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<DIV>Jeff, how dare you challenge the white lines on black paper!</DIV>
<DIV>The WHITE LINES serve to create a qualification for a run and shall remain
forever!</DIV>
<DIV>I suggest that Jeff Koenig be banned from the club.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Now with that said, I do like the proposal that David Anderson made at
the October meeting which is to do a contest using a few markers --
skipping the walls and the lines on paper.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For those who are not local / did not attend October meeting, David (best I
can recall) proposed two contests in place of Quick Trip and Tee Time.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>1. Drive out a given distance (within some tolerance) then return to
start point. Radial distance of stop point from start point would be your
score. Lowest score wins.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2. Drive a square pattern of a given size passing by each of three way
points then returning home (fourth point). Here again the radial distance from
start point would be your score.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The point in these contests is to encourage the use of odometry -- a very
useful skill in creating nifty robots that can do cool things.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The point in driving a square pattern is that you can use the UMBmark
test to diagnose errors in your robots odometry (David's presentation at the
meeting). So the idea is kind of neat that a contest parallels a good method for
improving odometry.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~johannb/Papers/paper60.pdf">http://www-personal.umich.edu/~johannb/Papers/paper60.pdf</A>
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I would be in favor of placing a marker at each way point that could be
targeted if desired or bumped out of the way. For the indoor contest, I would
propose something like an orange soda can be placed on a marker taped to the
floor. That would make it easy to determine if robot passed within a given
distance of the can or struck the can. Taping target circles to the floor would
be more complicated I think -- just me talking here.</DIV>
<DIV>(Really knocking the can out of the way would be fun to watch)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Certainly wall following benefits from having the course walls, but no
paper floor would be needed for that contest. The 12' tee makes it easy to
transport a set of course walls for that contest.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Line following is still popular, but it is pretty easy to layout and roll
up that course.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I think -- of course -- it would be important to see/hear from anyone
with ideas, but let the folks who are going to build the robots or volunteer to
run the contest have the real say. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I hope the club would agree on some general goals in contest design:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>1. Easy to Set Up.</DIV>
<DIV>2. Easy to Judge.</DIV>
<DIV>3. Entertaining </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>#3 might be best addressed by multiple robots running at a given time
-- a little less order in the world please! The most fun I ever had
running my robot was at the annual BBQ when it was in a pen running with two
other robots and a human controlled RC car. It was chaos -- fun!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>All 3 points would encourage more contests, IMO.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Personally seeing robots run (at a contest) got me sucked into the
club.</DIV>
<DIV>Running robots at meetings is probably a good idea to do the same
thing.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>We need a meeting area that gives us that ability -- for smaller robots at
least.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Ron Grant</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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