CNI introduces new communication-related challenge to Robocup Rescue Word Championship
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After taking part in the German Open of the RoboCup Rescue three years in a row since 2019, a new milestone was achieved this year through the usage of CNI’s vSTING in the RoboCup Rescue World Championship held in Bordeaux France.
CNI's vSTING was used to emulate the effects of real-world wireless communications on the competing robots while these completed tasks challenging their mobility, manoeuvring and dexterity abilities. On this occasion, the network degradation assessment proposed by CNI was optionally integrated in 2 mobility challenges with a multiplier as a reward, then in the technology challenge as a mandatory setting, and in the semi-final and final stages of the competition as an optional setting.
The participation of the CNI marks an important achievement as part of our activities in the German rescue Robotics Centre (DRZ). At the same time we gained important insights with regards to the requirements for future 6G communication systems and our further work within the 6GEM test field on rescue robotics.
The network degradation provided by vSTING[1] allows the controlled application of network constraints such as additional latency, bandwidth reduction, and packet loss on a communication link to replicate network limitations that may arise during rescue missions in disaster scenarios.
The constraints used in the competition mainly followed the ones used in the German Open: an additional latency of 100 ms with 80 ms jitter. Of the 14 teams present, about a third took up the challenge and used vSTING from the preliminary round to the final. This gave the teams meaningful insights into the urgent optimization potential in the network communication of their setups. Thus, the goal of the RoboCup Rescue League with the integration of vSTING into the championship is fulfilled and our participation can be considered a success.
[1] M. Patchou, J. Tiemann, C. Arendt, S. Böcker, C. Wietfeld, Realtime Wireless Network Emulation for Evaluation of Teleoperated Mobile Robots, In 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotic (SSRR), November 2022, Spain.