Colorado Robotics ChallengeYear 6

Saturday

April 7th, 2012

Location: Great Sand Dunes National Park

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Goals• Develop small autonomous robots capable

of traversing harsh terrain as they move towards a central beacon.

• Providing students with exceptional training in a growing technological discipline.

• Develop electronics and mechanical skills specifically

• Low entry barriers

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The Challenge

• Provide increasingly challenging courses to challenge all ability levels

• Provide divisions for friendly recognition of engineering achievement

• Start with simple “go home” then build to more advanced autonomy including avoidance, mapping, etc.

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Basic Rules

• Mass: 1.5 kg goal

• Hard limit 2.5 kg

• Cheap: < $500 for final unit

• Don’t hurt the environment

• No flying entries

• All robots will have a receiver for homing.

• The “is it about a cat” rule

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Overview of the Event

We will have four courses.

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Course 1

Course 1 will be fairly smooth and lacking major obstacles. The purpose of this

course is to illustrate the robot’s ability to find the homing beacon (433 MHz).

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Course 2

Course 2 will be essentially level, but will contain obstacles, natural or artificial. On this course, the robot will demonstrate its ability to detect and avoid obstacles while still homing to the beacon.

The obstacles will be sizable.

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Course 3Course 3 will involve uneven terrain. This

course will demonstrate the robot’s ability to make decisions regarding a safe route.

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CSU’s Robot 2011

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Overview of the Event

Course 4 will be a nightmare, combination of all the course only at a harder level.

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Basic Systems

Your robot will have at least these basic systems:

1) Motion

2) Sensory

3) Direction Determination

If your robot can send/receive a 433 MHz signal (and decode it!), we will help solve the

Direction Determination system. The other two systems are within the capacity of students.

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DANGER! DANGER!Sand Trap

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Where Should Your Students Start?

They should design a platform – the unit responsible for

movement and start on the logic!!

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Your team needs traction I’m there

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Typical TimelineStart teams Dec 2011

Receive COSGC Beacon Unit Jan 1

Receive COSGC Beacon Simulator Jan 1

Design, Drawings and Prototyping Feb 1

Electronics and Microcontroller Feb 28

Base mechanical unit Feb 28

Robotics Challenge Tag-up March 9

Integration March 15

Testing March 30

Testing and Testing April 1

Event Day April 716