Project task description

Scenario

Your robot is a search and rescue robot, specialised in extraction of valuable items. The scenario in the course is that you arrive at a site with a building that is partially collapsed. It is known to contain a lot of valuable objects that you want to retrieve. You have a map of the building which has been created by small drones that have been sent into the building. The map is incomplete. Your task is to send in your robot into the building and bring out valuable objects from the building and identify them. If you are not able to identify the object you will be screwed when you sell it and will not earn as much. Your robot will be equipped with an arm so that you can lift up the objects. Some of the rubble will have to be moved for you to be able to move through the building. Some rubble will be booby-trapped and cause problems for your robot if you run into it. You have limited time to get out of the building before the door closes. You get two runs. In the first run you are only allowed to get out of the gate once. You can use whatever information you collected in the first run in the second run. However, your robot will be shut down for maintenance and decontamination between the runs so any information that you want to keep between runs need to be saved to disk.

The building (maze)

Walls

The walls will be created based on white boards like this  http://www.byggmax.com/se-sv/Prod/PID-09030.aspx
The wall segments will have a minimum height of approximately 30cm.
The thickness of the walls might vary depending of the exact material, but it will be more than 1.5cm and less than 2.5cm.
The walls can have any angle around the vertical axis but will be standing straight up (be vertical and not tilted or lying down)
Any length of the wall segments might occur
Walls can be "disconnected" from anything else

Rubble

Defined as anything that is not a wall or a valuable objects.
Dimensions: Minimum height 2cm.
The two kinds of rubble are
- "Collapsed structure", these are heavy and cannot be lifted.
- The booby-trap rubble will be clearly distinguishable by geometry and/or color.

Clearance

There will be a path with a minimum clearance of 40cm from the start/end point to within a maximum of 10cm of all objects, possibly after moving some of the movable objects/obstacles. Note that not all paths have this clearance (in that case there will be another path if there is an object behind).

The 10cm maximum distance to the objects is defined as the distance from the center of the object and the closest point of the robot. The rubble blocking the path to an object this way will not be taller than 15cm.

Opening / door

The building "maze" will have an opening in the form of a door through which the robot should enter and exit.

The robot should declare when it wants the door to open by saying "Start" using its speakers. The door is then opened manually by pressing a button (to simplify the integration of the robot with the infrastructure). The door will close automatically when the time is up.

Map of the building

You will be provided with an incomplete map of the building. The map has been generated by scouting robots that was sent in before your expensive robot. This scouting robot can only detect vertical walls and not all of them. The walls that are in the map will be present when your robot goes in there but there might be more walls and rubble that is not mapped. All mapped walls will be presented as the (x,y) coordinates of the start and end points of the walls (line segments).

Tolerances

All of the measures given here are subject to a 20% tolerance w.r.t. the max dimensions of the maze given by differences in the materials and errors during the assembly.

Assembly of the maze

The things used to connect the wall segments together might have a colour different from the walls.

Illumination

Illumination conditions might vary from completely artificial light to a mixture of natural and artificial light (incl. camera flashes).

Objects

The number of objects is unknown. The objects will not exceed 10cm in cube and not be smaller than 5cm and typically made of plastic. The objects can be placed anywhere in the maze but no part of an object will be above 20cm. Objects might be placed on rubble (but not on booby-traps).

The robot

Hardware

All of the robots should make use of the given hardware platform. If you need anything else in addition to what you were given you need to ask for permission.

Processing

The robot must be completely autonomous. This means that all of the processing must be carried out inside the robot and never with the aid of an external computer.

External communications

All that is allowed is to press a button when you start the robot. The robot is allowed to send debug information to an off board unit but that off-board unit cannot provide any information to the robot (unless it comes as task directives from the teachers).

Height

No sensor on the robot is allowed to extend over 29cm.

Other sensors and actuators

Participants who would like to use other sensors must consult with the teachers. Any not allowed aid during the contest might cause disqualification.

Task

Your task is to design a search and rescue robot that can go into the building (the "maze"), detect and identify objects and move them out of the building before the gate closes. You get points for

correctly detected objects
correctly identified objects
retrieved objects (placed outside the gate when the gate closes)

Miss-detecttions and miss-classifications will result in penalties.

Objects must be transported out through the gate and cannot be thrown over the walls. Objects should be placed on the floor outside the gate.

The time for a run starts when your robot says "Start" and you manually press the button to open the door into the maze.

The robot should report the location and identity of objects and it MUST store this information to disk in so that it can be verified after the run.

Run 1 : 5min
Run 2 : 3min

A run is considered finished when the robot is outside and signals (stopping and saying something like "I am done") that it is finished. If the time is up then the run is also considered over.

The exact scoring scheme for the contest (not part of the grading!!!) will be released close to the contest so that you focus on the task and not the contest score.