The Bending of The Rules

The coarse course rules changed course a little bit over the course of the course. Some things I recall:

• zip-ties were allowed for structural purposes.
• the boss was a little lenient on the 1 ft³ volume restriction. We should have had a steep fine (not disqualification) for being over the limit. We should also have a box (like they have at airports for carry-ons :v) to make sure folks actually fit the limit.
• The tables that made up the course were bowed, so there were spots with very big bumps that threw off odometry and caused dragged food blocks to get stuck. Next year, I'd advise "paving" the course in taped-seam foamboard, with the seams always at the middle of a table, not at the joint between tables.
• Very few robots needed all 15 minutes. Instead, most robots could have used a second run. Some robots had last-minute algorithm bugs that would have made a second identical run worthless. For next year: Have two competitions (again). At the first one, give each robot one run of 10 minutes. At the second one, give each robot two runs of 10 minutes. (Many robots stop early, so it shouldn't be too boring.) The robot's score is best-of-three. That would give preliminary standings at the first competition, and give people a reason to work hard for the second one. It would also ensure the second one is good enough to invite local media. Finally, including the first competition's score in the best-of-three would ensure that people would have incentive to have their robot ready for the first one; otherwise they miss a scoring opportunity.
• Many robots had drained batteries and had to run tethered to get enough power (although, even tethered, there wasn't as much current available as from full batteries). Of course people want to run their robots all night before the competition. We should certainly allow tethers (as we did this year). It would be even better if we could come up with six spare batteries, and keep them fully-charged for the competitions.
• IR and photosensors stunk. Smack!Vision helped, I hear. (A red cellophane filter for the photoresistors). Hoods to protect from ambient light helped; low hoods to protect from light bouncing off white tables helped too. IR could probably be improved with a modulator(?). It was hard to test IR; it would be nice if the lab built a simple IR testing apparatus that could sense if your IR emitter is working.
• The one-foot rule for detecting unmapped food was silly. That only tested how well the LED was mounted in the food. My suggestion: two points for detecting unmapped food (only awarded once per food; and it must be clear that the robot is not passing off lots of false positives). Two points for actually capturing the unmapped food. The usual points for returning the food.
• We didn't actually penalize anybody for excess beeping. In fact, one robot got style points for musical beeping.
• Hall effect sensors broke off like antennas in a car wash. Suggestion: Solder and glue each sensor to a fragment of prototyping board, and solder the wire to that. Then screw the fragment to some lego for mounting.
• Poison food actually only had one (huge) magnet on top. That magnet was fragile and slightly dangerous. Should we consider a new way to do poison food next year?
• We instituted a last-minute score for getting back early. However, we realized that could be abused (if you just sat at home and won "early" points). So we modified the rule to only take effect if you got all four mapped nonpoisonous foods home. In retrospect, it was a clumsy rule. A better rule might be to allow you to make as many runs as you like in your allotted time, with your score being the best of all runs. It would reward fast robots by giving them more opportunities to get a higher score. Unfortunately, you'd have to be at least twice as fast as the next robot to take advantage of it. (Well, I guess you could force-stop a run at your discretion, hoping to do better in the remaining time. But stopping a robot without him realizing he's done should cost you something.)
• Nudges and bumps. We allowed you to nudge your robot up to two times, at a cost of 2 points per nudge. This helped avoid damaging or getting stuck robots that were off-course. (The right solution, of course, is to have better error correction or compliancy.) It wasn't a bad rule, but some "nudges" got pretty extreme. A nudge shouldn't be more than an inch or a few degrees to free a stuck lego from a wall. Sliding the robot six inches or turning it 90 degrees is beyond nudge. :v)