SPARC

 

 

The Standard Platform for Autonomous Rescue Competition (SPARC) is the Unitree Go2-w robot base.

Please join the Organizing Committee to develop the new rules for this competition!

Join our discord server

For more information email: soerensch@shanghaitech.edu.cn

 

 

Motivation

  • In 2025, novel wheel leg mobile robots showcase a big jump in robot locomotion capabilities, with great applications for rescue robotics.
  • Being available commercially, for the first time those robots make a commercial product interesting as a mobile platform for the RoboCup Rescue Robotics competition that can perform very well w.r.t. mobility.
  • Using such a high-mobility robot as a standard platform enables teams to concentrate on other aspects of rescue robotics, such as:
        • Human Robot Interaction/ Operator interface design
        • SLAM
        • Autonomous Perception
        • Autonomous Navigation
        • (Semi-) autonomous dexterity and manipulation
  • In the open competition, teams have to spend considerable effort on hardware design and maintenance. With this standard platform competition, the rescue league hopes to attract many more teams who specialize in software/ CS/ AI.
  • Recently, robot technology, AI and embodied AI developed rapidly and it is expected that robotics will gain significant traction in industry and society. Establishing a competition within Rescue that concentrates on software, algorithms and AI, we hope to 1) foster the development of actually useful AI solutions for real rescue robotics applications, 2) drive the research of embodied AI also in areas other than the obvious service and industry scenarios, as well as 3) help young students to engage in robotics, AI and specifically the rescue area.
  • Rescue Robotics cannot provide one robotic solution that fits all application scenarios – the requirements are too different in each case (e.g. size, weight limitations, speed, mission duration, requirements on manipulation, …). Establishing a 2nd competition helps to address this issue by letting both competitions diverge towards different specializations (speed, autonomous navigation and inspection for SPARC as well as tracked and legged locomotion, high-force manipulation with longer reach for the open competition).

Standard Platform

  • The mobile base of the Standard Platform for Autonomous Rescue Competition (SPARC) is the Unitree Go2-w robot base.
  • The robot comes with a L1-LiDAR on the bottom of the nose, as well as a camera at the front.
  • Additionally, a MID360 LiDAR is mounted on the front top of the robot.
  • For computation, teams are encouraged to mount a NVIDIA Jetson AGX with 12 Arm cores (AGX Orin 64GB) additionally or as a replacement for the Nvidia Jetson Orin the robot comes with.

Dexterity

  • It is NOT required to have an arm mounted on the robot to compete in SRPC.
  • HOWEVER, teams with manipulators will generally be able to gain more points, because dexterity tasks will be part of the competition.
  • Unitree offers the D1 arm, that seamlessly integrates into the standard platform
  • The D1 arm will be offered with a parallel gripper. Teams will be encouraged to mount an RGB-D camera using the 3D printed holder.
  • Teams are also free to purchase or design their own manipulator

Hardware Rationale

  • As the easiest entry into the competition, teams can first concentrate on (autonomous) navigation – manipulation tasks can be added to the capabilities of the robot by mounting an arm at a later time.
  • The robot, sensor models (2x LiDAR + camera) and their mounting positions, are fixed for all teams. This enables easy sharing of code for the robot navigation between the teams, which will be mandatory.

Team Eligibility

  • In order to be eligible to the RoboCup Standard Rescue Platform Competition with the RoboCup Rescue League, teams must comply with the following requirements:
  • Utilize a SPARC robot:
  • Go2-w with the 2-LiDAR setup
  • Publish the complete source code of your robot software (control, perception, planning, navigation & software for arm control) for years where the team placed 1st, 2nd or 3rd in the RoboCup SPARC Worldcup
  • The placements and links to the code need to be reported in the team description papers (TDPs) of the following years.
  • Teams can participate either in the open RRL competition or in the SPARC – not in both. If teams whish to compete in both they need to register 2 teams and bring at least 1 robot per team.