Multi-domain robotics competitions: The CMRE experience from SAUC-E to the European Robotics League Emergency Robots

Abstract

This paper details the experience of the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) in the organisation of several robotics competitions since 2010. In particular, the Student Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge-Europe (SAUC-E) which started in 2006 in the UK and has been hosted by CMRE since 2010, the euRathlon 2014 and 2015 competitions and the European Robotics League (ERL) Emergency Robots 2017. SAUC-E started as a marine robotics competition for students. This paper explains the expansion towards multi-robot and multi-domain competitions such as euRathlon and ERL Emergency Robots. It was the success of SAUC-E, widely recognised by the community as the most realistic student competition for underwater robots, that led CMRE to participate in the euRathlon project and locally organise the first world competition, the euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge, in which autonomous aerial, land, and marine robots worked together in an emergency scenario inspired by the 2011 Fukushima disaster. ERL Emergency Robots will be held in Piombino, at Tor del Sale site, 15–23 September 2017, and it is the natural follow-up of euRathlon. Some new twists will be presented to the teams to push for more autonomy and multi-robot cooperation. Results from previous competitions are presented and the evolution along time and different competitions is shown.