MASLab 2003 Contest

Ten teams participated in the third annual MASLab Robotics Exhibition and Contest which took place on January 29, 2003. Over 200 spectators crowded into room 26-100 to watch the students show off their hard work and they were not disappointed. The robots explored the playing field, showed off their image processing, and even managed to exclaim in glee (several teams installed speakers on their robots)!

Media

We have put together a DVD which includes the highlights video, full video from each of the robot's runs, and lots of extras. To purchase your own copy of the MASLab 2003 DVD, please contact . Photographs of the competition are in the MASLab 2003 gallery.

Contest Rules

In the MASLab contest, each robot will have four minutes in the playing field during which it can score in several ways. The simplest way to score is for the robot to drive near a red target and announce its arrival. Each robot can "announce" arrival in a way of their choosing: playing music, wiggling, spinning in a circle, raising a flag, etc. This announcement is rewarded with 1 point (maximum 1 point per target).

More points are scored if the robot can move the red target to either a yellow scoring area or back to "home." Yellow scoring areas are marked on the wall by a patch of yellow. Any target within 8" of the yellow panel scores 3 points. "Home" is the area where the robot started and is unmarked. If a target is delivered back home, the robot scores 5 points.

The robot scores a bonus point if they end the four minute round at home. The robot is penalized a point if it does not automatically stop after four minutes.

The teams do not know the size or shape of the playing field. They know only the basic characteristics of the playing field: white walls (with a blue stripe at the top) either 6" or 12" high, green floors, red targets, and yellow scoring areas. This forces students to make their robots respond dynamically to their sensor data and makes the contest both more rewarding and exciting.

Strategy

Teams are encouraged to develop creative mechanical, electrical, and high-level strategies. MASLab robots involve considerable mechanical design: each piece of the robot must be carefully positioned for the robot to remain within the maximum dimensions and a mechanical gripping mechanism is required to transport the targets into the scoring areas. Some teams built compact and maneuverable robots capable of gripping only one target at a time, while other teams built larger robots capable of holding several targets at once. The robots in this year's contest have many different gripping techniques: bulldozer style robots simply push the targets to the scoring areas, gate style robots trap the targets in a gated enclosure, magnetic style robots use magnets to pick up the targets and a mechanical mechanism to remove them, and bucket style robots pick up the targets with a arm and deposit them in a bucket.

Each team had to make various design tradeoffs when working on the electrical aspects of their robot. Some teams chose to use ultrasound or infrared range finders to precisely determine the target position, while other teams relied solely on their robot's digital camera. Several teams used contact switches to detect a target in their gripper, or to detect a collision with a wall. Other electrical components, such as amplified speakers to announce arrival at a target, were also added.

Finally, each team developed their own high-level strategy. Some teams use a simple, stateless strategy to repeatedly search for and grab a red target, then find a scoring area and drop it off. Teams which can carry multiple targets must decide how many targets to collect before unloading them at a scoring area. More advanced teams use the camera and sensor data to create an internal map of the playing field which allows the robot to make more intelligent decisions. Some teams have chosen to ignore the home scoring area in favor of the easier-to-find yellow scoring areas, while other teams have programmed their robot to carefully backtrack its movements and thus return the targets to the home scoring area. While four minutes sounds like a long time, a robot can easily squander it by spending too much time collecting and processing sensor data, or by picking an inefficient route from one point to another. Acquiring more data enables the robot to choose more efficient routes, so the time limit imposed a fundamental design tradeoff.

Each team’s robot is a unique creation with its own mix of mechanical, electrical, and high-level strategies.