Spring 2001 489 Project November 14 2001 Course

Spring 2001 489 Project November 14, 2001

Course Overview • Project will be formalized in “request for proposals” (RFP) • Your group of 3 -4 will work on a prototype and a proposal in an attempt to win the contract • Will give two (private) progress reports to your project manager (me) • Will give final (public) presentation to customers (me & other faculty)

What is the Project? • Modeled after the Trinity College Robotics Firefighting Competition • Philosophy: Detect and extinguish a warehouse fire – Though they call it a house fire • Will generally follow the rules and specs of the competition – Subject to change

Robot Specs • Chassis will be made out of LEGOs, controller out of Handy Board – Deviation from rules (they allowed non-LEGOs) • Robot must be completely autonomous • No bigger than 31 cm in any dimension • Will extinguish fire with DC fan only (no CO 2, halon)

Robot Specs (cont’d) • Recommended sensors: – Thermal, IR (for obstacle avoidance), contact, anything else you deem necessary – Beware of changing ambient light, camera lights, etc. , which can cause all sorts of difficulties • Will definitely be different than your practice runs in room 18 – Be able to calibrate your robot

Arena • Known floor plan (on web) • 4 rooms • Walls 33 cm high, doors & halls 46 cm wide • White walls, black floor, door entry marked with 2. 5 cm white line • May be seams in floor & connectors sticking out of walls • Bottom of flame 15 -20 cm above floor

Arena (cont’d) • Furniture (steel cylinders) will be in rooms • Robot may touch, but not push furniture • Furniture might block view of candle from door • There will be a sufficiently wide path through furniture to candle

Arena (cont’d) • May have “pictures” on walls • May add ramps to foil dead reckoning

Competition Rules • Your robot will start in a designated (“home”) area, flame will be at a random spot in a random room – May have a marker available at home spot for orientation – Room for robot to get 33 cm inside room before reaching candle • You will press your robot's start button (no smoke alarm)

Competition Rules (cont’d) • Will get at most 5 (10? ) minutes to find & put out fire • Then get 2 mins. to return home – Can take any route back, but must not enter any other room on the way – Time only includes time to extinguish fire, not return time • Final score is sum of times for 2 or 3 runs – DEVIATION: scoring based only on time; no “operating mode”

Competition Rules (cont’d) • • Penalty for touching a wall or candle Cannot mark or leave things for navigation Cannot “accidentally” put out candle Penalty for knocking over candle after extinguishing – Knock over before => disqualified • Some part of robot must be within 30 cm of candle before extinguishing

Schedule • Preliminary competition in late Feb. or early March – Get to see how yours measures up – Winner will get higher seed in final competition • Finals during E-week Open House (Friday before dead week) • Winner gets. . . –. . . no cash, but gets bragging rights & media exposure

What Now? • Over break, check out Martin book, Trinity College rules, and other miscellaneous links