The award for the best social robot has unleashed teams’ creativity when developing the human-robot interaction. Referees have already seen volunteers laughing at some of the robots’ comments.

“Humans are helpful by nature. They want to take part in activities when they see a robot that reminds them of the future. If the robot is more human-like and behaves more like a human, it will be better accepted by customers. In that context we can also predict some actions or behaviours of the customers. We use the Pepper robot because it has a soft voice and a broad range of gestures, therefore is less likely to scare people. If a robot relies on being expressive, it can rely on people to help it.” says Daniel Delgado Bellamy, research associate at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and team member of HEARTS.

Daniel and Pepper robot. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

In this first day, the five participating teams (HEARTS, Gentlebots, Leeds Autonomous Service Robots, eNTiTy and Robotics Lab UC3) performed without major problems.

Team Gentlebots completed the episode in the first day with a TIAGO robot they loaned from SciRoc platinum sponsor PAL robotics. “We have been working with TIAGo since June this year. Our research team focuses in cognitive architecture oriented to social robots. We chose the platform without the manipulator, because we were only interested in the social navigation and dialogue. TIAGo is definitely an easy and powerful platform to work with” says Francisco Martin Rico, Associate Professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, and Team leader of Gentlebots.

Team Gentlebots from the Rey Juan Carlos University and the University of León, Spain. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

For a detailed description of the episodes and the evaluation criteria, check the SciRoc Rulebook – episode E03 and SciRoc Rulebook – Episode E04.

Watch this space for Day Two: robot manipulation in human environments!

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The city of Milton Keynes hosts from the 17th to the 21st of September the European Robotics League – Smart Cities Robotics Challenge (SciRoc Challenge). For the first time, international researchers in robotics and artificial intelligence meet in a shopping mall to demonstrate the state of the art in robotics within the context of smart cities and specifically smart shopping.

The European Robotics League, funded by the European Commission to advance research, development and innovation in robotics and artificial intelligence, is the umbrella for three robotics competitions: ERL Consumer, ERL Emergency and ERL Professional service robots. All three leagues meet every two years in the ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge, showcasing how real robots can make our lives better in urban environments.

The Challenge
The SciRoc challenge will be held in the smart shopping mall of the Centre:MK. The challenge focuses on smart shopping and is divided into a series of episodes, each consisting of a task to be performed addressing specific research challenges. In order to accomplish their tasks, robots will have to cooperate with the simulated digital infrastructure of a smart shopping mall. Although the competing robots will face mock scenarios, the environment and difficulties are intended to be as realistic as possible, including the interaction with people from the public.

The episodes are organised into three categories:

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Mobility, focuses on robots able to show social behaviour tasks such as verbal interaction with humans.

Manipulation, focuses on robots able to achieve manipulation tasks.

Emergency, defines tasks addressed autonomously by small aerial robots

The SciRoc consortium has designed the episodes with the collaboration of external experts from research and industry in the different categories.

The five episodes that are part of the Smart Cities Robotics challenge, and have been chosen by the robotics community from a previous list of fourteen are:

Deliver coffee shop orders (E03)
In this episode the robot will assist customers in a coffee shop by taking orders and bringing objects to and from customers’ tables.
The main functionality evaluated in this episode is people perception. Additional side functionalities are navigation, speech synthesis and recognition.

Team SocRob and their robot MOnarCH getting ready to serve coffees. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

Take the elevator(E04)
The robot must take the elevator crowded with customers to reach a service located in another floor.
The robot should interact with the MK:DataHub to discover which floor it must reach to accomplish its task. The robot must be able to take the elevator together with regular customers of the shopping mall.

Shopping pick and pack (E07)
The robot is in one the booths of the mall. On the shelf of the booth are the goods displayed for sale to the customers.
The customers can place orders through a tablet. The robot must move behind the display and collect the requested packages for the customer, place them in a box, and place the box on a tray where the customer can pick it up.

Through the door (E10)
Doors are ubiquitous in human environments. There are many types of doors, some of which are easier to operate than others for a robot.
In this episode the robot will identify a door, approach it and open it completely within a specified tolerance from 90°.

Fast delivery of emergency pills (E12)
The aerial robot must attend an emergency situation in which a first-aid kit needs to be delivered to a customer.
The robot must be able to fly autonomously to the customer location as fast as possible.

Teams can participate in one or more episodes depending on to their research interests.

The teams
A total of 10 teams from 5 different countries classified to compete in the first edition of the ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge.
The teams participating in the SciRoc Challenge 2019 are:

1. SocRob@Home – The Soccer Robots or Society of Robots (SocRob) team is a long-term research project of the Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal. Funded in 1998, the team has a broad experience participating in robotics competitions such as RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup@Home, RocKin@Homeand and ERL Consumer Robots. The team has special interest in the topic of HRI and mobility and will participate in Episode 3 – Deliver coffee shop orders.

2. Robotics Lab UC3 – This multidisciplinary research group from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, has previously participated in the ERL Consumer Robots league with one of the TIAGO platforms sponsored by PAL Robotics. The team will demonstrate their robot abilities to interact with humans in the Episode 4 – Take the elevator.

3. Gentlebots – Gentlebots is a team of researchers in robotics from the Rey Juan Carlos University and the University of León, Spain. Their research focus is on software development that allows robots to exhibit intelligent behaviours and they have competed in RoboCup@Home. They will participate in Episode 3 and Episode 4.

4. b-it-bots – The team from the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany, has a broad experience with industrial and domestic robots in RoboCup@Work and RoboCup@Home. Winners of the ERL Professional Robots Season 2018-2019, they will participate in Episode 7 – Shopping pick and pack and Episode 10- Open the door, both episodes involve manipulation tasks.

Team b-it-bots. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

“You learn a lot of things at University, but not always how to apply them in real life. Robotics competitions are the best place for students to use their knowledge in real scenarios and learn from mistakes. In this competition we are solving problems which do not have a solution yet, so the students cannot download a tutorial or watch a YouTube video, they need create their own engineered solutions. This is learning by doing, not learning by listening” says Deebul Nair, b-it-bots Team Manager.

5. Leeds Autonomous Service Robots – The team of the newly established AI group of the University of Leeds, UK, studies long-term decision making and adaptation. They will demonstrate how it is applied in robotics by participating in Episodes 3, 4 and 10.

6. HEARTS – The Healthcare Engineering and Assistive Robotics Technology and Services (HEARTS) team is based in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, a collaboration between the University of the West of England (UWE) and the University of Bristol, UK. The team was formed to provide an opportunity for students to get hands-on experience of developing assistive robots that are robust and reliable to assist people in a range of situations. The HEARTS will participate in Episode 4 – Take the elevator.

“Participating in the SciRoc challenge gives me the opportunity to use a social robot platform like Pepper in applications different from the ones of my PhD. Pepper is designed for interaction with humans, so it is a good platform for the episode of the elevator in which we are competing” explains Beth Mackey, PhD student and member of the HEART team.

Team HEARTS. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

7. UWE Aero – This aerial team of the University of the West of England, UK, is made up of a group of students interested in aerospace projects, focusing in Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Their backgrounds in aerospace engineering, 3D printing and computer science are a perfect combination to participate in Episode 12 – Fast delivery of emergency pills.

8. CATIE Robotics – The technology transfer center CATIE, France, created in early 2018 this robotics team with the aim of exploring service robotics. CATIE robotics was created in early 2018, and has participated at RoboCup@Home. The team aims to explore service robotics from an application-driven perspective.

“Competitions bring together people from different technical backgrounds under a common goal. They give visibility and the opportunity to be part of a community of experts. Robotics competitions are always very motivating” says Remi Fabre, Team Leader of CATIE robotics.

Team CATIE robotics setting up their robot. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

They will apply their knowledge in control and grasping in Episode 7 – Shopping pick and pack.

9. eNTiTy – Everbots – eNTiTy is the team of the R&D department of NTT Disruption, Spain. The team focuses on developing social robotics applications for clients. They first participated in the ERL Consumer tournament in IROS 2018 conference in Madrid.

“Participating in robotics competitions such as the SciRoc challenge help us advance the state of the art in social robotics and put together a good team of researchers. It gives us the opportunity to test different algorithms, such as vision modules, that we can then apply to other products” says Julian Caro Linares, robotics engineer of NTT Disruption.

They will participate with a PAL Robotics TIAGO robot in Episode 3 – Deliver coffee shop orders and Episode 4 – Take the elevator.
Irene Diaz-Portales, Computer Vision Researcher adds “we chose TiAGo because it’s an excellent robotics platform for developing ROS modules.”

Team eNTiTy testing TIAGO robot. Photo Credits: European Robotics League

10. TeamBathDrones Research – The TeamBathDrones Research is the University of Bath, UK, competitive autonomous aircraft team. The team is formed of a mixture of lecturers, PhD and undergraduate students from the engineering faculty. Through entering in the ERL Smart cities challenge in the emergency category, they aim to demonstrate the application of collision avoidance by in-flight risk minimisation in Episode 12 – Fast delivery of emergency pills.

Which teams will successfully address the SciRoc Challenge Episodes? Don’t miss the updates starting this week.

Air, land and sea robots will meet in Piombino, Italy, for the ERL Emergency Robots major tournament. Photos: Joshua Hayes Davidson / euRathlon

The European Robotics League (ERL) is pleased to announce the dates for the major tournament of the ERL Emergency Robots competition. The 2017 challenge will be held in Piombino, Italy, from 15-23 September 2017. The call for participation is now open.

Lead by euRobotics in collaboration with SPARC Robotics, and funded by the European Union, the ERL is the natural evolution of a series of highly successful previous competitions that were established via FP7-funded projects: euRathlon, RoCKIn and EuRoC. This competition builds upon the success of euRathlon 2015 Challenge, the first world’s robotics multi-domain competition and aims to push the state of the art in heterogeneous cooperative autonomous systems for emergency response.

ERL Emergency Robots: Call for participants

The call for participation in ERL Emergency Robots major tournament is now open. Detailed information on the application process and requirements can be found on ERL Emergency website and the competition Rulebook.

ERL Emergency Robots is a civilian, outdoor robotics competition, with a focus on realistic, multi-domain emergency response scenarios. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the ERL Emergency challenge can only be met when land, marine and flying robots work cooperatively. The competition itself sees International teams of various disciplines and organisations surveying the scene, collecting data, searching for missing workers and identifying critical hazards, all in a race against the clock.

The challenge is open to universities, research centres and industrial companies interested in applying the results of robotics research and development to real world challenges.

ERL Emergency Robots 2017 is expected to go beyond the competition boundaries, aiming to cross-fertilise multiple robotics domain and foster discussions within the robotics community. The event will also provide a forum where roboticists from different areas will exchange ideas, show the state-of-the-art and outline the future of research on disaster-response robot systems.

Sponsors and exhibitors

Companies and academic institutions are invited to attend the event and present their work as an exhibitor and/or as a sponsor.

In parallel to the competition, the event will run a program of activities that will include robot demonstrations and robotics talks from eminent experts in the field. In 2015, the competition attracted over 100 robotics experts, 150 participants and more than 1200 visitors and public in general.

This is a unique opportunity to be associated with a high-profile European robotics competition and with universities and institutions leading in robotics research across Europe.

Please visit their website for detailed information on the competition and sponsorship, or contact erl.emergency@robotics-league.eu

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read:

• European Robotics Week #ERW2015 recap and videos
• Live coverage: Robocup 2016
• European Robotics League posts first major tournament results
• Day One at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Two at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Three at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Four at euRathlon 2015: Video recap

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Team Tech United Eindhoven testing their robot at ERL Service Robots major tournament. Photo: European Robotics League

The European Robotics League (ERL) is a European-based common framework for robotics competitions in the fields of Industrial Robots (ERL Industrial Robots), Service Robots (ERL Service Robots) and Emergency Robots (ERL Emergency Robots). The ERL builds on the success of the European funded FP7 projects EuRoC, RoCKIn and euRathlon.

International teams participate in local and major tournaments distributed across Europe. The three robotics competitions have been designed to address open societal, scientific and industrial challenges and to thoroughly assess, compare, and evaluate their competing innovative approaches. This new robotics league format was launched under the umbrella of SPARC – the Partnership for Robotics in Europe – at this year´s RoboCup in Leipzig, Germany.

The kick-off event took place in Leipzig, Germany, during the RoboCup 2016 World Championship. Organised by SPARC and hosted by Reinhard Lafrenz (Secretary General of euRobotics), it included members from the robotics community, including: Juha Heikkilä, Head of the European Commission Robotics Unit; Anne Bajart, Programme Officer of the European Commission Robotics Unit; Rainer Bischoff, Vice President euRobotics/KUKA; Bruno Siciliano, Researcher from Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II; Pedro Lima, Coordinator of ERL Service Robots; Marta Palau Franco, Project Manager of ERL Emergency Robots.

European Robotics League organisers and RoboCup trustees at the ERL kick-off event. Photo: European Robotics League

Background about ERL

The ERL provides a common framework for two indoor robotics competitions, ERL Industry Robots and ERL Service Robots, and one outdoor robotics competition, ERL Emergency Robots. These competitions aim at replicating consistent benchmarking results, more so than stating a winner of a single event. The ERL local and major tournaments are based in Europe and open to international participation. ERL Service and ERL Industrial Robots have a diffused set of benchmarking testbed across Europe, where researchers compete, meet, discuss, learn and improve. Whilst ERL Emergency organises a pre-competition summer school and attendees can prepare themselves for participating in the major tournament.

The three competitions target three clear objectives:

• European societal challenge of aging population
• strengthening of the European robotics industry
• push the state of the art in autonomous systems for emergency response

Finally, the ERL provides a platform for challenging, developing and showcasing robotics technologies and engages not only with the robotics community but also industry and general audiences. This new model for the robotics league will be tested for viability alongside its implementation over the next two years.

ERL Service Robots

ERL Service Robots focuses on service robots for home and healthcare applications. The scenarios are designed around the idea of giving support to an elderly person in mastering his/her daily life at home. Robots have to welcome visitors, map the home, and perform a large variety of other general-purpose service tasks.

A student setting up her team’s robot. Photo: European Robotics League

The first major tournament of ERL Service Robots was held in conjunction with RoboCup@Home 2016. All the twenty-three teams from thirteen countries that qualified for RoboCup@Home opted to participate in ERL Service. Teams’ performances in two of the RoboCup@Home tasks were shared with ERL Service. The tasks that were assessed using the ERL scoring system were Navigation/Visit My Home and General Purpose Service Robot.

Task benchmarking sheets. Photo: European Robotics League

The ERL scoring system is based on achievements and penalizations, a ‘class’ assigned to each team, determined by their number of achievements. The class number goes from 0 to a maximum number of achievements that may vary from task-to-task.

In this first major tournament, the teams’ classes were:

Task Benchmark: Navigation/VisitMyHome

• ToBI, University of Bielefeld, Germany: Class 6
• Tech United Eindhoven, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands : Class 3
• CIT brains, CIT, China: Class 2
• eR@sers, Tamagawa University, Japan: Class 2
• Markovito, Mexico: Class 2
• WrightEagle@Home, University of Science and Technology of China, China: Class 2
• b-it-bots@Home, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University, Germany: Class 1
• KameRider, University of Tokyo, Japan: Class 1

Task Benchmark: General Purpose Service Robot

• ToBI, University of Bielefeld, Germany: Class 3
• homer@UniKoblenz, Univesity of Koblenz, Germany: Class 2
• Tech United Eindhoven, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands : Class     2
• WrightEagle@Home, University of Science and Technology of China, China: Class 2
• eR@sers, Tamagawa University, Japan: Class 2
• Golem, UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico: Class 1
• Pumas, UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico: Class 1
• SocRob@home, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon: Class 1

(Left) Team TOBI’s and Team homer@UniKoblenz’s robots. (Right) A member of Team homer@UniKoblenz sets up their robot. Photo: European Robotics League.

The next ERL Service local tournaments will take place in Portugal and Italy. More information on the calls will be published soon.

ERL Industrial Robots

ERL Industrial Robots main purpose is to foster innovation in industrial robotics. The focus is on manipulation, handling, assembly and transport of work pieces. The competition takes place in a scaled-down factory environment and uses desktop-size robots for mobile manipulation. The scenarios include performing a variety of work steps at different locations on a shop floor and automating high-mix, low volume production using a limited number of production equipment.

Standard platforms used in RoboCup@Work and ERL Industrial Robots. Photo: European Robotics League

Eight teams of four countries participated in ERL Industrial Robots competition first major tournament in Leipzig.  Three RoboCup@Work tasks were assessed using the ERL scoring system, which follows the common model of Penalties and Achievements.

The teams’ classes for the ERL Industrial Robots were:

Task Benchmark: Basic Transportation Task 1

• LUHBots, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany: Class 4
• Robo-Erectus, Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore: Class 4
• AutonOHM, Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Germany: Class 4

Task Benchmark: Basic Transportation Task 2

• smARTLab@Work, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom: Class 3
• AutonOHM, Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Germany: Class 3
• robOTTO, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany: Class 3
• Robo-Erectus, Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore: Class 3
• SPQR@Work, Spienza University of Rome, Italy: Class 2
• WF Wolves, Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences, Germany: Class 2
• B-it-bots, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany: Class 1
• LUHBots, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany: Class 1

Task Benchmark: Basic Transportation Task 3

• B-it-bots, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany: Class 2
• SPQR@Work, Spienza University of Rome, Italy: Class 1
• AutonOHM, Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Germany: Class 1
• LUHBots, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany: Class 1

Teams preparing their robots for the competition. Photo: European Robotics League

ERL Emergency Robots

ERL Emergency Robots is a civilian, outdoor robotics competition, with a focus on realistic, multi-domain emergency response scenarios. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the ERL Emergency Grand Challenge can only be met when land, underwater and flying robots work cooperatively.

Team ICARUS inspecting the building area with their land robots. Photo: Joshua Hayes Davidson

A summer school in collaboration with TRADR EU-FP7 project will take place in Oulu, Finland from 22-26 August 2016. If you would like to attend the outdoor demonstrations as an observer, contact the organisers.

The ERL Emergency Robots major tournament will be held in Piombino, Italy, September 2017. More information on the event will be published autumn 2016.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read:

• European Robotics Week #ERW2015 recap and videos
• Live coverage: Robocup 2016
• Call for euRathlon/TRADR Summer School 2016 on heterogeneity in robotic systems
• Day One at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Two at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Three at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Four at euRathlon 2015: Video recap

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

UAV developed by Ascending Technologies. Photo credits: TRADR

The University of Oulu will host a summer school on heterogeneity in Robotic Systems this August in Oulu, Finland, where the latest advances and developments in the field of European research within this area will be presented.

The euRathlon/TRADR summer school 2016 will take place from 22-26 August and will provide participants with both theoretical and practical insight in multi-domain (ground, marine and aerial) real robotic systems for deployment in disaster response scenarios.  The trend in this area is towards multi-robot systems with different platforms, processing powers and operational spaces (ground, water, air) that will be deployed over long periods and several sorties. This raises many challenges including multi-modal heterogeneous mapping, semantic analysis and reasoning, collaborative planning under uncertainty, and the integration of mapping and planning.

The summer school programme has been designed to provide attendees with hands-on experience; they will work on practical tasks using several robots with different sensory equipment.

Three invited speakers will give master classes. The keynote speakers confirmed are:

• Jan Peters  from the Technische Universitaet Darmstadt and Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Germany),
• Cesar Dario Cadena Lerma from ETH Zurich (Switzerland), and
• Matthijs Spann from TU Delf (The Netherlands).

The intended audience of the summer school is undergraduate students, Master students, PhD students, postdoc students, researchers from universities/organisations and engineers from industry companies around the world. The summer school will provide an opportunity for attendees to deepen their understanding of heterogeneous robotics systems and share ideas and experiences. Participants can optionally present a paper/poster during the summer school.

Participants of euRathlon/SHERPA 2015 summer school during the hands-on experience with domain-specific simulators. Photo credits: euRathlon

During their stay in Oulu, participants will extend their knowledge by learning about the latest advances in multi-domain real robotic systems for deployment in disaster response scenarios.

In addition to improving their knowledge in field robotics, the event constitutes a great opportunity to meet professionals and specialists with common interests and can serve to create new teams willing to participate in the ERL Emergency competition in 2017.

The call for participation in the summer school is now open and full information is available on http://www.eurathlon.eu/index.php/workshop/summerschool2016/

The summer school is jointly organised by EURATHLON and TRADR research projects funded by the Seventh Framework Programme and the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission, respectively.

Participants of euRathlon/SHERPA 2015 summer school test the USV on the lake in Oulu. Photo credits: euRathlon

euRathlon is an outdoor multi-domain robotic competition inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident. The euRathlon Challenges requires teams of land, underwater and flying robots to work together to survey the scene, collect environmental data, and identify critical hazards. After three successful years, euRathlon takes a step further under the RockEU2 EU-Horizon 2020 project.  RockEU2 builds on the success of the RockEU FP7 coordination action, together with the expertise in robotics competitions generated within euRathlon, RoCKIn and EuRoC EU-FP7 projects. The approach to robot competitions will be transitional and experimental. RockEU2 traces the first steps of a novel model for competitions: the European Robotics League (ERL). The ERL model will be tested for viability alongside its implementation during the next two years, in which euRathlon will become ERL Emergency Robots.

Watch the video resume of the euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge:

TRADR is a research project. It focuses on long-term human-robot teaming for robot-assisted disaster response and addresses the scientific challenges arising from making the experience of a human-robot disaster response team persistent over multiple sorties during a prolonged mission. Using a proven-in-practice user-centric design methodology, TRADR develops novel science and technology for human-robot emergency teams.

Ground robots used in survey and rescue missions by TRADR. Photo credit: TRADR.

Different types of robots collaborate with human team members to explore the environment, and gather physical samples. Throughout this collaborative effort, TRADR enables the team to gradually develop its understanding of the disaster area over multiple synchronous and asynchronous sorties (persistent environment models), to improve team members’ understanding of how to work in the area (persistent multi-robot action models), and to improve team-work (persistent human-robot teaming).

Watch the video of TRADR Joint exercise in Dortmund, Germany:

Torre del Sale, Piombino, was the location chosen for simulating the euRathlon’s Fukushima-like disaster. Photo Credit: euRathlon

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the euRathlon competition is the first outdoor competition where teams of land, sea and air robots must cooperate in a realistic disaster-response scenario. Following participation in the trials and sub-challenges, six multi-domain teams attempted the Grand Challenge, where they were required to locate missing workers, map a building and identify critical hazards, and inspect land and underwater pipes and stem a leak, all within 100 minutes. Watch the Grand Challenge video recaps and find out the winning teams …

An example ‘Object of Potential Interest’, or OPI, the unblocked entrance was represented by a green rectangle. Photo credit: Joshua Davidson

ENSTA Bretagne Team 1 looking under water for a possible missing worker. Photo credit: euRathlon

The Grand Challenge

The seven partners of euRathlon consortium worked together for more than two years to design this unique disaster-response scenario, which comprised three realistic mission goals:

• Mission-A: Search for missing workers – Robots had to search for two missing workers represented by mannequins dressed in orange suits, which could be inside the building, outside the building, floating on the sea surface near the coast, or trapped underwater. Teams received bonus points if a worker was found during the first 30 minutes of the Grand Challenge, because in a real scenario the probability of finding a missing person alive decreases rapidly with time.
• Mission-B: Reconnaissance and environmental survey of a building – Robots had to inspect a building to evaluate damage (represented by markers) and find a safe path to a machine room where valves were located. This required robots to reconnoitre the area, create a map of the building and the outdoor area surrounding it, and locate there the objects of potential interest (OPIs) in order to provide situational awareness to the team.
• Mission-C: Pipe inspection and stemming a leak – Robots had to localise four pipe sections on land, localize another four matching pipes underwater, look for damage to the land pipes and identify a contaminant leak (represented by a marker), reach the valves in the machine room and underwater, and close the correct valves in a synchronised process.

Schematic representation of the distribution of piping sections and valves and their correspondence. Credit: euRathlon

Example of pipe distribution. Source: Google Maps.

The Grand Challenge was successfully met if all the three missions were accomplished within 100 minutes. Strategy was important, as teams were given significant leeway:

• Teams were free to tackle the mission goals in parallel or in sequence, and to choose the order.
• Teams were free to choose which types of robots to deploy, as well as how and when to deploy them.
• A team’s robots could communicate directly, or via their operators at the control station.

Taking place over two days, Grand Challenge was designed to encourage and reward cooperation between ground, marine and aerial robots, while allowing maximum flexibility in participation and innovation. Half of the teams were multi-domain partnerships and the other half full multi-domain teams.

Day One participants:

• Cobham (land) + Universitat de Girona (sea) + ISEP/INESC TEC (air)
• ENSTA Bretagne Team 1 (land, sea, air)
• ENSTA Bretagne Team 2 (land, sea, air)

Day Two participants:

• Bebot (land, air) + AUV Team TomKyle (sea)
• B.R.A.I.N Robots (land) + UNIFI (sea, air)
• ICARUS (land, sea, air)

Watch the video recaps:

The Award Ceremony

After the runs were complete, the judges retired to analyse the data provided by the teams throughout the competition and reach a verdict. The awards ceremony took place at the gardens of Giardini Pro Patria, Piombino.

Alan Winfield, euRathlon project coordinator, welcomed everyone and opened the ceremony. Then followed short speeches by Deputy Mayor Stefano Ferrini, and CMRE Deputy Director Andrew Pickup.

Gabriele Ferri, Director of euRathlon 2015, thanked René Garello, representative of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society, for their platinum sponsorship with a special focus on marine robotics. He also thanked the silver sponsors Enel, ECmanaged, Evologics, SBG-Systems and Texas Instruments, and Satoshi Tadokoro, IEEE RAS representative, for supporting the competition with the IEEE RAS Technical Committee (TC) on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR) special prizes for autonomy and multi-robot collaboration.

Winner of euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge: Team Cobham (Land)+Universitat de Girona (Sea) + INESP/INESC TEC (Air). Photo credit: euRathlon

euRathlon 2015 winners

Grand Challenge

• 1st prize: Cobham + Universitat de Girona + ISEP/INESC TEC
• 2nd equal: ICARUS
• 2nd equal: Bebot + AUV Team TomKyle
• 3rd prize: ENSTA Bretagne Team 1

Land + Air sub-challenge

• 1st prize: Cobham + ISEP/INESC TEC

Sea + Land sub-challenge

• 1st prize: Cobham + Universitat de Girona

Best euRathlon SSRR Autonomy Award, given by IEEE RAS TC on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics

• Winner: ICARUS
• Finalists: ICARUS, Universitat de Girona, ENSTA Bretagne Team 1

Best euRathlon MRS Multi-Robot Coordination Award, given by IEEE RAS TC on Multi-Robot Systems

• Winner: ICARUS
• Finalists: ICARUS, BeBot+AUV Team TomKyle, Universitat de Girona+Cobham

Texas Instruments Special Prizes for Innovation

• Winner (Land): Bebot
• Winner (Sea): Universitat de Girona
• Winner (Air): ICARUS

Marine Trials Prize (Students prize)

• 1st: Universitat de Girona
• 2nd: ENSTA Bretagne Team 1
• 3rd: AUGA

See you all at euRathlon 2017!

Group photo of euRathlon 2015 participants. Photo credit: euRathlon

DRC-HUBO robot from Team KAIST, winner of DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015, drops in for a visit on Day Four of eutRathlon 2015. Photo credit: euRathlon

Weather conditions challenged the teams participating on the second day of euRathlon 2015 two-domain sub-challenges. The morning started with the remaining team that had yet to participate in the land and air scenario (L+A). In the afternoon the strong wind made flying aerial robots difficulty, and to some extent, unsafe for spectators. As a result, the judges decided to cancel the sea and air (S+A) scenario scheduled for the afternoon, and allowed the land and sea robots to practise for the next day’s Grand Challenge. Find out the winners of the euRathlon 2015 sub-challenges …

Sub-Challenge (L+A): Survey the building and search for a missing worker

A minimum of one land robot and one aerial robot was required to participate in this scenario.

The robots had to perform a reconnaissance mission of the building and the land surrounding it. A schematic map of the building was given to the teams at the beginning of the sub-challenge. Entrances, corridors, rooms, and the machine room were shown on the map. However, it did not have detailed dimensions and the teams were told that it may or may not be up to date. Teams needed to be aware that an earthquake and tsunami had probably damaged part of the external and internal structure of the building, blocking some paths and entrances.

The team had to look for damage to the building, locate an unobstructed entrance, and at the same time find a safe path to the building and to the machine room for their land robot. Additionally, the robots had to find a missing worker (represented by a mannequin), who was located either inside or outside the building. If the worker was found during the first 30 minutes of the sub-challenge scenario, it improved the team’s chances of rescuing the worker alive.

Teams had 45 minutes to create a map of the interior of the building and its surroundings, and locate objects of potential interest, in this case blocked/unblocked entrances and corridors, damage, and the missing worker.

The multi-domain teams that participated in this second day of land and sea sub-challenges were:

• B.R.A.I.N. Robots (Land) + UNIFI (Sea & Air)
• ENSTA Bretagne Team 1 (Land, Sea & Air)
• ICARUS

One of ICARUS team’s multirotor (ICARUS EU-FP7 project). Photo credit: euRathlon

Caption: One of ICARUS team’s multirotor (ICARUS EU-FP7 project). Photo Credits: euRathlon

Sub-Challenge (S+A): Pipe inspection and search for a worker

A minimum of one marine robot and one aerial robot was required to participate in this scenario. Ground robots were not allowed in this sub-challenge.

In this scenario aerial robots had to inspect and map the beach area surrounding the building, and sea robots had to inspect and map the Enel-harbour area. They had to search for damage and leaks in the four pipe sections on land and the four pipe sections underwater, represented by different markers. The piping sections consisted of cylindrical yellow shapes on land and underwater, and each of the pipes on land was logically connected to one underwater (and vice-versa).

Robots also had to look for a missing worker represented by a mannequin dressed in bright orange. The worker could be located on the land outside the building or at the sea (at the surface near the shore or trapped underwater) in a supine or prone position.

Schematic representation of the piping structures for the Sea & Air Sub-Challenge. Credit: euRathlon

This scenario was cancelled due to poor weather conditions that could compromise safety for the aerial robots.

WALK-MAN and DRC-HUBO humanoid robots exhibition

A large audience of people of different ages came to Tor del Sale, Piombino, to see the exhibition of WALK-MAN and DRC-HUBO robots. These two humanoid robots participated recently in the DARPA Robotics Challenge in Los Angeles (USA). This was the first time they did a demonstration together in Europe. WALK-MAN is the robot developed by the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) and the Research Centre “E. Piaggio” from Pisa as part of an EU-FP7 project with the same name. DRC-HUBO, the winner of the DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015, is developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) is a competition of robot systems and software teams with the aim to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters. Team KAIST and Team WALK-MAN showed how their robots walked, close a gate valve and could go up and down steps.

WALK-MAN robot closing a valve during the exhibition. Photo credit: euRathlon

Winners of euRathlon 2015 Two Domain Sub-Challenges

The winners of euRathlon 2015 two-domain sub-challenges were:

• Sub-Challenge (Land +Air) : Survey the building and search for a missing worker:
  – 1^st Cobham (Land)+ ISEP/INESC (Air)
  – 2^nd ICARUS (Land, Sea & Air)

• Sub-Challenge (Land & Sea) : Stem the leak:
  – 1^st Cobham (Land)+ Universitat de Girona (Sea)
  – 2^nd ICARUS (Land, Sea & Air)
  – 3^rd AUV Team TomKyle (Sea) + Bebot (Land, Air)
  – 4^th UNIFI (Air & Sea) + B.R.A.I.M. Robots (Land)

• Sub-Challenge (Sea + Air): Pipe inspection and search for a worker:
  Cancelled

Don’t miss tomorrow Day Five recap, the Grand Challenge starts!

 Missed coverage of some of the earlier challenges? Find it here.  

Robot Monique (B.R.A.I.N Robots) and the Enel Power Plant in Tor del Sale, Piombino. Photo Credits: Klemen Istenic

The first day of euRathlon 2015 two-domain sub-challenges started with the land and air (L+A) combined scenario, followed in the afternoon by the sea and land (S+L), where robots had to search for missing workers and leaks, inspect the building and close valves on land and underwater. Only ten teams passed to this second round of the competition, creating a total of 6 multi-domain teams — find out the winners of these trials and watch the video recap …

The Sub-Challenges

In euRathlon competition, the sub-challenges are referred to as the combined scenarios. They are two-domain scenarios, each a combination of two trials.

There are a total of three sub-challenges: land and sea (L+S), sea and air (S+A) and land and air (L+A). In the sub-challenges the main goal is cooperation between the two domains. Cooperation and autonomy are rewarded through the scoring schema.

Sub-Challenge (L+A): Survey the building and search for a missing worker

A minimum of one land robot and one aerial robot was required to participate in this scenario.

The robots had to perform a reconnaissance mission of the building and the land surrounding it. A schematic map of the building was given to the teams at the beginning of the sub-Challenge. Entrances, corridors, rooms, and the machine room were shown on the map. However, it did not have detailed dimensions and the teams were told that it may or may not be up to date. Teams needed to be aware that an earthquake and tsunami had probably damaged part of the external and internal structure of the building, blocking some paths and entrances.

The team had to look for damage to the building, locate an unobstructed entrance, and at the same time find a safe path to the building and to the machine room for their land robot. Additionally, the robots had to find a missing worker (represented by a mannequin), who was located either inside or outside the building. If the worker was found during the first 30 minutes of the sub-challenge scenario, it improved the team’s chances of rescuing the worker alive.

Teams had 45 minutes to create a map of the interior of the building and its surroundings, and locate objects of potential interest, in this case blocked/unblocked entrances and corridors, damage, and the missing worker.

Of the total of 6 multi-domain teams, only three teams participated in this first day of land and sea sub-challenges. The teams were:

• AUV Tomkyle (Sea) + Bebot (Land & Air)
• Cobham (Land) + Universitat de Girona (Sea) + ISEP/INESC (Air)
• ENSTA Bretagne Team 2 (Land, Sea & Air)

The rest of teams were scheduled for the next day.

Air Team UNIFI (University of Florence) partners with land team B.R.A.I.N Robots. Photo Credits: euRathlon

Sub-Challenge (L+S): Stem the leak

A minimum of one land robot and one marine robot was required to participate in this scenario. Aerial robots were not allowed in this sub-challenge.

Land and sea robots started from the premise that they had already reached the building and the pipes area underwater, respectively. The main tasks were to find the leaking pipes and close the correct valves underwater and on land to stop the leak. Special care had to be taken, as closing an incorrect valve could cause a reduction of the amount of water provided for cooling the reactor in the scenario, causing the team to incur a penalty.

Land and marine robots had to cooperate to map the area and discover the correct valves. Once the leak on land was found the ground robot had to communicate the number of that pipe to the sea robot, so that it could follow that pipe underwater and close the corresponding valve. In the case of the marine robot, it had to communicate the number of the leaking underwater pipe to the land robot so that it could close the corresponding valve. A schematic of the connections was given to the teams. The robots could not close the valves until the two correct pair were found, as the process of closing them had to be synchronised.

Schematic representation of the distribution of piping sections and valves and their correspondence for Sub-Challenge L+S. Photo credits: euRathlon

In this sub-challenge, it was known that the pipes on land close to the shore were not damaged or leaking, so no inspection of them by the land robots was required.

Only four multi-domain teams decided to participate in this L+S sub-challenge. They were:

• AUV TomKyle (Sea) +Bebot (Land & Air)
• Cobham (Land)+Universitat de Girona (Sea)+ISEP/INESC (Air)
• ICARUS (Land, Sea & Air)
• B.R.A.I.N. Robots (Land )+ UNIFI (Sea & Air)

Team Universitat de Girona (partner in this sub-challenge with Cobham) closing the valve underwater. Photo credits: euRathlon

Robot-era project exhibition

A big crowd of people attended the robotics exhibition of Robot-Era project (Scuola Sant’Anna di Pisa) at Piazza Bovio, in the main square of Piombino city. Robot-Era is an EU-funded project that focuses on the development, implementation and demonstration of feasibility of robots for assisted living. One of it aims is to improve the quality of life and efficiency of care for the elderly people.

: The three assistance living robots of Robot-Era project ready to welcome the public. Photo credits: euRathlon

Winners of euRathlon 2015 Trials (A2, S2, L2).

The winners of the second euRathlon 2015 trials were:

• Land Trial (L2): Mobile manipulation (valve closing):
  – 1^st Cobham
  – shared 2^nd ICARUS / Bebot
  – 4^th SARRUS
  – 5^th ENSTA Bretagne Team 1

• Sea Trial (S2): Leak localisation and valve closing:
  – 1^st Universitat de Girona
  – 2^nd ENSTA Bretagne Team 1
  – 3^rd AUGA
  – shared 4^th OUBOT / AUV Team TomKyle

• Air Trial (A2): Aerial reconnaissance inside a building:
  – 1^st ENSTA Bretagne Team 1
  – 2^nd ENSTA Bretagne Team 2 

Don’t miss tomorrow Day Four recap of the second set of sub-challenges and the exhibition of the DRC-HUBO KAIST and WALK-MAN Humanoid robots!

Missed coverage of some of the earlier challenges? Find it here.  

Sea scenarios take place in the harbour of the Enel power plant, Piombino, Italy. Image: euRathlon

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, euRathlon is a civilian outdoor robotics competition focused on realistic cooperative disaster response scenarios. On the second day of single-domain trials, the land, sea and air robots faced three new challenges. Sea robots had to search for a leak and close a valve, while land robots had to inspect the inside of the building and close the valves in the machine room. Aerial robots had to inspect the building and look for a safe path to the machine room for a land robot. The winners of the first euRathlon 2015 trials were unveiled and a series of robotics talks took place at Piombino Castle.

Watch the Day Two recap video here:

Sea Trial (S2): Leak localisation and valve closing

In this second trial, the marine robots had to localise a leaking underwater pipe and close the valve associated to it. The leak was represented by a plume of orange buoys and an orange rectangular marker on one of the four yellow pipes. Once the leaking pipe was found, the robot had to follow it to reach the underwater structure where the valve was mounted. Finally, the robot had to close the valve to stop the hypothetical leak.

As in previous days, the teams had to work under poor water visibility conditions, making it harder to find the leak and close the valve. Teams were only allowed to tele-operate their AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) for closing the valve.

Eleven teams participated in this sea trial, competing in parallel in two different areas. The teams were AUV Team TomKyle, Robdos Team , ENSTA Bretagne Team 1, ENSTA Bretagne Team 2, Team Nessie, Universitat de Girona , AUGA, AVORA, UNIFI, ICARUS and OUBOT.

AUV Team Tomkyle (University of Applied Sciences Kiel) preparing for the second sea trial. Photo credits: euRathlon

Land Trial (L2): Mobile Manipulation (valves closing)

In the mobile manipulation land trial, the robots had to reach the machine room inside the building. Inside the machine room there were 4 valves, a canister containing water that simulated contaminated material and a barrel. The land robots had to close a minimum of one valve. They were also required to pick up the canister containing the “hazardous” substance, move it into the barrel, and then cover the barrel with a lid.

The seven teams that participated in this trial were Bebot, B.R.A.I.N. Robots, ENSTA Bretagne Team 1, ENSTA Bretagne Team 2, Cobham, ICARUS and SARRUS.

Team Bebot (Bern University of Applied Sciences) setting things up before starting the second land trial . Image: euRathlon

Air Trial (A2): Aerial reconnaissance inside a building

In the second air trial, aerial robots performed a reconnaissance mission of the building in order to increase the situational awareness of the emergency response team. For this purpose, the robots had to enter the building and find a safe path to the machine room for a land robot. The UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) had to create a map and localise objects of potential interest (OPIs) that marked obstacles and blocked paths that would limit access for a ground robot.

Due to the complexity of flying inside a building (which also limits the size of the UAV), only three teams participated: ENSTA Bretagne Team 1, ENSTA Bretagne Team 2 and ICARUS. This last team opted for inspecting the inside of the building through the windows using a thermal camera.

ENSTA Bretagne Team 2 performing the aerial reconnaissance inside the building. Image: euRathlon

Robotics talks

As part of euRathlon 2015, a series of robotics talks took place in the evening at Piombino Castle. On Sunday, Prof Alan Winfield (UWE Bristol, Bristol Robotics Laboratory), Dr Anne Bajart (EU Commission Project Officer) and Dr Gabriele Ferri (CMRE) presented the euRathlon project to the audience. This introduction was followed by a talk on robotics for underwater archaeology by archaeologist Pamela Gambogi (Soprintendenza dei Beni Archeologici della Toscana) and Prof Andrea Caiti (ISME, University of Pisa). Monday’s talks also featured another group of exceptional speakers: Prof Paolo Dario (Scuola Sant’Anna of Pisa) presented the Robot-Era project and the Biorobotics Institute and Dr Nikos Tsagaraskis (IIT, Genova) talked about the WALK-MAN project and their experience participating in the DARPA Robotics Challenge with their humanoid robot.

Prof Paolo Dario (Scuola Sant’Anna of Pisa) presenting on the Biorobotics Institute. Image: euRathlon

Winners of euRathlon 2015 Trials (A1, S1, L1)

The winners of the first euRathlon 2015 trials were:

• Land Trial (L1): Reconnaissance in urban structure. Shared 1st place – Bebot / Cobham, 3rd – SARRUS

• Sea Trial (S1): Navigation and environmental survey. 1st – Universitat de Girona, 2nd – ENSTA Bretagne Team 1, 3rd – AUGA, 4th – ICARUS, 5th – AUV Team TomKyle

• Air Trial (A1): Aerial detection and mapping. 1st – ICARUS, 2nd – ISEP/INESC TEC, shared 3rd – ENSTA Bretagne Team 1 / ENSTA Bretagne Team 2

Don’t miss tomorrow’s Day Three recap for the results of the second day of trials and the start of the two-domain Sub-Challenges!

Missed coverage of some of the earlier challenges? Find it here.  

[Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly noted the order of the Sea Trial Winners.]

Torre del Sale building, Piombino, Italy. Image: eurathlon

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, euRathlon is a civilian outdoor robotics competition focused on realistic cooperative disaster response scenarios. euRathlon 2015 takes place in the area surrounding the building of Torre del Sale, on the site of the Enel-owned power plant, and 16 teams from ten different countries have travelled to Piombino, Italy, to tackle this unique challenge. In the first day of trials, aerial, ground and marine robots had to deal with the very real conditions of a demanding coastal environment. Watch the Day One recap video.

The Opening

The mayor of the city of Piombino, Massimo Giuliani, gave a warm welcome to all the attendees, followed by the Enel engineer Antongiulio Bertoncini, Dr Anne Bajart (the project’s European Commission officer), Professor Alan Winfield (euRathlon project Coordinator) and Dr Gabriele Ferri (Head of the euRathlon 2015 robotics competition).

The Trials

The euRathlon 2015 scenarios are arranged in increasing order of complexity, with the trials first, followed by the sub-challenges and finally the Grand Challenge.

Trials are single-domain scenarios designed to encourage the participation of teams that may not have the time, resources and/or experience to directly address the euRathlon Grand Challenge. But, at the same time, they serve as a warm up for the multi-domain (land, sea and air) teams. There are a total of six trials divided into two land trials (L1, L2), two sea trials (S1, S2) and two air trials (A1, A2).

Land Trial (L1): Reconnaissance in Urban Structure

For the first of the two land trials the competitors’ robots were required to approach, inspect and map a ruined building. The land robots had to navigate across a beach filled with obstacles such as wood debris, vegetation and sand dunes. Once inside the building, robots had to look for mock damage and the entrance to the machine room.

A schematic map of the building was given to the teams at the beginning of the trial. The map didn’t include detailed dimensions of entrances, corridors and rooms. As part of the staging, entrances are randomly blocked as a result of a hypothetical earthquake and tsunami.

The seven teams participating in this land trial were B.R.A.I.N. Robots, Cobham, Bebot, ICARUS, ENSTA Bretagne Team 1, ENSTA Bretagne Team 2 and SARRUS.

The beach natural environment turned out to be a real challenge for the robots and only two teams successfully entered the building.

Team ICARUS (ICARUS EU-FP7) preparing for the land trial. Image: euRathlon

Sea Trial (S1): Navigation and Environmental Survey

The sea trial took place in the Enel-owned plant harbour, where robots were tasked with surveying an area of 15×15 metres in the basin of the dock.

The AUVs (Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles) had to navigate from the launch point to a validation gate, pass through it and search for damage on the seabed, marked by submerged orange buoys.

The 11 teams participating in the sea trial competed in parallel, in two different areas. The teams were OUBOT, AUV Team TomKyle, ENSTA Bretagne Team 2, AVORA, UNIFI, ENSTA Bretagne Team 1, AUGA, Team Nessie, ICARUS, Robdos Team and Universitat de Girona.

Teams had to contend with poor water visibility worsened by the rough sea conditions of the previous days. Although acquiring live video and images of the buoys with the on-board camera was a challenge, most of the teams succeed in the navigation task.

Team OUBOT (Obuda University) after their participation in the sea trial.

Air Trial (A1): Aerial Detection and Mapping

In this first air trial, teams were called on to conduct an aerial inspection to find a safe path from the starting point, for a land robot, to an unblocked entrance of the building.

Specific take-off and landing areas were designated for the UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).

The robots had to map the area surrounding the building and look for objects of potential interest (OPIs) representing blocked and unblocked entrances.

The six teams that participated in this trial were UNIFI, ICARUS, ENSTA Bretagne Team 1, ENSTA Bretagne Team 2 and ISEP/INESC TEC.

Team UNIFI ( University of Florence) getting ready for the aerial trial. Image: euRathlon

The teams faced variable wind conditions during the day, but that did not stop their robots from taking-off and flying around the building. Most of the teams succeed in surveying the area and finding a safe path for the land robot. 

Watch this space for Day Two: the second set of land, and sea trials!

The location of euRathlon 2015 competition at Torre del Sale, Piombino, Italy. Photo credits: EURATHLON

On March 11, 2011, a tsunami and earthquake struck Fukushima Dai-ichi energy plant causing a major disaster. Since then emergency services have deployed robots to inspect the area and collect data. Some robot surveys were successful while others failed, underlining the pressing need to advance the state-of-the-art in autonomous robots for disaster response. Further research is necessary, and so is testing in realistic environments. Shinji Kawatsuma, from the Japan Atomic Energy Authority (JAEA), urged in his outstanding talk in euRathlon 2013: “Don’t build robots, build robot systems”. And this is what euRathlon 2015 is all about: testing the capabilities of robot systems in realistic mock emergency-response scenarios.

euRathlon is an outdoor robotics competition funded by the European Union with a focus on realistic cooperative search and rescue response scenarios for land, sea and air robots. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge can only be met when these three domains of robotics are working cooperatively. Previous single-domain euRathlon competitions focussed on land (2013), sea (2014). These, alongside team building workshops, and have been building up to the 2015 Grand Challenge, where the overall aim is to advance the state-of-the-art in heterogeneous teams of autonomous vehicles. Multi-disciplinary and multi-organisational teams of students and engineers will survey the scene, collect data, search for missing workers, identify critical hazards, and more, all in a race against the clock. Of the sixteen teams that have qualified for euRathlon 2015, ten will participate in the Grand Challenge (sea, land and air) creating a total of 6 multi-domain teams.

The scenarios

The euRathlon 2015 Challenge will be held in the area surrounding the Tor del Sale building, and in the Enel-owned thermal power plant sheltered harbour.

Although competing robots will face mock scenarios, the environmental conditions and difficulties are intended to be as realistic as reasonably possible, and the success criteria will reflect straightforward end-user priorities such as task completion and minimal intervention with the robots.

Three different types of scenarios have been defined:

• The Grand Challenge: a three-domain air, land and sea scenario, which comprises three missions.
• Sub-Challenge: two-domain scenarios; each is a combination of two trials.
• Trial: single-domain scenarios.

The scenarios will begin with the six Trials (2 land, 2 sea and 2 air), move on to the three Sub-Challenges (land + air, sea + air, land + sea), and finish with the Grand Challenge. The euRathlon Grand Challenge main goal is task fulfilment, but autonomy and cooperation between domains are also essential for achieving the mission objectives – to search for missing workers, conduct an environmental survey, and stem a leak – within the allocated time.

Drafts of the scenarios, competition rules and the scoring/benchmarking schema were published in advance for teams to comment. However, detailed descriptions of the scenario setups, for instance the location of blocked doors or missing workers, have not been given to teams because such details would not be known ahead of time in a real life scenario.

euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge schematic. Credits: EURATHLON

The teams

As in previous euRathlon events, teams were required to undertake a qualifying process to prove that their vehicle(s) would be able to cope with the scenarios. The teams were asked to write a Scenario Application Paper (SAP) for each of the scenarios they were planning to enter. In the SAPs they describe their robot(s) and explain how they plan to address the technical challenges for each specific scenario. A technical advisory board reviewed the SAPs and checked that the proposed solutions were realistic.

The 16 teams participating in the euRathlon 2015 Challenge are:

1. AUGA – Team AUGA (or “water” in Galego) is from ACSM (Advanced Crew and Ship Management), a company that will participate in the sea trials with one of the SPARUS II AUVs that were loaned to less experienced teams by the euRathlon organisation.
2. AVORA – The AVORA team is from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, which will participate in the sea trials with their robot, Charle.
3. AUV Team Tom Kyle – AUV Team Tom Kyle is from the University of Applied Sciences of Kiel, Germany, which will participate in the sea trials with their robot Robbe 131 and will partner with Bebot team for the Sub-challenges and Grand Challenge.
4. Bebot Team – Bebot is a two-domain team from the University of Applied Sciences of Bern, Switzerland. They will participate in the competition with their robots Bebot (land) and Bee (Air), and will partner with AUV Team Tom Kyle to participate in the Grand Challenge.
5. B.R.A.I.N. Robots –  B.R.A.I.N. Robots e.V. from Esslingen, Germany, participated in euRathlon 2013. In 2015 they will participate in trials and sub-challenges with their robots Monique (land), Alice (land), Caro (sea) and Hannah (sea). They will team up with UNIFI Team for the Grand Challenge.
6. Cobham – Team Cobham is from the German-based company Cobham Mission Systems. Cobham was one of the winners of euRathlon 2013 with their robot Telemax. This year they will participate in land trials and will team up with ISEP/INESC TEC and Universitat de Girona for the Sub-Challenges and Grand Challenge.
7. ENSTA Bretagne Team 1 – one of the two multi-domain teams from the Institute of ENSTA Bretagne, France, that are going to participate in the trials, such-challenges and Grand Challenge. ENSTA is the only institution that participated in both euRathlon 2013 and 2014. They will participate with the robots SAUC’ISSE, SARDINE, USV, ETAS WHEEL, ETAS TRACK, buggy, and two quadrotors.
8. ENSTA Bretagne Team 2 – the second of the two multi-domain teams from the Institute of ENSTA Bretagne, France. Like Team 1, they are going to participate in trials, such-challenges and Grand Challenge. Their robots are CISCREA, EUREKA, TREX, a buggy and two quadrotors.
9. ISEP/INESC TEC Aerial Team – The team from ISEP/INESC TEC (Portugal) will participate in the aerial trials with their robot OTUS. They will team up with Universitat de Girona and Cobham for the Sub-Challenges and Grand Challenge.
10. ICARUS – This is the team of the ICARUS EU-FP7 Project, with partners from Belgium, Germany, Poland, Portugal and Spain. This multi-domain team will participate in the trials, sub-challenges and the Grand Challenge with their robots ASCAMM-LIFT-V and ASCAMM-LIFT-VI (air), UKL-SUGV and RMA-IMM-tEODor (land), INESC_ROAZ and INESC_MARES (sea).
11. Team Nessie – The team from the Ocean Systems Laboratory & Heriot Watt University (UK) will participate in sea trials with their robots NESSIE VII and E.M.I.L.Y.
12. OUBOT – The team from Obuda University (Hungary) will participate with one of the SPARUS II UAV loaned by euRathlon consortium in the sea trials.
13. Robdos Team Underwater Robotics – Robdos is formed by a group of students from the University Polytechnic of Madrid (UPM) and the Spanish-based company Robdos SRL. They will participate in the sea trials with one of the SPARUS II that euRathlon loaned to them and which they participated in euRathlon 2014.
14. SARRUS-Search And Rescue Robot of UPM & SENER – is the team of the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain, and the company SENER Ingenieria y Sistemas S.A. They will participate in land trials with their robot Summit XL.
15. UNIFI Team – UNIFI is the team of the University of Florence (Italy) that will participate in the sea and land trials with their robots FEELHIPPO (sea), MARTA (sea) and BATIGOL (air). They will team up with B.R.A.I.N Robots for the Sub-Challenges and Grand Challenge.
16. Universitat de Girona – The team of the University of Girona is formed by students and researchers of the Underwater Vision & Robotics Research Centre (CIRS). The team develops and operates the robot vehicle SPARUS II AUV that was one of the winners of euRathlon 2014 sea competition. This year they will participate in sea trials and will team up with Cobham and ISEP/INESC TEC for Sub-Challenges and the Grand Challenge.

Which teams will successfully address the Grand Challenge? Don’t miss the updates starting this week.

For pictures and more information about the teams visit: http://www.eurathlon.eu/index.php/compete2/teams2015/

Team testing their AUVs onsite one week before euRathlon 2014 competition. Photo credit: CMRE

euRathlon is a new outdoor robotics competition that invites teams to test the intelligence and autonomy of their robots in realistic mock emergency-response scenarios inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident. The euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge will require a team of ground, marine and aerial robots to work together to survey the scene, collect environmental data, and identify critical hazards. euRathlon 2015 will be held in Piombino, Italy, from the 17^th– 25^th September 2015. 

The competition will take place in the area surrounding the Torre del Sale building, on the beach and in the nearby waters, and in the Enel-owned thermal power plant sheltered harbour. Competitors and their robots will face real life conditions (i.e., a ruined building, sandy terrain, etc) in a realistic mock disaster scenario.

We welcome teams from universities, research labs and industry; from single organisations or teams made up from multiple organisations. Although euRathlon is a European initiative, International teams are also welcome.

To encourage the participation of the maximum number of teams – especially teams with experience in one domain only, three different categories of scenarios have been defined:

• The Grand Challenge: a three-domain scenario, which comprises three missions
• Sub-Challenge: two-domain scenarios; each is a combination of two trials
• Trial: single-domain scenarios

There will be a total of one Grand Challenge, three Sub-Challenges and six trials.

The scenarios will be held in increasing order of complexity (i.e. the trials will be held first followed by the sub-challenges and finally the Grand Challenge). Trials and sub-challenges will allow teams to test and prepare their robots as the scenarios are based on and preparatory to the Grand Challenge. You can learn more about the scenarios here.

There is a Team Matching form available on the website for single-domain teams that wish to join with teams in other domains to create a multi-domain team before the competition.

Official information concerning the registration process, requirements, programme, scenarios and the competition can be found on the euRathlon website and the euRathlon forum.

Please visit www.eurathlon.eu for detailed information or contact eurathlon@uwe.ac.uk.

This project is funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n^o 601205.

Example of visualization of the euRathlon 2013 Common Shared Data Set (CSDS) for the scenario “Search and rescue in a smoke-filled underground structure”. Technically, it’s a ROS rviz visualization of a recorded sensor rosbag. Photo credit: euRathlon

euRathlon is an EU-funded project that aims to set the standard for research through robotics competitions. It not only provides opportunities to test advanced emergency response robots in very challenging outdoor scenarios, but also recognises that there is an urgent need to develop useful metrics that will advance the field. A series of Common Shared Data Sets of real data gathered before and during the competitions are now available to the robotics community through a cloud tool sponsored by ECmanaged. euRathlon is staging a series of outdoor robotics competitions for land, sea and air robots, inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident. After successful land and sea competitions in 2013 and 2014 respectively, the project will stage the three-domain euRathlon 2015 Challenge in Piombino, Italy, from 17th-25th of September 2015.

Real data in realistic scenarios

Participating in outdoor competitions is a great opportunity for roboticists to test their vehicles and gather real data in realistic scenarios. The seven euRathlon partners have contributed their expertise in each domain (land, sea and air robotics) to design realistic but also achievable scenarios that are oriented to emergency-services and industry demands. The scenarios also aim to be:

1. technically demanding, i.e. pushing the boundaries of the state of the art,
2. relevant to the research, industry and user communities, and
3. feasible in the context of a competition both in terms of logistics and evaluation.

The importance of Common Shared Data Sets (CSDS)

Teams that are either new to the competition or have limited access to proper hardware and training areas face the problem that they cannot test their system against typical settings as they would appear in the competition. Also the comparison of methods or configurations requires an exactly reproducible data stream from all sensor inputs. A classical approach to coping with this situation is to provide standardized Common Shared Data Sets (CSDS). Many fields in science and engineering employ standardized CSDS to evaluate similar research, approaches, or techniques and to provide the means for their comparison. Common Shared Data Sets are a good base from which to accelerate the progress of the state-of-the-art in research.

We believe that sharing data reinforces open scientific research, promotes new research and encourages a diversity of analysis and opinions. This is why one of our goals is to provide a framework for the community to discuss and work towards the development of metrics, scenarios and other matters of relevance. The metrics and the euRathlon 2015 challenge scenarios draft are open for discussion in the web-based euRathlon forum.

euRathlon 2015 Common Shared Data Set (CSDS) aerial outdoor task. Image acquired by the UAV at the maximum resolution during the high altitude flight. Photo credits: CATEC

euRathlon CSDS are available to the robotics community

The repository of Common Shared Data Sets produced before and during the euRathlon competitions is a valuable pool for testing, benchmarking and comparison. ECmanaged, a Spanish-based company, sponsors euRathlon with a cloud storage tool that allows the open dissemination of the data sets and other online materials to the robotics community and public in general.

In the euRathlon 2013 land competition, we have previously made available recorded real data sets of the scenarios from the real trials area; and in the euRathlon 2014 sea competition, teams could test one week prior the competition in the real location with the objects used in the competition. The euRathlon 2013 land competition CSDS and the euRathlon 2014 sea competition CSDS generously provided by teams participating in the competitions are now available to the community.

For the euRathlon 2015 competition, we have generated two datasets for the aerial domain: a dataset of indoor tasks and a dataset of outdoor tasks. These data sets have been created from real data collected with real systems in real field experiments. The experiments are designed to be similar to the scenarios that teams will face during the euRathlon 2015. The euRathlon 2015 Challenge CSDS (provided by the organisers) can be used to test and improve robotic systems, and we hope will also help to motivate multi-domain teams to participate in the competition.

Teams could test their AUVs in the real location one week before euRathlon 2014 competition. Photo credit: CMRE

About ECmanaged

ECmanaged is a multi-Cloud and IT management tool that enables users to take full control of their Cloud Platforms and Physical servers at the implementation phase and afterwards. Its design and interface allow users to develop Cloud platforms while avoiding provider-imposed restrictions. ECmanaged combines a monitoring tool with automated management actions such as alerting, auto-scaling and disaster recovery. It uses a novel approach of high-level platform modelling allowing Cloud platforms to be developed avoiding provider imposed restrictions. The deployment of applications is also simplified through the use of predefined templates and images. A key feature is the automated incident resolution with up to 80% of incidents being solved without any human intervention in less than 5 minutes.

Team Avalon tuning their underwater robot for the combined scenario. (copyright Nicolas Jourden/CMRE-euRathlon)

euRathlon is an outdoor robotics competition funded by the European Union with a focus on realistic cooperative mock emergency-response scenarios in three different domains: land, sea and air. On the third and fourth days of the euRathlon 2014 marine competition the teams faced two more tasks, and in the last day a combined scenario that included the tasks of the previous days. Visitors saw a demonstration of cooperation between an aerial robot and a land robot, as an advance of euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge. The winners of the five euRathlon 2014 scenarios were unveiled at the award ceremony in the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) in La Spezia.

(See also euRathlon 2014 Sea competition recap: Day 1 and 2.)

Team CISSAU (Ensta Bretagne) deploying in the water their Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). (copyright Nicolas Jourden/CMRE-euRathlon)

Third day scenario: Interaction with underwater structures

In this scenario the underwater robots had to reach the manipulation area where there was a piping assembly structure. In one of the pipes there was a lever to be manipulated.
The robots had to touch the structure and maintain contact with it, close the stopcocks and bring to the surface a pole (with a ring on the top) that had been fixed to the sea bottom. Teams had different time slots depending on the degree of used autonomy. The three modalities were:

1) Fully autonomous: an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) without a cable. The AUV could communicate with an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) acoustically or with the operator located on the shore.

2) Semi-autonomous: no human tele-operation. Sensory data could be received and high level commands could be sent by the operator to the AUV or the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), but low-level joystick driving was not allowed.

3) Tele-operation: human tele-operation in a low-level joystick driving. The vehicle could not be connected to the shore, but could be connected to a surface vehicle that acted as a communications relay for the tele-operation. The surface vehicle in this case could be moored.

In the fully autonomous robots mode, the teams had 70 minutes, for the semi-autonomous mode they had 55minutes, and for tele-operated mode they had a total of 40 minutes.

Rain was present on Wednesday morning. Only three teams participated in this scenario: University of Girona, Avalon and CISSAU. Despite the rain all teams performed well and completed the scenario. Most of the teams combined full autonomy in the inspection and contact tasks, with tele-operation in the ring and stopcock manipulation.

Spectators waiting for the aerial and land cooperation demonstration. (copyright Nicolas Jourden/CMRE-euRathlon)

Fourth day scenario: Environmental survey of the accident area (mapping)

This scenario took place in a marina dock area. The robots had to complete an environmental survey of a specified area. The underwater vehicles had to inspect a wall to find an anomaly and localise a number of submerged Objects of Potential Interest (OPIs) represented by orange buoys. After completing the scenario, the teams had to download the information and create a map with the position of the OPIs.

On Thursday morning the sun shone again. Two of the six teams decided to withdraw due to technical problems with the navigation of their vehicles. The four teams participating were: Avalon, SAUC’ISSE, University of Girona and CISSAU. All of them completed the scenario successfully. The wall inspection was a difficult task for most of the robots, due to the particular rounded shape created by the rocks in one of the corners of the dock area.
Teams had a maximum of 60 minutes to complete this scenario and the teams had an hour more to process the data and give it to the judges.

Team ROBDOS testing. (copyright Nicolas Jourden/CMRE-euRathlon)

Fifth day scenario: Combined scenario

This scenario took place in the coastal water area and the marina dock area, and was a combination of the four previous days’ scenarios. It included three different tasks: “Autonomous underwater navigation”, “Mapping the area and wall following/anomaly detection” and “pick and bring to the surface the pole ring”. The scenario ended when the AUV surfaced with the pole ring object. Teams had a maximum of 75 minutes to complete the scenario.

The judges on the boat and inside the sonar cabin evaluated in real time the teams’ performances. Once the scenario finished, maps with the trajectories of the vehicles and the OPIs localisations were created from the data given by the teams.

Four teams participated in this last scenario: University of Girona, Avalon, SAUC’ISSE and CISSAU. All the teams performed well, especially when taking into account the difficulty of the combined scenario. Only the University of Girona and SAUCI’SSE completed the three tasks. SAUC’ISSE and Avalon were able to demonstrate cooperation between a USV and an AUV.

Demonstration of aerial and land robots cooperation

The demonstration of the cooperation between an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) that took place on Friday offered a preview of what spectators can expect to see in euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge. The event was held at CMRE and open to the press and public. Attendees standing behind a security line saw the cooperation between a land vehicle and a quadrotor. The demo was performed by the Centre for Advanced Aerospace Technologies (CATEC), Seville, Spain and the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy.

Team SAUC’ISSE (Ensta Bretagne) carrying an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) (copyright Nicolas Jourden/CMRE-euRathlon)

Dynamic display

Parallel to the competition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), challenged teams to participate in their underwater tests.

euRathlon 2014 winners

The awards ceremony took place at the NATO’s Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation.

The Director of CMRE, Hank Ort (RADM), gave the certificates and prizes to the winners:

• Scenario: Long range autonomous underwater navigation.
  1st prize University of Girona, 2nd SAUC’ISSE
• Scenario: Leak localisation and structure inspection
  1st prize University of Girona, 2nd Avalon, 3rd SAUC’ISSE and 4th CISSAU
• Scenario: Underwater manipulation
  1st prize University of Girona, 2nd Avalon, 3rd CISSAU
• Scenario: Environmental survey
  1st prize Avalon, shared 2nd SAUC’ISSE / University of Girona, 4th CISSAU
• Scenario: Combined scenario
  1st prize University of Girona, 2nd SAUC’ISSE, 3rd Avalon and 4th CISSAU

At the end of the ceremony, Gabriele Ferri, technical director of euRathlon 2014, thanked the Judge Team and the Crew. The euRathlon project coordinator, Alan Winfield, thanked the teams and ONR Global, for sponsoring euRathlon 2014 prizes. He also thanked the Centro di Supporto e Sperimentazione Navale (CSSN), ECmanaged and Bq for their support and sponsorship.

Teams and attendees of euRathlon 2014 were invited to participate or attend euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge in Italy next year.

(See also euRathlon 2014 Sea competition recap: Day 1 and 2.)

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Six teams to participate in euRathlon 2014 sea competition next week
• Don’t build robots, build robot systems
• Winners of the euRathlon 2013 land robotics competition announced!
• euRathlon and the DARPA Robot Challenge: A difference of approach

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Team University of Gerona at the euRathlon 2014 Sea Competition.  ©euRathlon.

euRathlon is an outdoor robotics competition focused on realistic emergency-response scenarios inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident. After a successful land-based competition in 2013, a marine-based competition takes place this year in La Spezia, Italy (29 Sept – 3 Oct). The good weather present in the first two days of euRathlon 2014 helped the teams participating in the “Long range autonomous underwater navigation” and the “Leak localisation and structure inspection” scenarios. Only two of the six teams participating in the first scenario successfully finished it, while all the teams participating in the second scenario completed it.

First day scenario:  Long Range Autonomous Underwater Navigation

The scenario took place in a coastal water area free of boats and other floating obstacles. The Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) were deployed at the starting point. They had to navigate underwater a distance of 900 meters drawing a quadrilateral shape, which was marked by four waypoints. The waypoints were GPS coordinates given by the organization to the teams. The robots had to surface when reaching each of the waypoints. Teams had a maximum of 70 minutes to complete this scenario, and the task was complete when each team’s robot returned to the starting point.

The judges on the boat and inside the sonar cabin evaluated in real time the performance of the teams. Once the scenario finished, maps with the trajectories of the vehicles were created from the data given by the teams.

On Monday morning two teams decided to withdraw from this scenario due to technical problems, leaving four participating teams: University of Girona, Robdos, SAUC’ISSE and Avalon. The team from the University of Girona and the team SAUC’ISSE gave a very good performance. The French team showed the cooperation between an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) and an AUV. Teams had a maximum of 70 minutes to complete this scenario, and the task was completed when the robot returned to the starting waypoint.

Team SAUC’ISSE competing at the euRathlon 2014 Sea Competition. ©euRathlon.

Second day scenario:  Leak localisation and structure inspection

In the second scenario the robots had to find an underwater piping assembly that was leaking contaminated water. The leak was represented by a plume of Objects of Potential Interest (OPI), in this case white and orange buoys with numbers written on them. Once the robots found the structure, they had to inspect it and localise a stopcock. Teams had a maximum 60 minutes to complete this scenario.

This scenario was held on Tuesday in a sheltered harbour. The teams participating were: CISSAU, University of Girona, SAUC’ISSE and Avalon. All the teams completed the scenario, and gave their data logs to the judges. The judges have yet to analyse the data and decide which teams performed best.

A judge evaluates Team University of Girona at the euRathlon Sea Competition. ©euRathlon.

There are still three more days of competition to come: Wednesday 1 October “Interaction with underwater structures”, Thursday, 2 October “Environmental survey of the accident area” and Friday, 3 October a “Combined scenario”.

(read here our next post for Winners of euRathlon 2014 sea competition recap: Day 3, 4 and 5)

If you want to know more about the euRathlon 2014 scenarios and the teams’ performance, follow the competition on twitter and Facebook for daily updates.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Six teams to participate in euRathlon 2014 sea competition next week
• Don’t build robots, build robot systems
• Winners of the euRathlon 2013 land robotics competition announced!
• euRathlon and the DARPA Robot Challenge: A difference of approach

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Team participating in SAUC-E sea robotics competition collects their robot from the sea. Photo credits: SAUC-E

Leaks of substances into the sea, damage to underwater structures, machine rooms flooded… these were real challenges that emergency services working at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station had to face. euRathlon is an outdoor robotics competition funded by the European Union with a focus on realistic cooperative search and rescue response scenarios for land, sea and air robots. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the competition is in its second year, after a successful euRathlon 2013 land robotics competition in Germany. This year the competition aims to advance the state-of-the-art in autonomous underwater/surface vehicles by challenging multi-disciplinary teams of students and engineers with autonomous missions in the marine environment. Six teams have qualified for euRathlon 2014. We will be providing coverage of the competition, which will take place at the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), La Spezia, Italy, from September 29-October 3, 2014.

The scenarios

The competition scenarios for euRathlon 2014 focus on those aspects of the Fukushima-like accident that will characterize the euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge. This means that teams can use the 2014 sea competition as an opportunity to design and test marine robots ready to take part in the 2015 cooperative land-sea-air robotics challenge.

The 2014 sea-competition scenarios have been designed as possible intervention tasks. The scenarios are:

1. Long range autonomous underwater navigation
2. Environmental survey of the accident area
3. Leak localisation and structure inspection
4. Interaction with underwater structures (manipulation)
5. Combined scenario

Descriptions of the five scenarios were published early in 2014 to allow teams to comment on them and to prepare their vehicles. A draft of the scoring table was also published in advance for teams to discuss on the website-based euRathlon forum. Detailed descriptions of the scenarios were not given to the teams so as to keep an element of uncertainty, as it would be in the real world.

Qualifying teams

Successfully tackling the competition scenarios is not an easy task. Teams were required to undertake a qualifying process to prove that their vehicle(s) would be able to cope with the scenarios. The teams were asked to write a Scenario Application Paper (SAP) for each of the scenarios they were planning to enter. In the SAPs they describe their robot(s) and explain how they plan to address the technical challenges for each specific scenario. A technical advisory board reviewed the SAPs to check that each team’s proposed solutions are realistic. Feedback from this process was given to the teams to help them prepare for the competition.

Here are the 6 teams that qualified for participation in the euRathlon 2014 sea competition:

1. AVALON — The team from DFKI GmbH and the University of Bremen will participate in all five scenarios with their robots: “Avalon”, “Dagon” and “ASV”.

2. CISSAU – CISSAU is one of the two teams from the Institute of ENSTA Bretagne, France, that are going to be present in euRathlon sea competition. Their robot “Vici” will participate in all five scenarios.

3. ROBDOS – Robdos is formed by a group of students from the University Polytechnic of Madrid (UPM) and the Spanish-based company Robdos. They will participate with one of the SPARUS II that euRathlon has loaned to them, in long range autonomous navigation, environmental survey and leak localisation scenarios.

4. SHARK – SHARK is the team of researchers from the TeCIP Institute and the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy. They will participate with “SHARK”, another SPARUS II loaned by euRathlon, in the long range autonomous navigation and the environmental survey scenarios.

5. SAUC’ISSE – The second team from the Institute of ENSTA Bretagne, France. They will participate with their robot “SAUC’ISSE” in the long range autonomous navigation, the environmental survey, leak localisation and structure inspection, and the combined scenario.

6. UNIVERSITY OF GIRONA – The team from the University of Girona is formed by students and researchers of the Underwater Vision & Robotics Research Centre (CIRS). The team develops and operates the robot vehicle “SPARUS II” that will participate in long range autonomous navigation, environmental survey, and leak localisation scenarios.

Which teams will successfully address the scenarios? Don’t miss the updates next week. For pictures and more information about the teams visit:
http://www.eurathlon.eu/site/index.php/compete/teams/

euRathlon is an outdoor robotics competition where teams test the intelligence and autonomy of their robots in realistic mock emergency-response scenarios. On the fifth and last day of euRathlon 2013 competition, visitors saw demonstrations of robots performing different tasks. The winners of the four euRathlon 2013 scenarios were unveiled at the award ceremony in Salinenplatz, in Berchtesgaden.

Watch the Day Five recap video …

Demonstration of Reconnaissance and Disposal of Explosive Devices
The demonstration “Reconnaissance and disposal of explosive devices” was open to the public and held in the Berchtesgaden train station. Attendees standing on the main platform saw three scenarios in which robots are used by police and bomb squads. The teams participating in this demo were ELP, Telerob and Fraunhofer FKIE.

Robots had to find and pick up a bag or suitcase from a locker and deactivate an explosive device, so as to reduce risk for the squad members. In another scenario, the competing robots had to cut a cable belt of explosives. Some robots were faster than others, but all performed well and successfully completed their mission.

Dynamic display demonstrations
Parallel to the demonstration, visitors once again witnessed some teams’ robots be challenged by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) tests. Visitors also enjoyed product demonstrations from various exhibitors and euRathlon 2013 Sponsors: Cobham plc, ELP GmbH, Geo Systems Inc., OrbiTeam Software GmbH & Co. KG and Saltation GmbH & Co. KG.

euRathlon 2013 winners
The awards ceremony took place in the big marquee located in Salinenplatz.

Frank E. Schneider, head of euRathlon 2013 competition, and Alan Winfield, euRathlon project coordinator, gave the certificates and prizes to the winners.

• Scenario: Mobile for handling hazardous materials.
  1st prize Telerob, 2nd ELP and 3rd SPACEAPPS
• Scenario: Reconnaissance & Surveillance in urban structures (USAR).
  1st prize ELP, 2nd Telerob and 3rd IMM-IAIR
• Scenario: Search & Rescue in smoke-filled underground structure
  1st prize Telerob, 2nd ELP and 3rd ENSTABretagne
• Autonomous navigation
  1st prize MuCAR, 2nd RIS and 3rd NAMT

Additional awards for:

• Novel Scientific Solution: team RIS
• Creative Solution: team NAMT
• Best Team Effort: team E15

Corporate teams ELP (from ELP) and Telerob (from COBHAM) donated their prize money to the first university team on the list of scenario finalists.

At the end of the ceremony, Alan Winfield and Frank E. Schneider thanked the Chief Judge Team, Dr.-Ing. Michael Gustmann, and the judges: Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Zawadke, Prof. Dr. Juha Röning and Kenneth A. Pink.  They also thanked the local organiser Frank Woodcock, CEO of the company ProgenoX, and all the teams and attendees of euRathlon 2013. All of them were invited to participate or attend euRathlon 2014 underwater robotics competition in Italy next year.

See all the euRathlon 2013 coverage.

Clouds, mist and rain accompanied the fourth day of euRathlon 2013 civilian outdoor robotics competition. Thursday was the day when the “Autonomous Navigation” scenario took place in an area of the Kehlstein mountain (1.834 m), located in the Berchtesgaden Alps. Unfortunately teams and robots had to deal with heavy rain. Despite of the poor weather conditions, which are part of a real world scenario, many robots successfully finished two of the three levels of autonomous navigation.
Watch the Day Four recap video …

The 4th Scenario: Autonomous navigation
The “Autonomous navigation” scenario took place in the breathtaking landscape of the Berchtesgaden Alps. The robots had to autonomously navigate an Alpine trail on the Kehlstein mountain. The trail had three levels of difficulty. At the end of the first and second levels, there was a sign that the robot could detect and choose whether or not to continue to the next level. The first-level terrain was gravel and the path was slightly inclined, while the second level had the same type of gravel terrain, but the path was steeper and was scattered with medium-size tree branches. The third-level path was narrow and steep with rocky terrain.

The competing robots had 45 minutes to reach the end of the third level or, if they decided not to traverse that very difficult path, reach the first or second level and come back.

Spectators followed the slower-moving robots as they performed this task, and watched a recording of the faster-moving ones on a big screen once they returned to the starting point.

Despite the poor weather conditions, many robots successfully reached the end of level two. All the robots were fully autonomous and not tele-operated. However, each had a system that allowed the robot operator, who was following the robot next to the judge, to take control of the robot if needed, for example, if the robot was lost, got stuck, or could not navigate. Some robots required human intervention as they performed the task, and were consequently penalized. However, all teams did well bearing in mind the poor weather and the completely unknown terrain.

Of the seven teams initially signed up for this scenario, two withdrew before the competition and the rest qualified for the final. These five teams were: MuCar, ARTOR, RIS, FKIE and NAMT.

In tomorrow’s post, the winners of euRathlon 2013 will be unveiled. Don’t miss it!

See all the euRathlon 2013 coverage.

The sun was shining again on the third day of euRathlon 2013 outdoor robotics competition in Berchtesgaden, Germany. Wednesday was the day for the “Search and rescue in a smoke-filled underground structure” scenario, and the last day of the euRathlon 2013 workshop, where attendees enjoyed presentations by specialists in various areas of robotics. The keynote presentation was given by Shinji Kawatsuma, senior primary engineer of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, who talked about the lessons learned from using robots in the emergency response disaster of Fukushima Daiichi NPP. Following the presentations was a UAV pilot demonstration carried out by the Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies (CATEC). Watch the Day Three recap video …

Workshop Day Two
In addition to the keynote, Day Two of the workshop featured more presentations by specialists in the area of robotics:

• Anne Bajart, of the and euRathlon European Commission project officer , “Unmanned vehicles and Horizon 2020”
• Shinji KAWATSUMA, Senior primary engineer of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA)
  “Robotic lessons learned in emergency response to Fukushima Daiichi NPP”
• Dr.-Ing. Peer Rechenbach, Senior Expert of Disaster Management, Civil
  Protection, Leadership Organization and CBRN-Measurement.
  “Information needs for decision makers in case of major emergencies – Experiences”
• Martin Hutchings, of the National Bomb Squad Commanders Advisory Board (NSBCAB) “Robots used by police and bomb squads”
• Dr.-Ing Konstantin Kondak, of the DRL (National aeronautics and space research centre of the Federal Republic of Germany)
  “Robotics Technologies for Flying Robots – New applications and challenges”
• Antidio Viguria Jiménez, of CATEC (Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies) “UAV platform available for teams participating in euRathlon 2015”

Following the presentations, a safety pilot from CATEC, one of the partners of euRathlon consortium, did a UAV pilot demonstration in the garden of the Kongresshaus, and attendees were invited to test their pilot skills.

The 3rd Scenario:  Search and rescue in a smoke-filled underground structure
The scenario “Search and rescue in a smoke-filled underground structure” took place in a tunnel located next to Salinenplazt in Berchtesgaden.  The tunnel entrance was covered with large curtains to keep the inside of the underground structure in darkness and filled with dense smoke.

This scenario required competing robots to enter the tunnel, inspect the area, and search for Objects of Potential Interest (OPI) — ERICard number plates. Debris and objects were scattered across the floor and stacked next to the walls to make navigation more difficult for the robots. The robots were required to build a geometric representation of the tunnel and reference all the OPI detected there. Once the OPIs were referenced and all the data and images reported to the control station, the robot had to leave the tunnel and return to the starting point.

The teams had 30 minutes to find as many OPI as they could and transmit the acquired data to the control station.

Spectators could follow the competition outside the perimeter of the underground scenario. Live camera video and computer screenshots were displayed on a big screen.

The competing robots managed well despite the extremely poor visibility and the debris-covered terrain; however locating all the OPIs in 30 minutes was a difficult challenge.

Of the ten teams participating in this scenario, eight qualified for the final. These eight teams were: ELP, Telerob, Ensta-Bretagne, IMM-IAIR,Robotics Inventions, SCentrRo, Space Applications and E15.

See all the euRathlon 2013 coverage.

The second day of euRathlon competition started with the opening session of the euRathlon 2013 workshop, which was run in parallel with the scenario “Reconnaissance and surveillance in urban structures” (USAR).  The competition continued until the end of the evening, followed by a fire drill performed by the local fire brigades featured in the same building as the USAR scenario.  The fire drill took place simultaneously with an interactive display session of workshop posters in the Salinenplatz marquee. A typical and festive Bavarian dinner was served to teams, workshop delegates and fire fighters at the end of the second day. Watch the Day Two recap video …

Workshop – Day One
The first day of the euRathlon 2013 workshop was held in the Congress Centre “Kur-und Kongresshaus” of Berchtesgdaen, and featured presentations by specialists in the area of robotics for field search-and-rescue:

• Dr.-Ing. Michael Gustmann, “Real-world field robotics: Nuclear emergency response robotics in Germany”
• Thommaso Flamma, “ICARUS Unmanned Search and Rescue”
• Adam Jacoff, “Standard Test Methods for Response Robots: Supporting Objective Evaluations, Procurements, and Operator Training”
• George Kern, “Synthetic Aperture Processing for Deep GNSS/INS Integration”
• Andrzej Typiak , “Development of high mobility platforms for search and rescue missions”
• Prof. Sergey Tsarichenko “Robots of the all-Russian Scientific Research Institute for Fire Protection”
• Dirk Schmidt “BlueBot phone app robot control system”

The 2nd scenario:  Reconnaissance and surveillance in urban structures (USAR)
The Reconnaissance and Surveillance in Urban Structures (USAR) scenario was held in the basement of an old building next to Berchtesgaden train station.

The scenario required competitors’ robots enter to the building and go down the stairs to the basement. Once there, the robots had to inspect the building and search for Objects of Potential Interest (OPI), which, for this scenario were ERICard number plates. While the robots were performing the search task, they had to simultaneously build a geometric representation of the structure and its environment and reference all the OPI detected in it.  All data and images had to be reported to the control station, and live camera video and computer screen shoots were displayed on a big screen outside the building where spectators followed the competition.

The teams had 60 minutes to find as many OPI as they could and transmit the acquired data to the control station.

Going down the stairs was the most difficult task for the six teams that participated in the USAR scenario. Most of the robots used an elevator lift to go to the basement (despite a score penalization for doing so); of those teams that decided to take the stairs, many wound up upside-down on the staircase landing.

The robots were able to find OPIs in very low light conditions, to transmit data and to successfully build a 2-D and 3-D geometric representations of the urban structure.

The six teams that qualified for Friday’s finals were: ELP, Telerob, Space Applications, Robotics Inventions, IMM-IAIR and Fraunhofer FKIE.

Exhibition area
Various companies and organisations have their products and projects on display in the exhibition area this week. On Day Two, exhibition area visitors witnessed how teams had the chance to test their robots in an off-competition testing circuit designed by people from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA.

Workshop posters display and social event
In the evening, the exhibition area held an interactive display session of workshop posters and a typical Bavarian dinner, and team members, workshop delegates and fire fighters exchanged ideas and talked about their projects and jobs while having a drink.

See all the euRathlon 2013 coverage.

euRathlon is a new civilian outdoor robotics competition focused on realistic cooperative search and rescue response scenarios. The euRathlon 2013 competition, which takes place this week in Berchtesgaden, Germany, is only for land-based robots. Though there was good weather on the first day of the competition, not all the teams qualified for the finals of the competition’s first scenario: “Mobile manipulation for handling hazardous material.” Watch the Day One recap video…

The Opening
EuRathlon project coordinator Professor Alan Winfield gave a warm welcome to all the attendees, followed by Anne Bajart (the project’s European Comission officer), Dr Frank Schneider (Head of  euRathlon 2013 Land Robotics Competition), and Herr Rudolf Schaupp.

The 1^st Scenario:  Mobile manipulation for handling hazardous material
The competition’s first scenario required competitors’ robots to approach and inspect a tank waggon that was leaking a “hazardous” substance (water was used to simulate the hazardous substance for safety reasons).  The robots were required to stop the liquid from flowing out of the tank by closing at least one of the tank’s many valves, which came in various sizes and shapes. Once the valves were closed, the robots were required to pick up at least one canister containing the “hazardous” substance from a loading platform, move it into a barrel, and then cover the barrel with a lid.  The canisters were of varying sizes and weights, and were located at different heights on the loading platform.  Teams had a maximum of 45 minutes to complete this scenario, and the task was complete when the robot returned to the starting point.

Mobile manipulation is a difficult task, especially if it’s done autonomously. On Monday morning three teams decided to withdraw from this scenario, leaving four teams to participate in the mobile manipulation scenario. All four teams that qualified for the finals on Friday were tele-operated; these are: Space Applications, Telerob, ELP and Fraunhofer FKIE.

Exhibition Area
Various companies and organisations have their products and projects on display in the exhibition area this week. On Day One, exhibition area visitors witnessed an impressive demonstration of the Menzi Muck “Rescue Spider”, a robot used by the German Agency for technical relief (THW) in real disaster-response scenarios. 

Get-Together Event
After a long day of tuning up and fixing robots, participants, visitors, exhibitors and euRathlon organisers met in the Congress Centre “Kur-und Kongresshaus” to relax, enjoy dinner and exchange ideas.

Day Two will be another exciting day, with qualifications for the Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) scenario and the first day of euRathlon 2013 workshop. See all the euRathlon 2013 coverage.

Buildings that are collapsed or on fire, tunnels flooded with smoke or water, unstructured areas subject to radiation, chemical spills or gas leaks … these are the kinds of scenarios that place emergency services personnel at great risk, and where using robots could help contain damage and minimize injury or death. euRathlon is a civilian outdoor robotics competition supported by the European Commission with a focus on realistic cooperative search and rescue response scenarios. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the competition scenarios have been carefully designed to provide teams with realistic challenges that test their robot’s ability to face real-world situations. Fourteen teams qualified for the event. We will be providing daily coverage of the competition, which will take place in Berchtesgaden, Germany from September 23-27, 2013.

The scenarios
When designing the event, organizers asked themselves how robots could best be leveraged by emergency services personnel in a disaster scenario: How can robots be monitored from a safe distance, so that human emergency workers can focus on other important tasks? What kinds of tasks could the robots perform? Are robots ready to succeed in real-world environments? And how can we test them?

To help address these questions, the euRathlon 2013 land competition was designed around five scenarios:

1. Reconnaissance and surveillance in urban structures (USAR)
2. Mobile manipulation for handling hazardous material
3. Search and rescue in a smoke-filled underground structure
4. Autonomous navigation using GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO
5. Reconnaissance and disposal of explosive devices

Descriptions of the five scenarios were published in advance of the competition to allow teams to prepare their robots. Detailed descriptions of the scenarios and potential hazards the robots would face were deliberately kept from the teams so as to keep an element of uncertainty, just like in a real world disaster.

Qualifying teams
Successfully tackling the competition scenarios is not an easy task, and prospective teams were required to take part in a qualifying process to prove that their robot(s) would be able to cope with the scenarios. Each team was required to write a Scenario Application Paper (SAP) explaining how their robot(s) would address the technical challenges of the scenarios they were planning to enter. The SAPs were reviewed to see if each team’s proposed solutions were realistic, and feedback from this process was fed back to the teams to help them prepare for the actual land competition. Here are the 14 teams that have qualified for participation in the euRathlon 2013 land competition:

1. ARTOR — ARTOR is a team of researchers and technical staff from the Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) of ETH Zürich and RUAG Defence. They will participate with their robot, also called “ARTOR” (Autonomous Rough Terrain Outdoor Robot), in the autonomous navigation scenario.
2. E15 — E15 is formed by a group of 16 students from the University of Applied Sciences Esslingen, Germany. Their robot “Monique” will participate in the mobile manipulation, smoke-filled underground and autonomous navigation scenarios.
3. ELP — The ELP team represents German company ELP GmbH and will participate with their robot “PAckBot EOD 510” in the USAR, mobile manipulation, smoke-filled underground and EOD scenarios.
4. ENSTA Bretagne — ENSTA Bretagne is a small team of students and researchers from the Institute of ENSTA Bretagne, France. They will participate with their robot “Tracker” in the smoke-filled underground scenario.
5. Fraunhofer FKIE — The team of the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE, Fraunhofer FKIE, will participate in the USAR, mobile manipulation, and autonomous navigation scenarios with their robots: “Telemax”, “TeodorPrime” and “Garm”.
6. IMM-IAIR — IMM-IAIR is a team of researchers of the Institute of Mathematical Machines in collaboration with the Institute of Automatic Control and Robotics, Warsaw, Poland. They will participate with their robot “MSAS II” in the USAR and smoke-filled underground scenarios.
7. MAJIDADA – Allen Vanguard — MAJIDADA is the team of the UK- based company Allen-Vanguard. They will participate in the USAR, mobile manipulation, smoke-filled underground and EOD scenarios with the robots “Defender D2.1”, “Digital Vanguard”, “Scorpion SUGV”, “Armadillo UGV” and “Beetle NUGV”.
8. MuCAR — MuCAR is the team of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Germany. The team develops and operates the robot vehicle “MuCAR-3” that will participate in the autonomous navigation scenario.
9. NAMT — The NAMT team is formed by students and staff of two institutions, the Nizhny Novgorod Automotive Technical School (NAMT) and the Moscow State Technical University. They will participate with the robot “CyberMobile” in the autonomous navigation scenario.
10. RIS — RIS is the team of the Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS), a CNRS research unit, based in Toulouse, France. They will participate with the robots “Mana” and “Minnie” in the USAR, smoke-filled underground and autonomous navigation scenarios.
11. RI Spirit – Robotics Inventions — RI Spirit is the team of Polish company Robotics Inventions. They will participate with the robot “A-Bot Light” in the USAR, mobile manipulation, smoke-filled underground and autonomous navigation scenarios.
12. SCentRo — SCentRo is a team of 6 PhD students of the Sheffield Centre for Robotics (SCentRo) that was jointly established by the Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield, UK.  SCentRo will participate with the robot “PIONEER P3 AT” in the “Search and rescue in smoke filled underground structure” scenario.
13. SPACEAPPS — The SPACEAPPS team is formed by staff of the Belgium company Space Applications Services N.V. They will participate with the robot “MILOU” (Clearpath Husky A200) in USAR, mobile manipulation, smoke-filled underground and EOD scenarios.
14. Telerob — Telerob is the team of the German-based company telerob Gesellschaft für Fernhantierungstechnik mbH trading as Cobham Mission Equipment. They will participate with the robot “Telemax” in the USAR, mobile manipulation, smoke-filled underground and EOD scenarios.

Which robots will successfully address the scenarios? Don’t miss the daily updates next week.

For pictures and more information about the teams visit:    http://www.eurathlon2013.eu/information/competition/participants.html

See all the euRathlon 2013 coverage.