TY  - CHAP
A1  - Booysen, Tracy
A1  - Mathew, Thomas
A1  - Knox, Greig
A1  - Fong, W. K.
A1  - Stüttgen, Marcel
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Steinbauer, Gerald
T1  - The Scarab Project
T2  - ICRA 2015 Developing Countries Forum
N2  - Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) is an active research
field in the robotics community. Despite recent advances
for many open research questions, these kind of systems are
not widely used in real rescue missions. One reason is that such
systems are complex and not (yet) very reliable; another is that
one has to be an robotic expert to run such a system. Moreover,
available rescue robots are very expensive and the benefits of
using them are still limited.
In this paper, we present the Scarab robot, an alternative
design for a USAR robot. The robot is light weight, humanpackable
and its primary purpose is that of extending the
rescuer’s capability to sense the disaster site. The idea is that a
responder throws the robot to a certain spot. The robot survives
the impact with the ground and relays sensor data such as
camera images or thermal images to the responder’s hand-held
control unit from which the robot can be remotely controlled.
Y1  - 2015
ER  - 
TY  - CHAP
A1  - Stopforth, Riaan
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Steinbauer, Gerald
T1  - Europe and South African collaboration on the Mechatronics and Robotics systems as part of the SA Robotics Center
T2  - ICRA 2015 Developing Countries Forum
N2  - Mechatronics consist of the integration of mechanical
engineering, electronic integration and computer science/
engineering. These broad fields are essential for robotic
systems, yet it makes it difficult for the researchers to specialize
and be experts in all these fields. Collaboration between
researchers allow for the integration of experience and specialization,
to allow optimized systems. Collaboration between the
European countries and South Africa is critical, as each country
has different resources available, which the other countries
might not have. Applications with the need for approval of
any restrictions, can also be obtained easier in some countries
compared to others, thus preventing the delays of research.
Some problems that have been experienced are discussed, with
the Robotics Center of South Africa as a possible solution.
Y1  - 2015
ER  -