Premise
Your cows are extremely hungry. In fact, they’re always hungry! Fortunately, a new supply of feed has just arrived at your farm. Use your robot to safely deliver the feed to the cattle troughs.
Aim
To take an amount of “cattle feed” from your barn to three troughs so that your cows can eat!
Control method
Remote Control or Autonomous.
Time limit
5 minutes.
Example run
Highlights
Rules
- You must add markings to your arena for your “barn” – this is the starting position of your robot and measures 500mm by 325mm and is located in the bottom-left corner of your arena.
- The main body of your robot must be contained initially within the Barn and it can face any direction. Trailers may be outside the bounds of the Barn.
- Three cattle feeding troughs must be created that your cows will “eat” from. The dimensions for these troughs are as follows:
- 100mm long
- 100mm wide
- 50mm deep
- The troughs can be made using any material you wish – cardboard or wood, for example, or even 3D-printed trays (examples of which can be found here).
- You must draw or otherwise mark lines on the inside of your troughs to show where “half full” is.
- The outside of the troughs can be marked or coloured in any way that might aid you in navigating to it, if you are completing this challenge autonomously.
- There is flexibility over the positioning of the troughs to allow different methods of approaching them. Each trough must be on the side of the line-following line shown above and must also be within the appropriate bright green box.
- Your robot must deliver “cattle feed” from the starting point (your barn) and deliver it into the troughs.
- The cattle feed should be dried rice (of any type). If you cannot get rice in your location, please use seed or grain as a substitute.
- Each trough must be at least half-filled with feed for it to be judged as “complete”. This is why we ask you to mark the inside of your troughs!
- You may return to the Barn during a run to collect more cattle feed. This is so that you can still complete the task if you are unable to carry a full load of feed in one journey. If you are tackling the challenge automously, the return journey must be done autonomously. If you are tackling the challenge with remote control, the return journey must be done by remote control. In any case, the feed refill can only be done within the Barn area.
- If you are refilling your robot with feed at any point, any method of refilling may be used.
- After each run (i.e. after all your troughs are filled), your robot must be reset to your Barn (by hand or by driving), the troughs emptied and the robot re-filled with feed if necessary. You may use the same feed each time, or you may use fresh feed each time.
- You may carry enough feed for all three runs on your robot, if you wish, meaning that you don’t need to refill with feed. You must, however, reset the course and start from the barn after each run of three troughs is complete.
- A line will be provided on the course layout to enable you to use vision or line following sensors to navigate your way. You do not need to use this line, however, to complete the task.
- The challenge should be run up to three times in succession within the time limit.
- You must submit a single video showing your runs.
- The timer will not be stopped during the reset process (to make it easier for the Judges and for greater overall accuracy).
- The timer will start when your robot first moves. The timer will stop when your robot returns to the barn after your final load of feed is delivered.
Ranking and points
- There are 9 troughs that can be filled across 3 rounds. You must also “return to base” at the end of each round of 3 troughs 3 times.
- For each trough (half) filled, remote controlled robots will be awarded 100 points and autonomous robots will be awarded 150 points.
- After each round of 3 correctly-filled troughs, your robot should return to the Barn, for which remote controlled robots will be awarded 100 points and autonomous robots will be awarded 200 points.
- If your robot completes all three runs within the time limit (including returning to your Barn and (half) filling at least two of the troughs on each run), your robot will be ranked against the other robots in your category, and using your control method, according to how quickly they completed the runs. Ranking points will be awarded according to the Formula Scoring System.