ICARUS partners won multiple prizes and awards at euRathlon 2015

Several ICARUS consortium partners successfully participated in the euRathlon 2015 Challenge which took place in Piombino (Italy) from 17 to 25 September 2015. This year, the ICARUS team which ranked second of the overall competition was composed of Eurecat (Spain), IMM (Poland), INESC (Portugal), Integrasys (Spain), RMA (Belgium), SPACE Apps (Belgium) and UKL (Germany). Additional ICARUS partners were also present in Italy to support and help the team, including CINAV (Portugal), CMRE (Italy) and SpaceTec Partners (Belgium).  

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the euRahtlon 2015 edition was the first outdoor robotics competition dedicated to land, sea and air Search and Rescue (SAR) operations with the particularity for maritime activities of focussing on underwater robotics. Furthermore, the euRathlon concept of operation was exclusively based on operations without line of sight, the participants being required to remain in a tent during the whole duration of each of the various exercises.

Having these specifities in mind, the Consortium partners couldn’t miss the opportunity to prove their technical abilities and to validate the different ICARUS Search and Rescue tools in a wide variety of (new) operational scenarios, including among other:

• Grand Challenge (overall winner) – the ICARUS team came second out of 18 competing teams;
• UAV aerial detection and mapping (Air trial) – the ICARUS team won;
• Survey of a building and search for a missing worker (Land + Air trials) – the ICARUS team came second;
• Mobile manipulation / valve closing (Land trial) – the ICARUS team camesecond;
• Stem the leak (Land + Sea trials) – the ICARUS team came second.

As an evidence of its performances, the ICARUS team was further honoured with several prizes, including 2 important awards in the area of Research & Development:

• The “Best Autonomy award” from the IEEE Robotic & Automation Society (RAS) Technical Committee (TC) on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR);
• The “Best Multi-Robot Cooperation award” from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA);
• The “Innovation in the UAV domain special prize”.

The euRathlon Challenge marked the end of a productive summer which started in July with the Sea Scenario Demo (Lisbon, Portugal), later followed by the Land Scenario Demo in September (Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium).

For further information, we would like to cordially invite you to visit the euRathlon website and youtube channel.