WMR Search and Rescue are back after a week of intense competition at the RoboCup Rescue German Open 2011.

Our core platform proved to be a class above the competition with both our main teleoperated robot (USAR-T) and autonomous robot (under teleoperated control) (USAR-A) showing their mobility and rigidity over obstacles that no other competitor was able to navigate. Our performance in this area lead to the team being awarded the Best in Class Mobility award.

The team faced a competition wrought with an almost perfect storm of technical issues for the USAR-T platform. An unfortunate tumble during one of the robot’s early rounds, impacting the exposed back of the robot’s head damaged the communication system. This setback thankfully was only temporary as our electronics team were able to fit replacement parts to restorecommunications for later rounds.

The technical issues however didn’t end there; Large acceleration profiles and a higher arm mass during testing had put more stress on the rest of the USAR-T motor control boards and base motor than the team anticipated. With the lack of arm control, we were unable to manouver the USAR-T's centre of mass, thus rendering the more complex terrains impassable. We decided to move over the vision and control system to the autonomous USAR-A platform and use this as our teleoperated platform instead. This way, as half the team continued to reconstruct the USAR-T, we were able to continue to compete with a piloted USAR-A, finding victims and completing the mobility challenges.

It was only minutes after the last round of the competition that the USAR-T was finally fixed (minus the operation of one arm joint) with a new, more powerful motor board, a rearranged internal electronics stack and arm wiring. As disappointed as the team was that they couldn’t have demonstrated the real capabilities of our most powerful and versatile platform to date at the competition, that didn’t stop us taking a run around the course to see how the improved platform handled. We also were able to test the arm and manipulator, picking up one of the test payloads with our arm and gripper – something that no other team has officially managed to date – placing it directly into one of the judges’ hands.

WMR Search and Rescue were proud to have been able to represent the University of Warwick, WMG and our sponsors at this competition. Although, we are disappointed not to have been able to demonstrate the full power of our new platform in time, the competition has served as a great opportunity for continuing the testing and development of our platforms, particularly the USAR-T. We are happy that the strength of our platforms’ mobility has still shone through the issues that we faced and that we can add the 2011 Best in Class Mobility award to our trophy cabinet.

We will be talking about the project and its outcomes in more details at our annual project presentation, to which all our sponsors are invited. More details will be sent out in the near future.