The winner of Robotour 2009 is for the second time the team LEE from
Prague. The second place belongs to Roboauto from Brno (with two robots)
and the third place fight out Radiklub Písek, competing with three robots.
Congratulations! Especially 2nd and 3rd places were celebrated that night quite
seriously …
This year contest was taken on new territory (park Lužánky, Brno) and it was so
far the most challenging year. There were 19 teams registered but at the end
only 15 homologated and competed on Saturday. The contest has been abandoned
mostly by new teams, not suspecting that "classic" problems have all teams,
even the most experienced. Among new teams we could at least welcome Italian
team CGS Robotics.
The contest had four rounds. Each team learned about code of round
approximately 30 minutes in advance, but the exact place of start remained
secret. This place was randomly selected and jury person then guided the
robot(s) to it. It was prohibited to transfer this information to robot(s).
At 10am, 12am, 2pm and 4pm were all robots started in parallel. Their first
task was to recognize where they are, to correctly follow entered round and to
return back to start/finish place. The rounds were appoximattely 1km long and
robots had 30minutes to complete them. Robots could not leave the road, hit
the obstacles (sometimes other robots), and stay 60s without moving.
Violation of any of these rules lead to try termination.
There were extra tracking units for evaluation of score. Teams gained 1 point
per 10 meters multiply by amount of payload they carried. There was surely
schematic paper map as backup too. You could also watch current position of
every robot on our website via online tracking of robots.
The first round was supposed to be "warm up", i.e. near the main building but
with non-trivial roundabout in front of the entrance. It's code was
ALK01JIZ.
2nd round
The second round was in South part of the park. The code BESQDGHJ0Y2 had
nickname butterfly because there was crossing SP4Q where robots could meet.
Except sandy segment Y there were no bad surprises.
This was supposed to be most challenging round. The code for 3rd round was
34PWTMLA. What could robots expect there? First of all narrow roads on
segments 3 and 4 and then divided road with a small bridge and ford. We
expected a lot of unpleasant words/comments, but none robot actually reach the
bridge. The winning team LEE draw the starting position next to the bridge.
Other robots in front of the bridge got scared of strong shadows from trees.
4th round
Final round 0Y2R34SFHJ repeated combination of sandy segment Y and narrow
roads on 34.
The contestants were satisfied with this year challenging rules, but spectators
were probably not very happy. As you can see from the table most of the robots,
if they started at all, cover only several meters and then return back to
base. So it was non-trivial to find any robot, which would stay long enough on
road and would be able to perform properly.
The weather was great (for the forth time!) — I mean great for us, organizers
and spectators. Robots would prefer some clouds, so that shadows would not be
that sharp … well it would not be challenge otherwise, right?
At the end we would like to thank again to our sponsors. There were many of
them this year. Besides several prices for contestants there were also prices
for spectators who filled the survey (I would mention at least construction kit
from Megarobots), and every team carried home a barrel of good bear
from brewery Černá Hora a many others. Thanks.
If you consider contest interesting and you would like to participate next
year, or if you have interesting photos and videos from contest, please let us
know via standard contact form.
robotika.cz
