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Farmyard Tours

Premise

Visitors are booked to come and visit your farm! You must do everything you can to make things entertaining, thrilling and exciting as your robot conducts their tour.

Aim

To build a farming/agriculture-themed obstacle course with as much inventiveness as you can muster. You must show that your robot can navigate its way around by remote control and return ‘home’ at the end.

Control method

Remote Control only.

Time limit

5 minutes.

Example video of a level change

Example Obstacle Courses from last year

Here are some of the best Obstacle Course runs from 2021. The theme was DIY/At Home.

Highlights reel

Rules

  • You must construct your own agriculture and/or farming-themed obstacle course.
  • Your obstacle course can be of any design, but here are some ideas for you to excel at this challenge. Feel free to use your imagination!
    • Animated obstacles
    • See-saws
    • Barriers
    • Bridges
    • Revolving doors/gates
    • Puzzles with moveable pieces
    • Level changes
    • Peril! Robotic danger!
    • Towing a trailer of some sort for your guests
    • Targets to shoot as you go along
    • Comedy value
    • Terrain differences
    • Making your course long enough to show your robot’s stamina!
  • You are required to have the following features in your obstacle course:
    • A level change of at least the height of your robot.
    • At least three different types of terrain.
    • A barrier that you must move in order for your robot to progress.
  • We are looking for originality, imagination, humour and innovation!
  • Your obstacle course can use your entire location (or an alternate location!) and is not constrained by your arena.
  • You may use as many obstacles as you wish for your course.
  • You must return (approximately) to your start point at the end of the run. (i.e. the course must be circular in nature and return you to your ‘home’ position).
  • It is important that the recording of your obstacle course run is a single, uninterrupted video. You may need to engage the help of a camera operator to achieve this.
  • If you wish, you may add a camera to your robot and record additional video footage that can be shown “picture in picture” for added interest.
  • You must only run your course once during the time limit.

Ranking and points

  • The merits of the course and your run of that course will be judged by at least three independent Judges on the following criteria:
    • How imaginative your obstacle course is – out of 200 points.
    • The complexity of your obstacle course – out of 200 points.
    • The strength of your course’s theming against this year’s theme – out of 250 points.
    • The amount of humour on display – out of 250 points. (Please make the Judges laugh – this is not an easy challenge to Judge!)
    • The agility of your robot – out of 200 points.
    • The skill of the driver – out of 200 points.
  • If audio commands (of any type – use your imagination!) are used as well, a bonus of 100 points will be awarded.
  • If you have included all of the required elements (and they are required, so you should have them!), a bonus of 100 points will be awarded.

We recognise that many of these are entirely subjective criteria. We will have a panel of three Judges per challenge run and their scores will be averaged so that the whole process is as fair as possible.

Hints

  • Note that extra points are available this year for theming your obstacle course.