RoboCupRescue Simulation League
From Robocup
Contents |
Competition Overview
The goal of the urban search and rescue (USAR) robot competitions is to increase awareness of the challenges involved in search and rescue applications, provide objective evaluation of robotic implementations in representative environments, and promote collaboration between researchers. The RoboCup Rescue Simulation League is composed of three competitions: the virtual robot competition, the agent competition, and the infrastructure competition.
Virtual Robot Competition
The goal of the competition is to foster research in cooperative multi-robot systems engaged in Urban Search And Rescue missions. USARSim, a high fidelity robot simulator built over a state of the art commercial game engine, provides the computational infrastructure. In a competition run, a team of simulated robots has to explore, map and clear a block-sized disaster area, featuring both carefully modeled indoor and outdoor environments. Robots and sensors used in the competition closely mirror platform and devices currently used in physical robots.
Currently addressed research topics include, but are not limited to, human-robot interfaces, sliding autonomy, sensor fusion, map building, and distributed planning and learning.
Agent Competition
The Agent competition involves scoring competing agent coordination algorithms on different maps of the RobocupRescue simulation platform. The challenge in this case involves developing coordination algorithms that will enable teams of Ambulances, Police forces, and Fire Brigades to save as many civilians as possible and extinguish fires in a city where an earthquake has just happened. The general issues that must be dealt with are:
1. Path planning under uncertainty (given that roads may be blocked).]
2. Communication with constrained bandwidth and uncertainty
3. Reasoning under uncertainty
4. Scheduling
5. Data fusion
This year's competition will see the implementation of a improved simulators, noisy/corrupted communication and sensing abilities, and an improved scoring system.
Infrastructure Competition
The Infrastructure competition involves evaluating tools and simulators developed for the simulation platform and for simulating disaster management problems in general. Here, the intent is, (but not limited to), to build up realistic simulators and tools that could be used to enhance the basic RobocupRescue simulator and expand upon it.
Executive Committee
Prof. H. Levent Akin (Bogaziçi University, Turkey)
Alexander Kleiner (University of Freiburg, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Stefano Carpin (University of California, Merced)
Technical Committee
Virtual Robots
Dr. Stephen Balakirsky (National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA)
Dr. Alessandro Farinelli (Università di Roma La Sapienza, Italy)
Agent and Infrastructure
Mohammad Mehdi Sabourian (Iran)
Dr. Gopal Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)
Yasovardhan Reddy (Indian Institute of Information Technology,
India)
Local Organizing Committee
Dr. Stephen Balakirsky (National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA)
Specific Competition Information
Virtual Robots Competition
Agent Competition
Infrastructure Competition
Infrastructure Requirements (Items to be provided by RoboCup)
Points of Contact:
Agent and Infrastructure competition: Arash Rahimi and Cameron Skinner
Virtual Robot competition: Stephen Balakirsky
Computer/Projector Needs:
Agent and Infrastructure competitions: They can mostly run on remote machines. They need a local machine for the viewer. There computer requirements are as follows:
1 file server
n clusters (n>=3) each of:
1 viewer machine with a good graphics card (must be local) and a data projector 1 simulator machine 2 or 3 agent machines
All of the machines should have at least 1GB of RAM and at least a 2GHz processor. Network bandwidth requirements are low. If there is a high-powered server, then an entire cluster (apart from the viewer) can run on one multi-CPU box. They will also need to have root access to the machines in order to set up various user accounts and software.
They would also like an additional projector for administrative items. They will need an additional machine for this.
Virtual Robot competition: They run windows as our operating system. So a remote server farm does not help them. They have the following computer requirements (all should be local): n clusters (n>=2) each of
2 systems to run the unreal engine. Must be local and have a really good graphics card. 1 system with a data projector for audience viewing. This system must be local.
All of the machines should have at least 1GB of RAM and at least a 2GHz processor. They would also like to have a local network for the machines. Only the administrative machine will need outside access. They use Windows (currently XP Pro) for their OS.
They would also like an additional projector for administrative items. They will need an additional machine for this.
Table Needs:
Agent and Infrastructure competitions: Would like 20 tables (16 for teams and 4 admin).
Virtual Robot competition: Would like 20 tables (16 for teams and 4 admin). They have 19 registered teams, but expect no more then 16 will actually show.
All tables should have power, and if possible a network drop.
Screens and Space: I have not seen a map of the area where the competitions will take place. How much space do we have? How many and what size display screens can we use? As you can see from above, there is a desire for a large number. I imagine that we will need to find a compromise between space and viewing desires.
Additional Needs: Gopal would like to organize a mini-workshop where he plans to have people present their work to the whole Rescue community. In addition, he will conduct a small tutorial on how to implement a simulator within the simulation platform. For these, he will need a beamer/table and space for at least 40 people.
The virtual robot competition requires an ethernet cable long enough to reach from the farthest competitors table to the projection table. They will need one per cluster.
Needs added May 29
The following requests have come in for additional equipment (apart from the computers).
1) Can we use a PC for a server which is for NFS, NIS(?) and DHCP?
2) Can we get monitor/keyboard switch boxes for systems without monitors? Since they will be set up as windows, they really need a console terminal.
3) We would like the following additional equipment:
a) 9 8-port switching hubs (6 for agent and 3 for VR) b) cables to connect PCs and hubs (length depends on the room layout)(also mentioned above) c) power for competition computers, monitors, and switching hubs
(plus a few extra connections)(also mentioned above) d) power strip for each team (also mentioned above) e) two white boards (one for agent and one for VR) f) one microphone (shared with the virtual robot competition) g) volunteers to help with computer set-up
