[Dprglist] Four Corners clarifications

[John Swindle]

Thank you, Doug. I understand the rules much better now.


-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Paradis <paradug at gmail.com>
To: John Swindle <swindle at compuserve.com>
Cc: DPRG <dprglist at lists.dprg.org>
Sent: Mon, Jan 28, 2019 09:29 AM
Subject: Re: Four Corners clarifications



John,

    TheFour Corners rule set states: "The robot must travel along the perimeterof the course and return to the spot where it started.". My interpretationof this statement is that the robot must stay outside of the rectangle definedby the corner marks. This might need to be clarified specifically in therules. 

 

It is okay for a robotto train to recognize the corner markers/cones.  The rule set states:"The competitor may also use the corner marks/cones as landmarks duringthe run. Note: There is no guarantee what will constitute acorner marker at the time of the contest.". Using the corner markers toguide final robot placement has been done before successfully by using a visionsystem with blob detection. 

 

The difficulty isthere is no foreknowledge of what the corner mark will be in competition. Ifthe corner marker is a small cone, as it often is, it should be easy to use themarkers to stay outside the perimeter and to use them to guide the robot'sfinal location. If the markers are blue painter marks on the floor, which Ihave also seen, the problem is much more difficult. Imaging of the floor tofind the start location marker that the judge places at the start of the run isprohibited.

 

DPRG wants competitorsto be successful and use as many different methods as possible to solve contestproblems. If a contestant asked for the corners to be marked with cones insteadof tape on the floor, I think the judges would accommodate. The reason that themarkers are not more specifically defined is to allow people setting up thecompetition as much flexibility as possible. Blue painter marks on the floorwould be perfectly acceptable if all robots are using dead reckoning. 

 

It would really beneat to see an echolocator mounted completely on the robot. The rules do notallow beacons.

 

Regards,

Doug P.



 

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 1:36 AM John Swindle <swindle at compuserve.com> wrote:

Doug,
Four Corners questions:
Before a run, is it OK to measure the distance between the cones/markers and program that into the robot?
Before a run, may a competitor train his or her robot to recognize a cone/marker? I assume that's a necessary step (unless the robot is dead-reckoning the course), but maybe I'm missing something.
The robot has to stay in the "perimeter," outside the square, right? In Square Dance, it was OK to drive into the square so long as the robot did not cut off a corner.

Turning the localizer into an echolocator is not as easy as I thought it would be. I should try it on Four Square to prove the low-frequency sonar mapping and the high-frequency sonar targeting.
Thanks!
John Swindle

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.dprg.org/pipermail/dprglist-dprg.org/attachments/20190128/a08de933/attachment-0001.html>