AUVSI & ONR's 5Th Roboboat Competition
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2012 RoboBoat PRELIMINARY RULES 2011/10/24 5th RoboBoat Competition - Preliminary Rules Sponsored by the AUVSI Foundation and the US Office of Naval Research “The five card draw” 20-24 June 2012 Founders Inn and Spa, Virginia Beach, VA Note: The goal of this preliminary mission statement is to encourage teams to submit comments and questions before the release of the final rules. Please post your feedback before November 15th on the RoboBoat forums. The goal of this competition is to provide an opportunity for students to experience the challenges of and develop skills in system engineering by accomplishing realistic missions with autonomous vehicles in the maritime environment and to foster ties between young engineers and the organizations developing Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) technologies. SCHEDULE*: Event Due Date Intent to Compete Form and Payment Due Friday 2 March 2012 Website and Video Presentation online Friday 16 March 2012 Journal Paper and Resume turned in Monday 28 May 2012 Team Check-in & Orientation Wednesday 20 June 2012 1000 hrs Safety Inspections and In-water Practice Time Wednesday 20 June 2012 1200 hrs In-water Practice Time Thursday 21 June 2012 0800 hrs Static Judging and In-water Practice Time Friday 22 June 2012 0800 hrs Qualifying Runs Saturday 23 June 2012 0800 hrs Last chance and practice time Sunday 11 June 2012 0800 hrs Finals Sunday 12 June 2012 1300 hrs Awards Party (evening) Sunday 12 June 2012 1900hrs *subject to change. POINTS OF CONTACT: Rules / Technical Issues: Félix Pageau [email protected] +1 206 266 6052 Overall Event Planning Daryl Davidson, AUVSI Foundation [email protected] +1 703-845 9678 Logistics / Administrative Leslie Hinton, AUVSI [email protected] +1 703 845 9671 Sponsorship/Marketing Wendy Siminski, AUVSI Foundation [email protected] +1 703 328 0741 Media Melanie Hinton, AUVSI [email protected] +1 703 845 9671 (202) Page 1/12 2012 RoboBoat PRELIMINARY RULES 2011/10/01 1 General requirements Autonomy: the vehicle must be fully autonomous and all decisions must be taken onboard the ASV. Buoyancy: the vehicle must be positively buoyant and stay buoyant for at least 30 minutes in the water. Communication: the vehicle cannot send information or receive instruction while in autonomous mode. Deployable: the vehicle must have its own 3 or 4 points harness for crane deployment. Energy source: the vehicle must use self-contained electrical energy source. Sailboats are permitted. Propulsion: any propulsion system is fine (thruster, paddle, etc), but moving parts must have a shroud. Remote-controllable: the vehicle must be remote-controllable to be brought back to the dock. Safety: all sharp, pointy, moving, sensitive, dangerous, etc parts must be covered and clearly identified. Size: the vehicle must fit within a six-foot long, by three-foot wide, by three-foot high “box”. Surface: the vehicle must float or use ground effect of the water. Mostly submerged/flying is forbidden. Towable: the vehicle must have designated tow points and a tow harness installed at all times. Waterproof: the vehicle must be rain/splash resistant. The competition is held “rain or shine”! Weight: the vehicle must be 140 lbs or less. 2 Notable changes from 2011 rules All teams will be required to submit a link to an online (YouTube or such) presentation video to introduce their team and vehicle. Orientation meeting will be held on the morning of June 20th and testing will start around noun. Plan on getting to the hotel at the latest on June 19th (or very early on June 20th for local teams) All vehicle deployments will be done via a crane. Each team is required to provide a 3 or 4 points harness to lift their vehicle (4 points harness are strongly preferred). Each team will be given two qualification time slots. One slot will be on course A, one on course B. A “open test area” zone will be setup with a partial course for testing (first-come, first served style) Historically, we have been using the buoys: (Taylor Sur-Mark Marker buoys #950400 & #950410 – 49” in tall, 10-18” in diameter) but may have to switch to Polyform LD-4 (Red and Green) due to availability/stock issues with the Sur-Mark buoys for the start and speed gates. This will be announced on the forum as soon as we hear back from suppliers. All teams are expected to provide a digital copy of the video footage analyzed by their vehicle. For 2012, the digital copy can be handed over manually (flash drive, upload to a FTP site, etc). We expect that in 2013 we will require teams to broadcast the ‘live’ video footage analyzed by their vehicle over a wireless network. We are working on a new amphibious station ramp design for 2012 (it won’t be as steep!). Telescopic robotic arms, cranes or anything that is an extension of a vehicle still in the water and is not self-propelled using the landing zone ‘ground’ surface effect will not be accepted for amphibious station. Page 2/12 2012 RoboBoat PRELIMINARY RULES 2011/10/01 3 MISSION TASKS In addition to completing the tasks and stations for the 2012 RoboBoat competition, we are adding a “5 card draw” (see definition on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-card_draw) poker challenge throughout the competition. Each team will be given a random set of 5 playing cards at the start of each run. If you reach a station, you can swap some of your cards for new ones in order to get the best possible hand. If you make “logical” swaps (do not break pairs, etc) you earn some bonus points. If you beat the dealer (technical director hand) you win a significant amount of points. Below is an overall competition layout. Note that the map is to scale versus the actual course and that elements may be placed differently then illustrated below. Overall, this map should be seen as a general orientation/placement idea more than an actual mapping of the elements. Page 3/12 2012 RoboBoat PRELIMINARY RULES 2011/10/01 3.1 Demonstrate your strength You will start by demonstrating the thrust of your ASV can generate by hooking up your vehicle to a thrust measurement system (see Thrust measurement harness diagram). Your vehicle will then generate as much thrust as possible in 10 seconds. This task can be accomplished in a manned manner (you can use a remote, laptop or buttons on the ASV to start/stop this task). See figure 2 in the Annex for the suggested harnessing mechanism between the strain gauge and your ASV. You must provide a harness attached to two points on your vehicle and which offers a single carabiner or loop as the strain gauge interface. 3.2 Demonstrate speed The vehicle should pass through the starting gate demonstrating the ability to steer a steady course and control speed up to a second gate, the speed gate. The starting gate will be in a fixed position with an orientation of about 25-30 feet (7.5-9 m) away from the dock throughout the competition. The speed gate will be 50-100 feet (15-30 m) away from the starting gate. A ‘gate’ is a set of two navigation buoys approximately 6 feet apart from each other. Your vehicle will be timed on how long it takes to transit between the starting gate and the speed gate. The gates will be positioned such that you can aim to pass both gates using a straight line from the dock. Page 4/12 2012 RoboBoat PRELIMINARY RULES 2011/10/01 3.3 Navigate the channel The entrance of the navigation channel will be outside of the speed gate. The navigation channel is delimited by sets of red and green navigation buoys (see Navigation channel diagram). The buoys model used will be Polyform A-0 (red and green). The buoys will be placed in such a manner that you can use the 3R navigational mantra (red-right-return). Follow the navigation channel while avoiding the yellow buoys marking obstacles (also Polyform A-0). At the end of the channel, you will find a larger blue buoy (Polyform A-2). From this buoy navigate following the provided magnetic bearing in degrees up (will change from day to day) to shore where you will find the challenge stations. Page 5/12 2012 RoboBoat PRELIMINARY RULES 2011/10/01 4 Challenge stations There will be four challenge stations. In addition to the four challenge stations, a card exchange board will be posted next to each station for the poker challenge. 4.1 The card exchange At each of the challenge stations, you can find a set of 5 playing cards. If your vehicle reaches a challenge station, it can exchange/swap [0, 5] of its cards. Your vehicle can only exchange cards once during a run at a particular challenge station (but can proceed up to four exchanges if it reaches all four stations). Your vehicle can never hold more than 5 cards at any points in time (even during an exchange). Your vehicle cannot pick up the same card it has previously discarded during the same run. Your vehicle must leave each station with exactly 5 cards. If your vehicle leaves a station with more or less than 5 cards, you automatically forfeit all the points from the “five card draw” poker challenge. A card exchange board will be posted next to each challenge station. The card exchange is a 24in x 16in board that is staked in the ground over the water (not on the shore). Each card exchange board contains 10 card slots arranged in two rows of five.