The Future of Robot Rescue Simulation Workshop An initiative to increase the number of participants in the league Arnoud Visser, Francesco Amigoni and Masaru Shimizu RoboCup Rescue Simulation Infrastructure Competition, Leipzig, July 1, 2016
20 years of RoboCup
16 years of RoboCup Rescue Raymond Sheh, Sőren Schwertfeger and Arnoud Visser, 16 years of RoboCup Rescue, submitted to Künstliche Intelligenz, Special Issue on RoboCup, Springer
Challenge Disaster in a city (Kobe): Buildings on fire Roads blocked Civilians buried Communication limited M.L. Fassaert, S.B.M Post, and A. Visser, The Common Knowledge Model of a Team of Rescue Agents, 1th International Workshop on Synthetic Simulation and Robotics to Mitigate Earthquake Disaster, Padova, Italy, 6 July 2003
Creating Sectors - Corner points Corner points are placed UvA Rescue C2003
Creating Sectors - Sectors Corner points are placed Paths between corner points Paths form a concave polygon Map is divided in polygons UvA Rescue C2003
Creating Sectors - Paths Corner points are placed Paths between corner points Paths between form a concave polygon Map is divided in polygons Paths in each sector computed UvA Rescue C2003
Multi-Agent Challenge Mircea Trăichioiu and Arnoud Visser, "Hierarchical Decision Making for Search and Rescue Teamwork ", in the Proceedings of the 27th Belgian-Netherlands Conference on Artificial Intelligence (BNAIC 2015), Hasselt, Belgium, November 5-6, 2015.
Success Stories of USARSim RoboCup 2014 Preliminary RoboCup 2012 Preliminary Dutch Open Final Future of Rescue Robot Simulation workshop, Leiden, February 29, 2016 Arnoud Visser Universiteit van Amsterdam
What is USARSim? High-fidelity multi-robot simulator developed on top of an existing game engine High performance physics and 3D rendering Originally conceived as tool for Urban Search and Rescue (USAR), it has a much broader scope [1] [1] S. Balakirsky, S. Carpin and M. Lewis (2009), "Robots, Games, and Research: Success stories in USARSim", Workshop Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2009), St. Louis, Missouri, USA, October 2009.
Basic Premise Would like to be able to develop, debug, and evaluate cognitive systems Repeatable trials Known ground truth, noise, detections, false detections Evaluation environment should provide realism Realistic complexity Tailored data output Environmental interaction Obey basic laws of physics in sensing and mobility Images from USARSim / MOAST Tutorial
Urban Search & Rescue (USAR) Research in USAR robotics is a vigorous research area Offers unique challenges that are difficult to create in a lab environment Colorado Floods, September 2013
Applications of rescue robots After the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), J. Blitch took notes as to how robots might have been applied. The trigger for the RoboCup Rescue initiative was the Hanshi-Awaji earthquake which hit Kobe City on the same year. Rescue robots were first used at the WTC 9/11 (2001). M. Micire analyzed the operations and identified seven research topics for the robotics community. After 2001, rescue robots were applied in several occasions: Aerial robots were used after hurricane Katrina and Rita Boat robots after hurricane Wilma Snake robots after Bonn s city archive collapse irobot, BobCat and Talon at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
Analysis the USAR operations
Recommendations [1] 1. Research in image processing is needed for fast and accurate victim detection. 2. Automated tether management is needed for robot mobility assistance. 3. Methodologies to increase the quality of wireless communication is required for robots traveling deep into void structures. 4. Research must continue for small robots that can adaptively optimize their shape in difficult void structures. 5. Localization and mapping must be expanded to include highly unstructured domains. 6. Operator assistance through size and depth estimation techniques should be researched. 7. Assisted navigation techniques in highly irregular confined spaces must be explored to limit the number of pose and robot state errors. [1] M. Micire, "Analysis of the Robotic-Assisted Search and Rescue Response to the World Trade Center Disaster," Masters Thesis, University of South Florida, July 2002.
Soryu and Kenaf robot [3] Okamoto, Shogo, et al. "Validation of simulated robots with realistically modeled dimensions and mass in usarsim." Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics, 2008. SSRR 2008. IEEE International Workshop on. IEEE, 2008.
3D mapping [7] Paloma de la Puente, Alberto Valero, Diego Rodriguez-Losada. "3D Mapping: testing algorithms and discovering new ideas with USARSim." Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2009), Workshop on Robots, Games, and Research: Success stories in USARSim, p. 35-40.
Lessons learned Many challenges can be realistically modelled in USARSim. NIST campus USARSim provides: Researchers rapid prototyping tools. Extensive training possibilities for Machine Learning applications Students quick access to robotic testbeds Robots, Games, and Research: Success stories in USARSim A full day workshop held at IROS 2009 Steve Balakirsky, Stefano Carpin and Mike Lewis USARSim/MOAST: Highly Realistic Simulation and Control for Multi Robot A full day workshop held at ICRA 2006 Stefano Carpin, Mike Lewis, Adam Jacoff, and Stephen Balakirsky Urban search and rescue: from Robocup to real world applications A full day workshop held at IROS 2004 Stefano Carpin, Andreas Birk, Daniele Nardi, Adam Jacoff and Satoshi Tadokoro
5 days workshop
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Speakers
Participants
Regional Diversity Selected participants from the Netherlands, Turkey, Italy, Tunisia, Austria, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Iran, Germany, Portugal, Peru, Malaysia, and Japan.
Technical skills The selected participants had experience in computer languages as C, C++, C#, R, Matlab, Java, Basic, Python, and Maple. They had experience with simulation environments as Unreal Engine, Gazebo, Player/Stage, Robotics Development Studio, Unit3D, V-rep, Open Dynamics Engine, and Bullet.
Experience The selected participants had participated in competitions as the DARPA Challenge, Japanese Virtual Robot Challenge, eurathlon, Drones for Good, RoboCup Junior, RoboRace, Mid-size Sumo, and the RoboPoly challenges.
Venue
Social Program
Tutorials Every day hands-on experiences and step-by-step instructions
Interaction
Support 9 letters of support were submitted
Budget LORENTZ CENTER MEETING BUDGET SHEET 2016 Alternative Use Please fill in the appropriate values in the blue cells Number Euro Anticipated number of participants (including scientific organizers) 25 Number of meeting days 5 A. Meeting Budget The Lorentz Center covers the costs for refreshments and facilities 1 External funding (please apply a.s.a.p.) Fill in: funding agency and amount 0 Fill in: funding agency and amount 0 Fill in: funding agency and amount 0 Fill in: funding agency and amount 0 Fill in: funding agency and amount 0 TOTAL BUDGET 15,112
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Conclusion the definition of new environment and new rules for the Virtual Robot Competition an initial seed of a community of researchers around the rescue applications of multi-robot systems
Impact for Agent competition Organize workshops at multi-agent / robotic conferences Tutorials / Video Lectures Rescue Simulation Camps