RobotChallenge 2009
RobotChallenge is the biggest competition in Austria for self-made, autonomous, and mobile robots.
This competition in Wien (Vienna) consists of several disciplines. We (= Jiøí I¹a + David Obdr¾álek) participated on the Puck Collect competition. The game takes place on a squared playground. Two robots compete. There are ten blue and ten red pucks placed randomly on the playground. The goal of each robot is to collect all of its pucks faster than the opponent, or just collect more pucks than the opponent in the three-minute interval.
Cogito
Our team, Cogito, participated with the robotic platform Mob2, which is used for lectures in robotics at the Faculty of Mathematics and physics, Charles university in Prague. We took the competition for the first non-trivial test-bed of these robots and an opportunity do develop important parts of the control software. We had more team to prepare the robot, than the other Czech team — Eduro. Eduro, on the other hand, is a well-tested robot and experienced warrior of several competition. It can follow instruction such as "go to the point [X, Y]". Not so our Mob2 robots. Two weeks before the competition, the communication between the control PC and the microchip controlling the hardware did not exist. In the next step we had to measure and control the velocity of the robot and to estimate the current position based on odometry. We did not make it to the fancy stuff such as Monte Carlo localization or Kalman filters.
Our strategy was to follow a fixed predefined route and to collect every puck we see on the camera. Our strategy and hardware mostly ignore the opponents. We could detect them only as an obstacle we have bumped into and which blocks our movement. From the point of view of the competing robots from LEGO it is probably pretty fine we have to withdraw from the competition after the third round due to hardware problems. We are still investigating their cause.
Despite our withdrawal we were satisfied with the competition. The whole competition happened in the friendly spirit and nice atmosphere of the robotic day. We developed quite a bit of so important basic control software for our Mob2's, which would otherwise take months to create. We also gained new knowledge about their hardware, which we shall use in their modification for further teaching. Next time, we will compete with more "adult" robots 
Pictures and movies
To download all the pictures at once I suggest something as 'wget -r http://jiri.isa.matfyz.cz/projects/robotchallenge2009/imgs/fullsize'
Movies |
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01-eduro-01.avi(4.8M) |
02-cogito-01.avi(15M) |
03-cogito-02.avi(9.1M) |
04-eduro-02.avi(18M) |
05-eduro-03.avi(19M) |
06-slalom-01.avi(963K) |
07-eduro-04.avi(17M) |
08-eduro-05.avi(17M) |
09-pc-01.avi(14M) |
10-slalom-01.avi(4.4M) |
11-eduro-06.avi(18M) |