The Dallas
Personal Robotics Group held their semi-annual Roborama contest on Saturday November 22nd in
Garland, TX. The DPRG had a table at the recent Austin
Makers Faire. Each spring and fall, they hold the Roborama contests for autonomous robots.
The spring event has contests for outdoor self-navigating robots. The 2008b contests were
designed to test the abilities of indoor robots. Normally held at the Science Place, this year
they elected to have the contests at the DPRG warehouse in Garland.
There were a wide variety of robots represented: lots of built-from-scratch projects, some
lego-bots, and a few off-the-shelf models. Computing power ranged from nothing up to an on-board
PC with WiFi. The Polulu
3pi’s were heavily represented. The builders themselves were anything from high school
students to veteran club members.
Winners had their choice of prizes in order of placement in each contest (first place got to pick
first, etc). Prizes included a STM32circle, a pair of servos, or
gift certificates to a local electronics store. Other entrants got a
mini-cylon LED display to make their robot a little more menacing. You can view full results here.
The simplest event was the Quick-trip contest. This competition had the robots move from the
starting area straight to a second area, and back again. The area is enclosed by walls and marked
off with black tape, and the robot must completely cross the tape to be considered in an area.
While it sounds very simple, not all robots were able to complete the course. The winners were
determined by who successfully finished the course in the least time. This years winner of the
Quick-trip contest was a lego-bot named Gort built by student Nathan Harlan.
The second event is a little more complex, called T-Time. This one has three areas, and tests the
accuracy of turning. There are 3 areas, the robot starts in one, must visit the other two and
return to the start area. The course is a ‘T’ shape, so the robot must
make a couple of turns. It was won by David Martineau with BoxyRoxy Mk IV.
The third event was a line-following competition. Robots must follow a white stripe on black
background, with lots of sharp curves. The course itself was only about a yard
square, so smaller bots fit more easily. This year the line following was all about the Polulu
3pi’s. At least 4 entered, and all of them used the unmodified hardware: the only
difference was the programming. One contestant used a genetic algorithm to evolve a neural-net.
Another contestant programmed his on the day of the contest. The winner was PI R Squared, owned
by Steve Rainwater.
The next Roborama will be sometime in the spring of 2009. DPRG holds montly club meetings. They
also have the Robot Builders Night Out, which is a chance for roboticists to meet at the Garland
warehouse and work on thier robots. It is open to anyone, not just club members.
Recommandations
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and reject those that you are not interested in
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