Engineering students at the University of Warwick are the only UK team to qualify for a place in a global competition to design and build a search and rescue robot.
Each year a team of students enter The European RoboCup Rescue competition, but this year’s team has gone one better and qualified for a place in the World RoboCup Rescue 2013.
The Warwick Mobile Robotics (WMR) team will be pitted against teams across the world for a chance to win the coveted championship in the Netherlands. They are currently the only UK team to be entered into the competition, which takes place in June.
The competition is designed to develop and demonstrate advanced robotic capabilities to help emergency responders search areas affected by natural disasters.
The team includes Rachele Williams, Michael Taylor - Grint, Nick Orlowski, Edgars Zauls, Kris Buckstone and Lewis Judd.
Team member Rachele Williams said: “We have worked really hard this year and are looking forward to competing at the World Robocup event. It would be good to see what the competitors are like and get a platform for next year’s team to start on. As it is going in at a higher level there would be more improvements to work upon for next year’s team.”
This year the team has formed a partnership with a company in Coventry called Northrop Grumman- Remotec UK, global leaders in mobile robot systems. The team has used testing equipment at the company to see how their robot performs.
Peter Green from Northrop Grumman-Remotec UK said: “The WMR system performed well for its first time out, railway lines were negotiated with little effort followed by some off-roading and then stairs all within minutes of arrival.
“The robot took some knocks and bumps and continuous vibration seen from track patter throughout the day and kept going proving to be robust. As the day went on driver confidence grew and negotiation of terrain and use of arm became second nature.”
The team is supervised by Dr Emma Rushforth from WMG, who said: “Over the past five years WMR have been successful in the RoboCup German Open, competing in the Rescue Robot competition against European teams. We came first in 2010 and second in 2012. Finally with the world cup competition being held in Netherlands, we have been given the opportunity to compete against the world’s best rescue robots in June.
“I am very interested to see how we will do and how we can learn from the other teams. For the students, this will be a culmination of four years of study. They can see how world class their engineering skills really are. We are very grateful to our sponsors for supporting our work and giving us the means to go to the competition.”
WMR can be found on twitter @WMRobotics
Anyone interested in sponsoring the team should email [email protected]
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