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The youngest member of the GET Lab robot family participated in the RoboCup German Open for the first time. The robot designed specifically for hard work as a mobile disaster relief worker impressed by its performance.

The RoboCup German Open 2008 took place in Hannover during the Hannover Messe from April 21 - 24, 2008. The newly developed GETbot of the GET Lab participated for the first time in the league of rescue robots. Members of the GETbot-team included the students Alwin Heerklotz, Sabrina Kliegl, Nicolas Schelp and Hendrik Vassmer, as well as the staff members Dirk Fischer, Zaheer, Aziz, Irtiza Ali and Prof. Dr. Bärbel Mertsching. "The German Open was really too soon for the GETbot", said Dirk Fischer. Although only three months remained for programming the system after setting up the platform, the robot from Paderborn got an excellent third place with the long-time experienced teams of the Jacobs University Bremen and the University Koblenz-Landau on the first two places, leaving an English and a Swedish team behind.

In the Rescue-Robot-League, the RoboCup-Initiative is expanded to real-life applications. A disaster scenario such as may occur after an earthquake is reproduced in an arena. The automatic rescuer has to autonomously or tele-operatedly find victims (dummies) hidden in the arena using various sensors (video camera, laser scanner, infrared detector and others). The conditions are to be as realistic as possible through numerous means. The victims' body temperature is simulated by heating blankets; the floor of the arena is covered with scattered newspaper scraps. The research of the GET Lab is focused on the construction of highly robust robots as well as on the development of innovative evaluation procedures for complex sensor data.

Forty-nine RoboCup Senior teams from 14 different nations and 116 RoboCup Junior teams from four different nations with a total of 850 participants started at the RoboCup German Open. As in previous years, the focus of the Senior-competition was on soccer-playing robots. For the first time, the competition and attendant scientific presentations were consolidated by the new special exhibition area of the Hannover Messe Mobile Robots & Autonomous Systems.

The GETbot is one of several robots at the GET Lab. The Lab's mobile robots are used for integrating procedures developed in various research projects onto demonstrators and test their performance. In addition, the robots allow students to be actively integrated into research through exploratory learning. "The success at the RoboCup is a great motivation for us to continue on our path", says a pleased Prof. Mertsching, "The GETbot will have learned a lot by this time next year and we will compete in the German Open again."

From left to right: Henrik Vassmer, Sabrina Kliegl, Nicolas Schelp, Irtiza Ali, Dirk Fischer, Alwin Heerklotz, Prof. Dr. Bärbel Mertsching, and Zaheer Aziz.

GETbot unterwegs. (Photos: Mertsching)