PANDORA Robotics – Robot-based search and rescue applications

Webpage: https://r4a.issel.ee.auth.gr/pandora-robotics/

Pandora Robotics was founded in 2007 when a group of ambitious students of our department, who wanted to apply the knowledge they accumulated over their studies on a real project, met some professors who shared the same passion for robotics.

Pandora Robotics Team has competed in the RoboCup Rescue competition 5 times: 2008 in Suzhou, China, 2009 in Austria, 2011 in Instanbul, 2013 in Eindhoven and 2015 in Hefei, China. The reputation of our team peaked, when we came out second in autonomy category in 2013 in Eindhoven, Netherlands and in 2015, Hefei, China.

The goal of this competition is the development of one or more robotic vehicles that can navigate areas having suffered a natural disaster – like an earthquake – and are able to locate human victims. For this purpose we have created several vehicles that incorporate sensors for determining their position in space and others for detecting and identifying victims. The vehicles are autonomous, which means they are able to move without the aid of a GPS system and with no teleoperation. They autonomously create maps and carry out the identification process.

The accomplishments of Pandora Robotics are recognized worldwide. Some of our programs are used in robotic applications all over the world, as we are active members and contributors of the open source community. Proof of the quality of our work are the old members of the team (over 180 through the years), who are currently distinguished scientists working in Greece or abroad.

For additional information and media, visit https://r4a.issel.ee.auth.gr/pandora-robotics/.