DPRG mailing list archives: [DPRG] Long Haul Plus

Mon Dec 3 19:59:07 CST 2007

Yes, ProtoBot and I had a blast in Dallas this past month and are looking
forward to a return in the spring to compete.

After my trip I contacted Dave Hylands to see if he would be interested in
competing with us.  He is most definitely interested, however other
non-robotics interests *MAY* keep him away from the robotics hobby enough to
make a spring event unattainable for him.   Since he monitors this list I
think we all need to work on him and if he can't make the spring event,
possibly late summer or fall.

-Kenneth

-----Original Message-----
From: dprglist-bounces at dprg.org [mailto:dprglist-bounces at dprg.org]On
Behalf Of dpa
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 1:47 PM
To: dprglist at dprg.org
Subject: [DPRG] Long Haul Plus

Howdy,

Several of us have been talking about exercises for outdoor robots
at next spring's DPRG Roborama.   Kenneth Maxon brought his
"Protobot" to the Fall Roborama and will be ready to roll this
spring.  Robert Scheer came down from Portland last month and
will be returning with his robot "Tarzan" this spring.  James
Harris had "NCRbot" at the last contest and Dr. Huff and his
students have also expressed interest in another outdoor
robot series like the one we had a year ago at the RailRoad
Museum parking lot.  I'll have jBot and our Austin friends
have been working on an entry but I don't know the robot's
name.

The exercises break up the outdoor robot competition into
four bite-sized pieces that are each incrementally more
difficult than the last, leading up to the actual "Long Haul"
itself across a major chunk of Fair Park.

The contest exercises are:

1.  Drive to a distant point and back, no obstacles.  (100 feet is a
good distance)

2.  Drive around a large square with no obstacles, and stop at the
starting point.
     (This is Borenstein's UMBMark recast as a contest --- again 100  feet)

3. Drive exercise #1, 100 feet out and back, with obstacles in the way.

4. Drive exercise #1,  1000 feet out and back, with Fair Park in the
way... ;)

Exercises #1 and #2 are done in a large asphalt parking lot, and #3 and #4
are done in Fair Park itself.

Here is a webpage we set up for last year's event, which describes the
areas at Fair Park and includes Cartesian and GPS coordinates:

<http://geology.heroy.smu.edu/~dpa-www/robots/dprg/11nov06/>

At this time it looks like we might have 5 or 6 robots able to do at least
exercise #1 and perhaps #2.   Add obstacles avoidance to that and
we're ready for Long Haul.

best regards,
dpa

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