Last Update: 8/10/2011, 6:00 pm
Robotics has always advanced in ways that we never imagined. This attitude of innovation is what inspires AUTOMATA, the flagship event of ENGINEER, to come up with a challenging and equally entertaining problem statement every year. Get ready to be surprised this year with a twist that you would never have thought of. Read ahead and discover how.
Build an autonomous robot and guide it, with only the help of images acquired from an overhead camera, from the start position on an arena to the end position following a specific path.
- The robot has to traverse the hexagonal cells in the arena to reach the finish position following a specified path.
- The robot should read a sequence of numbers from a text file provided by us and traverse to next cell as indicated by the number.
- Each team will be given 15 minutes inclusive of calibration time and best trial will be taken for consideration.
- ONLY DC MOTORS are allowed. Steppers and wheel encoders will lead to disqualification of the team.
- There will be a maximum of 10 minutes for each team in which they can have as many trials as required.
- All teams must submit their codes, or laptops at the start of the competition.
- The arena will be a non-reflective surface on top of a wooden base.
- An overhead camera is positioned on top of the arena so that it is completely visible. The position of the camera with respect to the arena will be fixed.
- Arena consists of hexagonal grids as shown denoted by black lines 4cm thick.
- Each side of a cell in the grid will be 25cm.
- All cells are white. The number sequence is read from a text file.
- The best time is taken in consideration.
- Any deviation from path will lead to restart of trial.
- In case of no one completing the traversal of arena, the team who has gone the farthest will win.
- The scoring is time-based and the team which finishes first wins.
- Illegal robot movements will result in a restart of the trial. (Eg. Diagonal Movements, bot partially moves out of the grid).
- The trial starts when the robot starts moving from the initial cell.
- The trial ends when the robot moves onto the destination.
The following activities will cause the robot to be disqualified from the competition:
- The robot tries to damage the arena.
- The robot dismantles in the arena.
- Any team member enters the arena during the trial.
- The robot is pulled with the wire during the trial.
- An external signal is given to the robot.
- The code tries to damage the communication protocol.
- The robot should be completely autonomous.
- The robot should fit into a box of dimensions 20x18 (length x width).
- The robot is required to have an onboard power source not based on combustion.
- The maximum voltage between any two points on the robot should not exceed 12 volts.
- The robots are NOT allowed to have stepper motors, sensors for a wheel encoder and any other sensors.
- The robots can communicate with a computer outside the arena either through wired or wireless connection.
- In case of a wired connection, the wire must be kept slack all the time and must emerge from the top of the robot.
- Use of on-board camera is not allowed.
- The following software for image processing are allowed:
- Open CV
- MATLAB
- Scilab / GNU Octave
- If any other software is used for image processing, please inform us.
- Software with ready-made image processing codes/GUIs is not allowed.
- Use of Lego kits or other ready-made kits is strictly prohibited.
- Sharp objects on the robot which may damage the arena will lead to disqualification of the team.
- An overhead USB camera is placed such that the entire arena is just visible.
- The camera provided by us will support image acquisition in these modes: 640x480, 1600x1200 and in RGB/YUV formats.
- The teams will have to use the camera provided by us.
A maximum of 4 members per team is allowed. NO DESKTOP COMPUTER WILL BE PROVIDED. You are to bring your own personal laptops for the event.
