Robotika.cz » Competitions » Robotour » 2007 » Pravidla

Pravidla

Author: Martin Dlouhý, 2007-05-24

převoz nákladu, kooperace robotů

The second year of this autonomous outdoor robot contest will be held again in park Stromovka, Prague. The task for year 2007 is payload delivery. A new feature this year is the possibility of robot cooperation. Each team can deploy several (up to 3) machines.

Motivation

Robotour 2006 - foto Jan Chudoba

We would like to support a development of smart robots that can be eventually usable in our everyday lives. Essential ability on this course is an outdoor navigation in an environment adapted for people. This of course includes also roads and sidewalks which are the main theme of Robotour. And because the ability to navigate is only a means to an end, the task of the robots is to carry a payload. Such a robot has certainly higher chances with an R-employment office .

Rules in a nutshell

Task The task of the robots is to travel through the given route of the park's (paved) passage ways. The route will be at most 1 km long and the time limit will be 1 hour. Robots must be fully autonomous, not leave the road, and correctly pick direction at intersections. The route specification will be available one day before the contest.

Route The route will be given using a combination of a road network (RNDF - Road Network Definition File) and several checkpoints (MDF - Mission Definition File) using the same coding as route specification for DARPA Urban Challenge. The network data will be available one month before the contest and it will contain all possible allowed paths. The list of checkpoints will be given to the teams one day before the contest start. Although the route will be given in the absolute WGS84 coordinates, the robots do not have to be equipped with GPS receiver. It is possible, for example, to generate an approximate map of park Stromovka and the route can be manually compiled into commands like in 25 meters turn right, on the next junction continue ahead, ... Moreover the team can walk through the route the day before contest.

Robots Each team can deploy at most three robots designated HEAD, BODY and TAIL. The robots may not touch while en route and the distance HEAD-BODY and BODY-TAIL may not exceed 2m. All robots must be equipped with a PAUSE button that can temporarily suspend their movement. This button will be used to start the robot and when it leaves the road.

Score The team whose robots best manage to proceed along the route wins. The route will be divided into fragments 20m to 40m long. Each intersection is designated to be a fragment of its own including approx. 5m before and 5m after the intersection. The segments in between the intersections will be evenly split. For a completion of a fragment team gets one point (“point for intelligence”). If the team carries any payload it is awarded one point for each payload transported. Points are awarded only if none of the robots leaves the road within the fragment in question. That also means that the points are awarded only after all robots belonging to the team finish the fragment.

Leaving the road The robots are expected to stay “on the road” which means to stay on the paved passage ways. When any robot leaves the road the PAUSE button(s) is/are used to suspend the movement of the whole group. The group is moved back on the road and oriented tangentially to the leave point. If any robot from the group leaves the road for the second time within one fragment the trial ends for this robot and all robots behind.

Organization The contest will consist of 5 trials for each team. The time interval between the starts of different teams will be at least 5 min. That means that robots of competing teams can be en route at the same time. The speed of the robots is not important (actually it is limited to 2.5m/s). All points gained during all trials will be summed together. If a robot does not move for 60s or more it is stopped and its current trial ends.

Basic differences between last and this year contest

in the title is extra word delivery, i.e. material handling (again five liter barrel or other 4-5l drink)
team can have up to three robots (HEAD, BODY, TAIL), and each robot can carry at most one barrel. Robots cannot touch each other and their maximal distance cannot be more than 2m.
the trail will be split into 20m to 40m long sections, and there will be fixed crossing sections (5m before and 5m after) and internal segments will be split regularly (i.e. in average 30m as last year)
robot has to be fully autonomous. To reach this hard goal it will be possible to return leading robot (HEAD) back on the road in each section at most once (i.e. also in start section)
returning robot back on the road will be different for crossings and segments (on segments it will be in place of leaving the road, for crossings 5m before entry of the crossing)
score will be a little bit different: for every finished section without leaving the path team gets 1 point. For every carried barrel team gets another point. To summarise, team gets at most 4 points per section. Poins counts up for all rounds (there will be 5 rounds as last year).
there is non-zero chance that there will be also a system for on-line vehicle tracking, in our case robots

Where and when?

For the general public the contest will be held on Saturday September 22nd in Prague, 10-17h in park Stromovka. In the case of very bad weather the contest can be postponed to Sunday.

For the teams this will be three-day-event: there will be homologations on Friday, contest on Satuday and a small workshop on Sunday (theme „what is actually hidden in your unique machines”).

Registration

If you would like to participate in the contest, please let us know using contact form. The final dead-line for registration is 14th of August 2007.