Warwick Mobile Robotics look to European bot success

This term, the Warwick Mobile Robotics group aim to achieve successes in international robotics competitions using a robot that contains parts more usually sold as part of the Xbox videogame console.

The robot, a remote-controlled creation designed to be a search and rescue aid to emergency services, will use the motion-sensing capabilities of the ‘Kinect’ gaming peripheral, which is more often utilised as Microsoft’s aid to controller-free gaming.

Warwick Search & Rescue, a select group of postgraduate Engineering students working within Warwick Mobile Robotics, aim to take the robot to amateur competitions in Germany and Turkey, where they will compete against other teams in the Robocup Rescue Championships. The competition will involve the simulation of a search for survivors in a disaster zone, and will test the extent to which each robot can aid emergency service providers.

As the Search & Rescue project counts towards a significant proportion of the qualifications of the students involved, the members of the team change each academic year. The competitiveness between successive teams is even greater than usual this time, as last year’s robot was victorious in the European Robocup Rescue Championship in Germany, and won a Best-in-Class Award for Mobility.

This year the team aims to go one better than the erstwhile European Champions by succeeding in the World Robocup Rescue Championships in Istanbul in June.

The Robotics Team seem confident that they can repeat last year’s success in Germany, claiming that “the team last year were so far ahead of the competition that it will be a major disappointment if we don’t win in Magdeburg,” but suspect that this year the competition will be particularly tough in the World Championships. Success in that event will be an achievement that Alex Ash, an undergraduate Engineering student, claimed “is about as impressive as you can get in Amateur Robotics.”

The robot for this year’s competition, thus far without an official name, is a reworked and improved version of last year’s machine. The team has started work on an improved mechanized ‘arm’ which will have greater manoeuvrability and sensory capabilities, and a streamlined system of communication between the robot and the human controller.

The main change to the design, however, involves use of the Kinect, which will be used to help the robot navigate the competition’s obstacle courses.

Matthew Dodds, the electronics engineer for the team and a postgraduate Engineering student, claims that “Considering the price, the Kinect is an astonishing piece of technology.” In previous years teams have used LIDAR laser technology to help navigation, which costs up to £2000 in total, and Dodds claims that the use of the Kinect will help save a significant portion of the team’s budget, and also provide 3D mapping technology, aiding navigation and the detection of obstacles and threats.

In order to compete at the Robocup Championships, the team need to raise roughly £20,000 of sponsorship money from private interests, currency which will cover the transport costs for the two championships and fund further improvements to the robot’s design. The project has a greater financial significance, however, when one considers the cost in terms of the time taken for students and the supervising academics; one member of the team estimated that the total project will cost “somewhere nearer £200,000” this year, which makes it unsurprising that a stated claim of this year’s Warwick Search & Rescue Team is to “make the platform viable for commercial release.”

Nevertheless, the Warwick Mobile Robotics project is far from a purely competitive enterprise, and several members of the team and faculty agree that the real-world applications for machinery of this type are real and palpable; Matthew Dodds claims that “the type of robot we are building now will be perfect for helping emergency services cope with disasters,” citing both the Chilean Miners’ Disaster and the 9/11 bombings in the United States as examples where the use of robotics could have had a real impact.

The World Robocup Championships will take place between June 6 -11 this year. The organisers claim that the ultimate dream for the competition is that “by mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, comply with the official rule of the FIFA [sic], against the winner of the most recent World Cup.” There are currently no plans for Warwick Mobile Robotics to expand in that direction.

The Warwick Mobile Robotics are a group of undergraduate and postgradute engineering students who are currently involved in two separate projects: developing a robotic rescue device for navigating a collapsed building and creating an unmanned autonomous flying robot for exploring and mapping inaccessible environments. The projects are supported by University academics and PhD students.