Competition Description
The purpose of the individual competition was to determine the seeding for the final competition. The individual competition took place in class on Friday, March 31st in Hitchcock 208. The robot was required to be within the 9x9x12 inch requirement on this date, and no metal was allowed to be exposed to the course.
The Individual Competition was held on Friday, March 31st, 2017 during regular class periods. This competition was closed, so only ENGR 1282.01H students in the section competing and instructional staff were present. One robot competed at a time, and each team had three opportunities to demonstrate their robot’s performance.
During the individual competition all of the primary tasks needed to be completed , and there were additional secondary tasks that boosted the robots score. In order to gain all of the primary points the robot needed to start with the starting light, pull down the lava lever, press the seismograph button, obtain the core, turn the satellite, and press the final button. Secondary points were awarded for holding the seismograph button down for five seconds, turning the satellite a full ninety degrees, depositing the core into a bin, and depositing the core into the correct bin. All of these tasks had to be completed within a time limit of two minutes.
Competition Strategy
The strategy that the team used was to make sure that the primary points were accomplished, then add as many secondary points as possible during the time limit. The robot read the light, then went right to the lever to pull it. After that the robot navigated to the button and pressed it down for five seconds. The next task that the robot accomplished was pulling the cored. It lined itself up, then drove to the core and pulled it out. Once the lift was raised, the robot backed up with the core still in the lift, and drove to the satellite. Once the robot aligned it self, it moved backward and used the backside to push the satellite five degrees. The last thing the robot did in the individual competition was navigate to the final button and push it. The previously described strategy is depicted below.
The best strategy was to get as many primary points accomplished in the time allotted as possible. The individual competition was the first test of the robot that had a time limit, thus the strategy had to be adjusted. There was not enough time to line the robot up perfectly to push the satellite the full ninety degrees. Also, the robot did not have the time to read the light and deposit the core into a bin. Even with less tasks the robot still was close to not completing the course at first. In order to reduce the time that the robot used the amount of RPS checks that were done was reduced. By only starting to check the RPS once the robot was up the ramp, it eliminated about five seconds that the robot was wasting on the lower level and it did not change the robots overall performance in any way. All in all, by the individual test the robot was running the course with the most efficient strategy that it was capable of executing.
Results
The robot received its best score in the second trial of the individual competition. In the second trial, the robot was able to complete all of the primary tasks and was also able to hold the seismograph button down for five seconds, yielding a score of 82 points in a time of 1 minute and 24 seconds. The success of the second run was due partially to the course that was chosen. The RPS coordinates on course H were the most similar to the coordinates in the code, which is why the robot performed exceptionally well on that course. In the other two attempts the robot was inconsistent with navigating to the lever and core because of too few RPS checks. After the individual competition, more RPS checks were written in the code to ensure that the robot would not miss the lever and core regardless of which course it was on. These RPS checks included the addition of RPS coordinates that would be inputted before each run in certain positions on the course. Those positions would ensure that the robot would not miss its target on any course unless the coordinates were inputted at the wrong position before the run.
Click to view the Individual Competition Testing Log