[Dprglist] November Competition 2017

[Doug Paradis]

John,
    I always enjoy your emails. They routinely look at things in a
different light. I will attempt to answer your questions and fix the LF
rule document.

    A little history, in 2014/15 an effort was made by a group of members
to see if the rules could be distilled to what was important and drop some
of the convoluted "legalize" aspects that were in the rules at the time.
The result was generally good, but sometimes nuances were lost.

    Q:   ... If that kind of movement of the robot is acceptable, then the
robot (a real physical one) does not actually have to follow curvature of
the line: It just has to move from entry points to exit points.
    A:   The rules state "The front and rear of a competing robot must
enter and exit every element of the course. If a robot overshoots or loses
the line and recovers, its recovery course must take it through the
adjacent element. Under-shooting an element or taking a wrong turn at an
intersection disqualifies the robot’s run."   The original purpose of the
"Additional Information" was to define when a robot became lost. A robot
was lost if it skipped a tile or undershot a tile. The classic lost robot
making an undershoot is when a robot jumps from one of the curves in a
"Double Curve" block to the other ( see allowed elements). I would
interpret the rules as a robot must follow the line or it is undershooting,
which is not allowed. I will adjust the rules to specifically state that
the robot must follow the curvature of the line or the implied curvature of
the line where the line is not contiguous.

   Q.   If the specific contest rules don't mention "self-contained", then
does that mean the robot can use external resources?
   A:    Yes. The club has been loosing the rules for the last couple of
years to allow external resources. Several in-door contests now do not
require a robot to be self-contained. However, non-self-contained is meant
to allow external computing power. Beacons or sensors may be covered in
other rules of the contest. For example, Can-Can soccer has restrictions on
where beacons can be placed.

   Rule Language Inconsistencies:  There was a decision at the last rules
revision to rename the LF levels from Beginner, Senior, Advanced to Novice,
Advanced, Challenge (note: the Challenge level course has always been named
the "Challenge" level course) . Also, the rules were specifically to
outline what contest that would be held at Roborama. These level were the
Novice and Advanced, which both only have black lines on white fields, and
that is where the error made it way into the document. I will look over the
rules again and make sure everything is consistent. Thanks for pointing out
the problems.

I will publish the modified rule set for review.

Regards,
Doug P.

On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 5:21 PM, John Swindle <swindle at compuserve.com>
wrote:

> Folks:
>
> I enjoyed seeing the 6-can contest today, and seeing the work Carl and Ron
> are doing on the Challenge Level Line Following contest.
>
> Carl explained that his simulation defines a single move from the
> entry-point of the square, to the exit-point of the square, or more
> correctly, either the exit point of the current square to the exit point of
> the next square, or the entry point of the current square to the entry
> point of the next square.
>
> If that kind of movement of the robot is acceptable, then the robot (a
> real physical one) does not actually have to follow curvature of the line:
> It just has to move from entry points to exit points.
>
> So, since the LF course layout is a fixed pattern until someone wins, what
> about just doing odometry or sonar/LIDAR to the room's walls (to correct
> the odometry, like what Neato does, ignoring obstacles and only looking at
> walls), and follow the fixed pattern of the course layout using corrected
> odometry?
>
> Separately:
>
> If the specific contest rules don't mention "self-contained", then does
> that mean the robot can use external resources? Or is there a set of global
> rules for all contests, covering things like self-containment?
>
> And just a note: The first sentence of the LF rules state that there are
> three levels. Then the second sentence states that there are two levels
> (with a different name). (I do tech writing. I see these things. Especially
> when they are in adjacent sentences. Especially when they are the first two
> sentences that I read. Kinda like a JEDEC standard.) I suggest that the
> second sentence be deleted.
>
> And another item: The first sentence says the robot follows a black line.
> I think the line color change tile was added after that first sentence was
> written. In any event, it's not always a black line.
>
> Best to you all,
> John Swindle
>
>
>
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