O.R.E. - Robomagellan

Robomagellan

Robomagellan involves autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance over varied, outdoor terrain. The contest is basically a scaled down version of the DARPA Grand Challenge

Robots navigate a pre-defined course dealing with various obstacles along the way. Waypoints may be marked with objects that the robot must touch or come within a specified distance. The robots will be guided primarily by GPS and vision systems. Robots will be fully autonomous, but do not necessarily have to be self contained, i.e. it is ok to have a laptop with a wireless or even wired link to the robot.

For the initial versions of the contest, we'll keep things simple. If things go well, we'll consider follow up contests with tighter rules, scoring and options, etc.

The first competition

April 29, 2007

Movies

The Results

All robots performed perfectly and got full points.

The second competition

Since the previous competition went so well, this time we put some obstacles between the waypoints.

We had a trial run Saturday June 14, 2008. Most of the robots were not yet ready to deal with obsticles.

The 2010 trials

During the summer, we meet every weekend or every second weekend to work on our robots. See the home page for time and location. If you don't have a robot feel free to come and watch and ask questions.

In addition to getting the robots around the course and avoiding obstacles, most of us are working on vision to find the orange cones. We're using Roborealm running on netbook computers.

Our testing grounds
The current magnetic declination at this location is 13.52 degrees

The Rules

Prior to the contest, contestants will have the opportunity to load waypoint and path data to their robots using techniques of their choosing.
Contestants may make any changes as they see fit between runs.
Contestants may not touch or interfere with the operation of their robot once a run has started. If this happens, the scoring for that run will be halted.
Robots may use GPS, compasses, and any self-contained sensors or apparatus. This excludes the use of differential GPS.
If there is any inadvertent interference with the robot (such as by a spectator, stray animal or unforeseen circumstance), then the contestant will be allowed to re-start the run with no penalty.
The robot must stop at the completion of the run.
Waypoints will probably be spaced about 15 - 30m apart.
There will be a maximum of 10 points in a path.

Scoring

Each time a robot navigates to a waypoint, and stops within the 3-meter radius from the waypoint, 1 point will be added to the score for that run.
Each robot will be run 3 times. The highest score of the 3 runs will be taken as the contest score. The highest score wins.
Robot runs will take place in a round-robin fashion, i.e. Robot # 1 Run #1, Robot # 2 Run #1, Robot # 1 Run #2, Robot # 2 Run #2, etc.