RoboCup Rescue

Simulation League 

RoboCupRescue Simulation Project is a new practical domain of RoboCup. Its main purpose is to provide emergency decision support by integration of disaster information, prediction, planning, and human interface.

A generic urban disaster simulation environment is constructed on network computers. Heterogeneous intelligent agents such as fire fighters, commanders, victims, volunteers, etc. conduct search and rescue activities in this virtual disaster world. Real-world interfaces such as helicopter image synchronizes the virtuality and the reality by sensing data. Mission-critical human interfaces such as PDA support disaster managers, disaster relief brigades, residents and volunteers to decide their action to minimize the disaster damage.

This problem involves advanced and interdisciplinary research themes. As AI/robotics research, for example, behavior strategy (e.g. multi-agent planning, realtime/anytime planning, heterogeneity of agents, robust planning, mixed-initiative planning) is a challenging problem. For disaster researchers, RoboCupRescue works as a standard basis in order to develop practical comprehensive simulators adding necessary disaster modules.

RoboCupRescue Simulation Project is an open resource of research results. Various people worldwide participate in this simulator for research, entertainment, training, or education via the Internet. A diverse spectrum of possibilities of this technology will contribute to the creation of the safer social system in the future. The awarded team will be requested to provide the component for the next year's competition. For this reason, teams should accept the open source policy before entering the competition.

Robot League 

Disaster rescue is one of the most serious social issue which involves very large numbers of heterogeneous agents in the hostile environment. The intention of the RoboCupRescue project is to promote research and development in this socially significant domain at various levels involving multi-agent team work coordination, physical robotic agents for search and rescue, information infrastructures, personal digital assistants, a standard simulator and decision support systems, evaluation benchmarks for rescue strategies and robotic systems that are all integrated into a comprehensive systems in future. Built upon the success of RoboCup Soccer project, we will provide forums of technical discussions and competitive evaluations for researchers and practitioners. Two projects and leagues, Simulation Project, Robotics and Infrastructure Project, Simulation League and Robot League, are concurrently proceeding at present. Integration of these activities creates digitally-empowered international rescue brigades in the future.