Published:
A six strong team from the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics (ECR) along with one undergraduate student have been selected to take part in a major robot competition.
The team Edinbots, are due to appear in the final round of the RoboCup Rescue Simulation League - Virtual Robot Competition.
And the Edinburgh team are only one of two including Cambridge – who will compete with seven across the glove at the finals in Canada, this month.
The RoboCup Rescue Simulation League was set up after the 1995 earthquake in Kōbe, Japan - in order to further the development of urban search and rescue strategies.
To qualify, all teams had to write an eight page paper describing how they'd tackle the rescue situation.
Hugo Sardinha, team leader, said: “We are very happy to have qualified for the RoboCup.
“Since we are such an interdisciplinary team, it will be a great opportunity to learn from each other as we develop an integrated approach to a search and rescue scenario.
“Since we will be operating in a competitive environment, we are also looking forward to seeing how our strategy compares to that of other teams on a worldwide level and how each one of us can use what we learn in our own PhD projects.
“This is truly a fantastic opportunity on a personal, technical and scientific level and we can't wait for the competition in June."
Dr Patricia A. Vargas, director of the Robotics Lab and ECR outreach and public engagement lead, added: “As supervisors, we are extremely proud of our students for having assembled the Edinbots team for this Robocup competition.
“Robocup is a unique opportunity for our robotics students to test their ideas and to advance this very complex and challenging field of research.
“We are confident that our Edinbots team will be excellent ambassadors for Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and the university, thus helping to improve our outreach and international presence.”
The Edinbots team is made up of Centre for Doctoral Training students Hugo Sardinha, Siobhan Duncan, Calum Imrie and Vibhav Bharti; ECR Robotics CDT affiliated student Ingo Keller; and undergraduate Computer Science student Sabina Jędrzejczyk.