Cone Stalking Rules for CIRC Bot Boogaloo
The goal of this contest is to negotiate obstacles set up in a room in order to find and touch 2 or 3 cones. It is similar to a Fire-Fighter contest without the fire and a Robomagellan event held indoors. The unique challenges to this event are the types of obstacles and the touching of the cone. If you have questions or insights, please let us know. You can email president@circpeoria.org
March 11, 2019: modifications were made to the rules regarding the possible size of the competition area, markings for headings, and how waypoints may be used.
Layout of area and obstacles: Sample picture shown below.
- Approximately 15 x 30 ft
- May include table legs and static judges. Robots will be allowed to go under the table if they desire.
- We will make sure there are no orange colored objects that would be obvious false-cones.
- All obstacles will have a minimum height of 6”.
- Approx. 1-2 ft square or cylinder obstacles will be placed randomly
- Balls will be placed on each obstacle to determine if an obstacle is hit too strongly
- 2-3 18”-tall orange cones will be placed randomly.
- Spectators and competitors will be asked to stay outside of the arena during a run.
Setup and Scoring:
- The cones, obstacles, and start locations are randomly placed; held constant for a round
- All obstacles and cones will start at the same location each time a robot runs a trial for this round
- Mapping in trial 1 and then using that map in trial 2 is encouraged!
- The bots know (are given) the start location and cone locations in memory.
- Intermediate waypoints are allowed.
- To encourage compasses, the coordinates will be Easting (x), Northing (y) in meters
- Coordinate error may be +/- 10 cm
- Local x,y coordinates w.r.t. an arena origin, but x,y axes are parallel to actual East and North
- If it is not easy to align the axes with East and North, we will provide the approximate angle offset between the x-axis and true East.
- The East and North directions will be clearly defined.
- The x-axis will be marked on the floor.
- All obstacles and cones will start at the same location each time a robot runs a trial for this round
- A round consists of 2-3 trials for each robot on a fixed course
- Robot A Trial 1, Robot B Trial 1, Robot A Trial 2, Robot B Trial 2, etc.
- The robot with the best trial score wins the round
- If the best trial scores are a tie, time is used as a tie breaker.
Robot Requirements:
- 16 inches wide x 16 inches long x 24 inches tall
- The main reason for width and length limits are because we will have to make sure that a valid path exists to each cone for a 16 inch x 16 inch robot.
- Will guarantee a valid path that has a minimum “corridor”/clearance of 18 inches.
- No weight limit
- No auto/manual safety switch is required
- Robot must pass safety inspection (can it be safely picked up or stopped if necessary)
- No weapons or devices that may harm people, damage cones, etc.
- No Cost limit
- The robot may communicate with a base station (e.g. laptop) off the robot.
- Neither the robot nor the base station may receive human input during a run.
- Neither the robot nor the base station should require internet access (e.g. cloud services), as internet access may not be available at the competition.
Rules:
- The start position and cone positions will be provided to the competitors 10 minutes before the round.
- All cones worth 1 point
- Full credit of 1 point is given for contacting a cone and not knocking a ball off the top.
- A judge will be near the cones to determine if a robot contacts a cone
- 0.1 points will be deducted for every obstacle that is “disturbed” such that a ball falls off its perch.
- 0.1 points will be deducted for every cone that is “disturbed’ such that a ball falls off its perch.
- You must contact at least 1 cone to qualify. (Cannot win by doing nothing vs. a bot hitting many obstacles and touching a cone)
- 3 minute time limit per trial (may change based on arena and testing)
- Time is only used as a tie breaker
- The time for a trial is how long it took to touch the final contacted cone that resulted in the high score.
- 0.1 point obstacle/cone penalties apply during the whole 3 minute trial period, regardless of when cones were contacted
- No penalty for “out of bounds”
We can have just one round or multiple rounds depending on # entries and time
- Multiple rounds would be used for a bracket
- If we have several bots, probably just one round, one fixed scene
- If there are only two entries, we may do the best of 3 full rounds
- Round 1:
Bot A runs two trials, best score is recorded
Bot B runs two trials, best score is recorded, Bot B wins round 1 - Round 2:
Bot B runs two trials, best score is recorded
Bot A runs two trials, best score is recorded, Bot A wins round 2 - Round 3
- Round 1:
Sample Layout:
