Embedded Motion Control/Maze competition 2015

The final competition will be held on June 17, 8.45h at the RoboCup soccer field. The goal of this competition is to let PICO autonomously drive through a maze and find the exit. Some facts:

• Where and when:
  • Wed June 17, 8.45h - 10.30h
  • Location: RoboCup Soccer field, GEM-N
• Set-up
  • Make sure your software is easy to set-up, i.e:
    • Your software can be updated with one easy command, e.g. 'git pull'
    • Your software can be compiled using 'cmake' and 'make'
    • To start your software, only one executable has to be called
    • If your set-up deviates from this method, let us know as soon as possible!
• Maze characteristics:
  • Exact location of the entrance and exit are unknown, but they will be on the boundaries of the maze
  • Walls are approximately axis-aligned, meaning all angles are 90 degrees. Approximately means: built by hand, so slight differences may occur.
  • Open spaces may occur
  • There may be loops in the maze, which means that some walls may not be connected to other walls.
• Start, goal and limits:
  • PICO will start with its laser range finder within the boundaries of the maze
  • You have finished the assignment if PICO did not drive into walls, found the exit and the whole robot is across the finish line.
  • Maximum speed (is limited in PICO): 0.5 m/s translational, 1.2 rad/s rotational. By the way, that's pretty fast (compared to last year's 0.2 m/s), so be careful! You don't have to drive that fast!
• Doors:
  • There is exactly 1 door in the maze
  • The door will be situated at a dead end, a dead end being defined as a piece of wall with minimum length 0.5 and maximum length 1.5 with side-walls of at least 0.3 meter length.
  • There might be multiple dead ends in the maze, one of which is a door
  • You need to pass the door to solve the maze
  • The door will open if and only if the following conditions are met:
    • PICO is located within 1.3m distance from the door (i.e., no part of PICO is located outside the 1.3m range)
    • PICO is not driving, i.e., the commanded velocity is 0 (both translational and rotational)
    • PICO asks to open the door. This will become available from the io-layer, e.g.,:

      io.requestOpenDoor()

  • If these conditions are met:
    • The door will start sliding open within 2 seconds since PICO's request
    • The door will slide open to the left or to the right
    • The door slides open at approximately constant velocity
    • The door is fully open within 5 seconds since PICO's request
• Scoring:
  • You have 2 attempts (= maximum one restart)
  • restart means:
    • PICO restarts at beginning of maze
    • MAZE time (= time used for scoring) is reset, BUT
    • TOTAL time keeps running
  • You have a total of 7 minutes for both attempts
  • Hit wall = that attempt fails
  • PICO standing still for 30 seconds = that attempt fails
  • No second attempt if first attempt was successful