Robot to the rescue again

King Mongkut’s Institute team wins World RoboCup for the second year.

A rescue robot built by a team from Thailand has been named champion in its division at the World RoboCup for the second consecutive year.

The Independent team beat 16 others to claim the championship with a score of 607 points. A Japanese entry secured the runners-up spot with 570 points.

"We hope to present the trophy to His Majesty the King for his 80th birthday," team leader Pinit Khueansu-wong said yesterday.

The team is from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology North Bangkok.

Chief judge for the international competition, Adam Jacoff, noted the development of the team's work from last year, when it also won.

"It will be difficult for others to take the championship from this team," he said.

He added disaster rescue was a "serious social issue which involves very large numbers of heterogeneous agents in hostile environments".

The rescue division of the cup promotes research and development at various levels including multi-agent teamwork, physical robotic agents for search and rescue, information infrastructure, personal digital assistants and decision-support systems.

The competition is a part of the World RoboCup 2007 in Atlanta from July 3-7.

In the division for robotic football, Thailand's Plasma Z of Chulalongkorn University was first runner-up after a penalty shootout. It was last year's winner.

"We have never been in a penalty shootout before. We didn't train our robots for it," said Manop Wongsuwan, a lecturer accompanying the Plasma Z.

In the final, Plasma Z played a team from Carnegie Mellon University. The full-time score was 5-5 and after extra time the teams were still deadlocked.

"Even though we lost the penalty shootout, we got good experience we will use next year," Manop said.

Plasma Z captain Karn Kanjanaparn said the match was vigorous and end-to-end.

Preecha Sa-ardsorn

The Nation