Roboticon 2010

From RoboticonWiki

The Story
Pac Man is dead. The Ghostbusters cleared out Pinkey, Blinky, Inky, and Clyde, but the Epic Quest remains. There is a maze, there are dots, and there is you; Wakka Wakka Wakka.

The Quest
Your challenge is to build a robot that can navigate the maze and collect dots. You aren't quite as hungry as the Legend, so you must instead move them by any means possible to your stash, to be devoured later.
The maze will be approximately 90" by 90" in size, divided into twenty-five 18" by 18" squares. The corners of each square are rounded unpainted wood and protrude out approximately ¾” on each side. The walls are white and approximately 6” high. There is only one restriction on the size of your robot: it must fit entirely within a single maze square's borders. You would be wise to build carefully to ensure that your robot can navigate the maze properly. Your robot will start in the stash square, which will be delineated with black walls. It will always have 3 walls, meaning that it is a dead end. There will be 6 dots within the maze, each placed at the centre of a square. Each dot will be approximately 1” in diameter. After collecting the dots your robot must return to the stash for maximal points. Your team will have 3 minutes to complete this task. You may end your run at any time, prior to the 3 minute mark. There will be 2 heats. You may only construct your robot from pieces within your kit(they must be on the kit manifest/inventory). We will accept NXT 1 or 2 kits as well as NXT educational or retail kits as long as you do not mix the parts. For this challenge your team will be limited to the use of the following sensors and motors:
• 3 servo motors
• 1 ultrasonic sensor
• 1 light sensor
• 1 touch sensor

Scoring One point will be awarded for each distinct dot found. To be "found", a dot must be touched by any part of the robot that is connected to the brick. If a piece falls off your robot and touches a dot it will not count. If this is uncertain, it falls to the judge's discretion. Additionally, one point will be awarded for delivering that dot to the stash square. For a dot to be counted as delivered it must be fully inside the stash when time runs out or when the team calls their run. For safety reasons please do not throw dots. Any dot that leaves the maze will disqualify you from the heat based on the judges discretion. Teams will be ranked based on the number of points they accumulate. Ties will be broken by the time the robot takes to complete the challenge, to the second, rounded down. When starting you may place your robot in any part of the stash as long as no part of the robot is outside of the borders of the stash. You must have your program in the first program slot; our judge will be starting the program for you.

Example Consider for example a robot that manages to collect five dots, and on its way back to the stash two of the dots are lost. The robot returns to the stash with three dots total. The team chooses to stop the run right as the dots are within the stash. This team would receive five points for touching five distinct dots and another three for delivering three dots giving them a total of eight points. Scoring Weighting: There will be two heats during challenge one. In each heat the teams will be ranked. These rankings will be added together and teams will be ranked based upon their total rank for both heats. If this causes a tie, the team who did the best in the second heat will win the tie. This rank will then be added to the rank from challenge two in the same way. If there is a tie when the ranks are added, the team with the better ranking in challenge two will win the tie. Good Luck!

We have included some images to help you with this challenge. For those of you who did not attend last year we used a very similar board as the one we will be using in this challenge. Figure one contains a picture of the 2009 board to give you an idea of what it will look like. Figure 2 contains a picture of one of the objects we will be using as a “dot”. Figure 3 contains a picture of the packaging of the dots we will be using. Please note that you must use our dots for the competition. You will be able to practice with them on the day of the challenge to ensure that they fit your robot.
Figure 1 The board used for a maze last year

Figure 2 A "Dot"

Figure 3 A package of "Dots"