RoboCup Rescue Robot and Simulation Leagues

The experience gained during these competitions has increased the maturity level of the field, which allowed deploying robots after real disasters (for example, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster). This article provides an overview of these competitions and highlights the state of the art and the lessons learned. A major outcome of this initiative was the RoboCup Rescue competitions. In this article, we introduce the RoboCup Rescue leagues, namely the Rescue Robot League (RRL) and the Rescue Simulation League (RSL) (Tadokoro et al. 2000; Kitano and Tadokoro 2001). Disaster mitigation is an important social issue involving large numbers of heterogeneous agents acting in hostile environments.