RoboCup Rescue 2019 TDP Virtual Robot Simulation ATR (US) Jong-Hoon Kim, Xiangxu Lin, Nathan Kanyok, Alfred Shaker, Pavan Poudel, Irvin Cardenas, Nadia Karina Camacho Cabrera, HyunJae Jeong, and Gokarna P. Sharma Kent State University, USA {jkim72, xlin10, nkanyok, ashaker, ppoudel1, icardena, ncamacho, hjeong3, gsharma2}@kent.edu http://www.atr.cs.kent.edu/ Abstract. ATR Kent is a research team from Kent State University, lo- cated in Kent, Ohio. The lab is oriented towards research in telerobotics, with emphasis on immersion and telepresence. The first robotics compe- tition we participated in was the Disaster Response Challenge, which was a part of the World Robot Summit (WRS) 2018 in Tokyo, Japan. The 2019 RoboCup Rescue Simulation League presents us with an opportu- nity to expand our research in robot simulation and share our knowledge with fellow competitors, with the ultimate goal of innovating the field of robotics. 1 Introduction ATR Kent, of Kent State University, is a competition team with backgrounds in Advanced Telerobotics Research. We focus on interaction and immersion within the realm of robotics, applying our methodology to Telebot-2, a disaster response robot which was developed for the WRS 2018 Disaster Response Competition (see Fig. 1 showing the participation at WRS 2018). The virtual robot simula- tion competition of RoboCup presents us with an opportunity to improve our simulation research. In the past, the Advanced Telerobotics Research Lab has mainly focused on improving the control and operation of physical robots. Past projects include a teleoperation suit that allows an operator to remotely control the torso of a robot [13], and a Virtual Reality control interface for a remote robot’s head. It is the case that the lab currently lacks having a strong simulation base. RoboCup gives ATR Kent an opportunity to establish research within the realm of robotics sim- ulation, as well as improve the community with our unique approach to robotics. Recent lab publications include: Telesuit: An Immersive User-Centric Telep- resence Control Suit [13], Engage/Disengage: Control Triggers for Immersive Telepresence Robots [19], Towards an Ethical Framework for Robot Develop- ment [18], and Performance Comparison of NVIDIA accelerators with SIMD, Associative, and Multi-core Processors for Air Traffic Management [21].