RoboCupRescue 2011 - Robot League Team resko@UniKoblenz (Germany)

This paper describes the approach of team resko@UniKoblenz for the RoboCup Rescue competition 2011. Our mobile system Robbie is based on a MobileRobots Pioneer 3 AT. On this platform, an aluminum rack is installed where additional sensors are attached: three color cameras (Philips SPC1330NC), two actively controlled Hokuyo UTM-30LX laser range finders (LRFs), three low-resolution thermal sensors and an inertial measurement unit. The robot can be operated in an autonomous and in a teleoperated mode. The map building is done by the computer automatically by merging the collected LRF data with the odometry information using a Hyper Particle Filter in 2D and in 3D an ICP based approach. The automatic victim detection is based on the thermal sensors and color cameras. Robbie was developed and improved at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany) in several practical courses during the last couple of years. The robot was used by the team resko@UniKoblenz at the RoboCup German Open 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 and at the RoboCup World Championship 2007 in Atlanta (GA, USA), 2008 in Suzhou (China) and 2009 in Graz (Austria). The team achieved the " Best in Class Autonomy Award" in six of these competitions.