The 2017 ASEE robotics competition is held in Columbus Ohio, each year the competition ‘game’ is designed based on the location of the competition.
THE GOAL:
To design and build an autonomous robot that can transport one blue barrel from Spain to each of 6 islands visited by Christopher Columbus and return one red barrel from each island to Spain. The robots will have a maximum time of 90 seconds in each of their four allotted trials. The robot must begin within an 8” X 12” X 10” high size limit but may expand to any size during a trial. An Exhibit Session will precede the robot trials.
THE TRACK:
First Impressions
- This year’s game is not a simple line follow, it introduces at least two obvious hiccups. The two main elements interfering with simple line follow are the hurricane symbol and the repeated bars which represent rapids.
- You may also need to avoid the boulders (gray dowels) if your robot’s path will interfere with them since they cannot be moved.
- You may need to adjust your path to avoid the islands if they interfere with your intended path.
- Robots will need to be designed in such a way that they can not only dispense but also collect and dispense a completely separate set of dowels.
- Two robots could be used for this but be cautious, little time will be saved and by increasing the number of robots you introduce another obstacle to avoid and introduce more complexity and essentially double your chances that something may fail.
