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More than 43 international RoboCup Major League teams from 14 countries competed in the 12th RoboCup German competition for soccer, rescue and service robots. The city of Magdeburg was again hosting this great event which was held from April 26 - 28, 2013. The GET Lab team with their robots "GETbot" and "GETjag" lined up this year, as in previous events (2008 - 2012), in the rescue robot league representing the University of Paderborn.

The basic aim of the RoboCupRescue project is to increase awareness of the challenges involved in search and rescue operations, promote collaboration between researchers and provide a stepping-stone from the laboratory to the real world.

In this competition, the rescue robots compete to find disaster victims in a simulated earthquake environment, e.g. a situation after a natural catastrophe. They have to explore the area, generate maps, recognize victims, determine their situation, and correctly label the map with the victims' positions. Victim detection is done using different sensors such as visual, thermal and audio. As per descriptions of RoboCupRescue League, there are different types of rescue arena (Yellow, Orange, Red, and Blue). Each of these arenas involves certain level of challenges. Robots can operate and score victims in an autonomous or a teleoperated mode in all types of arenas except the yellow arena in which robots must operate autonomously. The robots had only 15 minutes this year to complete their mission. Robot teams demonstrate their capabilities in autonomy, mobility, manipulation and mapping. Generally, points are scored based on the number of victims found and the quality of the generated maps.

Additional missions are given to evaluate the level of autonomy, mobility and manipulation of mobile robots, and awards are given accordingly: best in class mobility, best in class autonomy and best in class manipulation.

GET Lab had put its focus this year on developing a new mobile robot "GETjag" to run in a teleoperated mode. This new platform is supposed to work in parallel with the autonomous robot "GETbot" for finding and scoring more victims in the arena. Expectations and the pressure to succeed were high - given a third place last year - and team members fervently worked on optimizing the interaction of software and hardware components to get the two robots working together. Unfortunately, their performance did not suffice for a spot on the winner's podium. However, they were capable to won the best in class mobility using the new platform even though it was the first experience to them to launch the robot in the teleoperated mode. For the next year, the GET Lab is planning on improving the autonomous and the tele-operated rescue robots and the cooperation between them.

The GETbot Team 2013: upper row from left to right: Zaheer Aziz, Mawe Sprenger, Muhannad Mujahed, Carsten Alferding, Daniel Gaspers, Benedikt Krüger. Middle row from left to right: Daniel Nickchen, Dirk Fischer, Tobias Kotthäuser. Lower row from left to right: Florian Frings, Björn Braun.

The GETbot during one of the runs searching about victims in the yellow arena.

The GETjag during one of the runs trying to approach a victim in the red arena.

The GETjag moving over step fields during the best in class mobility competition.

The GETjag competing in the best in class manipulation competition.