IARC 2019 Countdown:



HELPER ROBOT BEHAVIOR
(Helper Robots are designed by you)

Your aerial robotic helpers must be man-safe and must be controlled by any non-electronic means (no RF, acoustic, or optical signaling devices).They can only be commanded and controlled by your body gestures or vocal commands.

They should be able to provide a video stream to you using FPV-like display goggles or a WiFi mobile display device (receive only) that allows you to see what they see. For operational efficiency, it is desirable that they be able to communicate electronically amongst themselves. They must avoid collisions with sentry robots and can not land in the arena (if they land or if they collide with a Sentry robot, they will be disabled by a Judge). Your aerial robotic helpers can heal your laser hit wounds with a surgical laser (identical to the sentry robot laser, but coded differently), however only four such healings are possible. The presence of the surgical laser can also prevent sentry robot laser hits from being effective if within range and directed toward you at the same time you are shot by a sentry robot.Finally, it is desirable that your aerial robotic help-ers have an endurance of at least 8 minutes but their endurance is not mandated.

You have 4 aerial robotic helpers (and therefore4 healing opportunities). [ The primary task for your engineering design team on Earth is to develop and test these four aerial robotic helpers prior to your voyage ].


Figure 3. Aerial Robot initial placement.


Figure 4. Potential Actions and Events during the 8-minute run.

OBJECTIVE
Enter the Reactor Room and retrieve the four parts comprising the critical component, and take it out of the Reactor Room through the doorway you entered without being killed, and do it in under 8 minutes. This will only be possible with aid of your Helper aerial robots that your team must develop. Your design team’s task is to create aerial Helper robots that can:

1. Fly fully autonomously
2. Stay within the arena
3. Avoid obstacles including    a. Sentry Robots    b. Storage lockers    c. Protective obstacles
4. Respond to verbal or gesture commands
5. Illuminate player with “healing beam” on command
6. Station keeping over storage bin on command
7. Send video of storage bin readout to player
8. Ideally have at least 8 minute duration.

COMPETITION ADMINISTRATION
The attempt will begin upon the signal of the Judges. Teams will have 5 attempts to achieve this objective in any given competition year.Teams must be ready to begin their attempt when called. Each team will have one “pass” allowing them to move to the rear of the attempt queue. An extra attempt will be awarded to the team submitting and presenting the best journal paper about their entry. Teams that are absent or not ready when their turn in the attempt queue arrives, shall forfeit that attempt. A monetary prize will be awarded to the first team to perform the mission. More than one team may successfully perform the mission in a given year, but the one doing so in the least amount of time will win the grand prize. Determination of the final winner will be announced once both the American and Asia/Pacific Venues have been completed in any competition year. The grand prize will begin at $10,000 and will increase by $10,000 for each year that the mission remains incomplete. Competition sponsors may add to the prize award at their discretion.

AERIAL ROBOT DESIGN DETAILS
The hostile sentry aerial robots belong to the arena and will be designed and operated by the arena staff. These aerial robots will be autonomous and to enhance gameplay, “directed autonomy” may be used to keep them in the arena and within reasonable altitude bounds, should they wander.Teams will design four (4) friendly aerial robotic helpers based on off-the-shelf platforms (preferred) or original designs. These aerial robots must be man-safe in that their propulsors must be completely enclosed so that the judge can not touch the rotating propulsor with his finger.A shutdown switch uniquely keyed to each of the 4 aerial robots must be provided to a Judge so that the aerial robots can be disabled independently.

The aerial robots must not be controlled by any electronic means (no RF, acoustic, or optical signaling devices). They can only be commanded and controlled by body gestures or vocal commands.They should be able to provide a video stream to the person in the arena using FPV-like display goggles or a WiFi mobile display device (receive only) that allows that person to see what the aerial robots see. An HDMI signal shall also be provided to the Organizer for display on a big screen if the Organizer decides to do so.

For operational efficiency, it is desirable that the 4 aerial robots be able to communicate electronically amongst themselves. For example,if they are all searching for the critical object and the person in the arena determines that all of its parts have been found, a command to return to the person received by one helper robot could be communicated to all others so that they break off their search and also return to the person without having to be individually instructed to do so.

Friendly helper robots must avoid collisions with sentry robots and can not land in the arena (if they land or if they collide with a Sentry robot, they will be disabled by a Judge). Your aerial robotic helpers can heal laser hit wounds sustained by the person in the arena with a “surgical laser” (identical to the sentry robot laser,but coded differently— the design of which is provided separately from these Rules). When commanded to do so, each aerial robotic helper can only heal one wound one time by focusing their surgical laser on the person in the arena for approximately 1 second. Continuously focusing a surgical laser on the person can neutralize new hits occurring simultaneously by sentry robots.

Finally, it is desirable that your aerial robotic helpers have an endurance of at least 8 minutes but their endurance is not mandated by these Rules.

  • THE ARENA
    The arena will be approximately the size of a basketball court (28m x 15m). The floor pattern, surrounding walls and ceiling, and lighting parameters are unknown. The arena boundary will be marked and for safety, all activity should remain within this boundary.

    The person attempting to retrieve the critical object will wear an instrumented helmet that is provided by the arena staff. The use of this helmet is mandatory and will contain laser hit sensors and “life counter” circuitry. The helmet may not be obstructed with any worn covering or by hands.Obstacles, bins, and objects will be provided in the arena and placed in a manner similar, but not exactly to that shown in Figure 1. The exact placement is unknown. The entry/exit point is the center of one end of the arena.

    The “critical object” will be distributed within the 4 locked bins. A code is required to unlock the bins. On the top of each bin is a section of the necessary code which must be viewed nearly simultaneously to decipher the code as each code display will reveal only a portion of the code (code segments will change periodcally, but the composite code will remain the same throughout a given run). Simultaneously viewing and overlay of the code segments will reveal the code that unlocks all of the 4 bins containing the “critical object”. The person in the arena will need to use this code to unlock each bin until all of the parts of the critical component have been retrieved. During this time, the person should attempt to avoid attacks by the sentry robots.

    The “critical object” to be retrieved will be the same at both the American and Asia/Pacific Venues, but will be unknown to teams prior to the first venue event. This object may change from year to year. The layout of both the American and Asia/Pacific Venue arenas will be substantially the same, although the physical surroundings, lighting, sound level, and RF environment may differ. Helper aerial robot designs must be robust enough to account for these variations.
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