Rescue Robot Contest - to expand the range of rescue research

On 17 January 1995, we had the Hyogoken-Nambu Earthquake in the Kansai area in Japan. At that time, we were surprised to learn that there were no effective rescue systems or rescue robots. After the earthquake, some research committees on rescue systems have been started [1, 2]. To construct a more effective rescue system, not only research on rescue systems but also public awareness is important. That is, we have to enlighten the public about the importance of rescue activities. The authors thought that an effective way of understanding the importance of rescue is to carry out a kind of contest. Therefore, we have proposed a new contest named the Rescue Robot Contest [3]. The Ž rst contest was held in the RoboFesta (the International Robot Games Festival) Kansai 2001 at Osaka in July 2001. In this paper, we introduce the outline of the contest.