Project Prompt
The object of the game is to gather up ping-pong balls off the floor of the field and autonomously deposit them into bins at the corners of the field.
The Field
- The playing field is a circle with a diameter of 8’ formed by a 3.5” tall wall.
- The Red ‘bot will start on the Red side. The Blue ‘bot will start on the Blue side.
- Each scoring bin will have a beacon emitting modulated IR driven by a 50% duty-cycle square wave. The emitters for the beacons will be LTE5208A IR LEDs. The IR emitters will be mounted at a height of 10” off the playing surface.
- The beacon on Bin #1 will be modulated with a period of 20mS, the beacon on Bin #2 will be modulated with a period of 18mS, the beacon on Bin #3 will be modulated with a period of 16mS, and the beacon on Bin #4 will be modulated with a period of 14mS. The back edges of the scoring bins (those along the circumscribing edges of the bounding square) will have netting 12” high.
- The pivot point for rotation is at the center of the playing field.
- At 2” inward from the outer edge of the playing field, for a horizontal distance of 6” the wall will have a steel plate below the vertical surface of the wall
The Field Status Reporter:
- The Field Status Reporter (FSR) will communicate with the robot over a 4-wire SPI bus.
- The FSR will provide information as to the number of balls in each of balls in each of the bins as well as the current angle of the rotatable wall.
- The FSR will communicate wirelessly with the field infrastructure, so it must be mounted on the top-most level of the robot with no structure above or surrounding it.
The Robots:
- The Robot must be a stand-alone entity, capable of meeting all specifications described in this document. Battery power is required. The robot must execute from code on either (or both of) the C32 and E128.
- Robots must be autonomous and un-tethered.
- The only parts of the robot that may ever touch the playing field surface are wheels, ball transfers, or slippery supports used to balance.
- The smallest bounding box (rectangular prism) that entirely encloses the robot must not exceed a 1 cubic foot volume at the beginning of the game.
- Each robot will carry an easily accessible switch on top. The purpose of the switch will be to cut power to the robot in case of a software or hardware malfunction.
- Each Robot must, under software control, determine and identify the side of the field that it is playing on . This must be displayed in a visual manner.
- Each robot may not be based on a commercial or otherwise pre-existing platform.
- Any exterior corners on the robot must have a radius of at least 1/4".
- Budget is limited to $150.00/team. Materials from lab kit or cabinet of freedom do not count against the limit.
- Bot speed must be low enough to be safe to the other bot and field infrastructure.
- The supplied motors must be used to drive anything that transfers force to the ground.
Game Play:
- The game is a head-to-head match up between Robots as they attempt to score points by gathering ping-pong balls off of the floor of the playing field and depositing them into the scoring bins.
- …At the beginning of each game, the robots will be placed on the field by a member of the team. The centroid of the normal 2-D projection of the robot onto the plane of the field must lie within the starting box at the start of the game.
- An equal number (1-120) of balls will be placed on each side of the wall before the beginning of a round. … The game will begin when a game status query to the Field Status Reporter (FSR) indicates a non-zero number of balls in play.
- …Ping-pong balls in Scoring Bins at the end of the round on the Red side of the wall score +2 points for the Red team, ping-pong balls in Scoring Bins on the Blue side of the wall score +2 points for the Blue team.
- Ping-pong balls on the floor at the end of round on the Red side of the wall score -1 points for the Red team, ping-pong balls on the floor on the Blue side of the wall score -1 points for the Blue team.
- …At the end of the round, ping-pong balls either in a robot or with any portion of the ball under the rotatable wall do not count against either team.
- At the end of the round, if the rotatable wall lies within the light grey region of Fig. 1 (defined by angle positions of A-B, C-D, E-F, G-H) the scoring bins at the ends of the wall are taken out of play and do not count for either side.
- The round ends 2 minutes after the Field Status Reporter first reported the Running state. At that time, ‘bots must stop all movement.
- In case of a tie at the end of a round, the robot with highest bin score wins
- …If the score does not change throughout a round, then both robots are removed from the competition.