Summary of the 9th Rescue Robot Contest

For purposes of enlightenment and publicities on disaster rescue activities, we proposed a robot competition named "the Rescue Robot Contest" in 1999, and have organized the competition every year since 2000. We terminated the first phase of this contest at the 5th competition in 2005 and decided to go toward a new phase. At the 6th and 7th competition the regulation and the system were renewed. At the 8th competition the regulation were became difficult. At the 9th competition were brought in the technical challenge "DAMIYAN identification." In this paper, these topics and the 9th competition held on July and August 2009 are reported.