EuRathlon: the autonomous robot challenge

This article aims to describe euRathlon 2013, the first competitive event in a three-year, EU-funded programme for autonomous robots, which was held in Germany in September 2013.

Following an introduction, this describes the teams and their robots, the scenarios in which they had to compete, the results and details of the winning robots. It concludes with a short discussion.

Thirteen academic and corporate teams competed in five tasks that simulated a range of challenging terrestrial disaster response scenarios. Performance was assessed and scored by a panel of judges and prizes were awarded to the teams that performed best.

This provides details of an important competition that seeks to enhance Europe's autonomous robot capabilities.