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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Welcome to the Robowars forum.. always nice to see another tech-head join
Although as youve already found, it seems autonomous bots are pretty thin on the ground down under..
The place Jason Cowley (the builder of the IBC's) works at (Vision Systems - a pretty big corporate BioMedTronics place) has an occasional in-house Autonomous Sumo Robot competition down here in Melbourne. I think it happens about every 6 months IIRC..
I went along to watch one of them and it was sadly, relatively boring to watch..
Even myself being a person who understands microcontrollers, programming, ultrasonic/IR sensors and the all tech-details, spending two hours watching two very small un-menacing, unrobotic-looking wheeled boxes blunder blindly around the arena, seeming to actually engage the other robot more often than not by chance rather than intent didnt exactly have me hanging on the edge of my seat..
Actually, it left me wondering if the majority of entrants had written very simple programs that went something like "drive randomly about, if <edge-of-arena-sensor> active, then reverse direction now, elseif <contact-with-other-robot-sensor> active, then keep driving in current direction, loop" and left it at that.
There seemed to be very little "intelligent" behaviour by 90% of the robots - There was *1* very serious team that had suction on the wheels and was demonstrated driving along the wall such was its ground-holding power. it won about 3/4 of its "fights" and exhibited moderately intelligent seek-and-push behaviour.
There was another team that looked like they had made a fair go of it, but their robot occasionally did something stupid like drive itself straight out of the arena without any pushing by the other bot.. which left me wondering, if you cant even get the arena-edge-sensor right, how hard have you really tried ?
The rest of the robots (about 8 or 10 out of about 12 in total) looked like they had been hacked together with hot glue and cardboard and had the above-mentioned lack of programming sophistication. And this is from a large company with an electronic R&D Dept, and a boatload of electronic "engineer" employees.
If thats the average australian autonomous robot competition excitement level, then to the average joe who doesnt know an ultrasonic-range-sensor from an if-then statement, they looked about as interesting as watching paint dry.
I've seen some fairly impressive sumo/mecha/autonomous competition videos from overseas, but unless there are other comps going on that I havent seen, it looks like the Aussies are a long way behind the rest of the world in the Autonomous area.
In Robot Combat by comparison, quite a few of our builders/teams (from what Ive seen from videos, I havent actually visited in person) would be right up there with the best of the worlds combat bots.
I think what is needed is something like a standardised "beginners pack" controller/sensor/program suite that offers some reasonably competitive "intelligence" so that inexperienced programmers can focus on building their chassis/motors/batteries/combo, and *then* start getting clever with the code once they have that working..
because while the autonomous bots show about the intelligence level of your average ameoba, they're not likely to gain much traction interest wise in my opinion.
regardless of my opinion though, its nice to see you here ! _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Thu May 06, 2010 11:16 pm |
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Garrows
Joined: 16 Apr 2010
Posts: 10
Location: Crestmead, Brisbane
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Thanks everyone for the info and complements.
The UAV challenge, www.uavoutbackchallenge.com.au seems very interesting. And with a $50k prise up for grabs, its well worth the effort and money.
I understand in a destructive competition, a robot with an on board phone isnt a good idea since it will get destroyed. But in a non destructive competition, it has significant advantages. Where else can you get a microcontroller with accellerometers, gps, wifi, bluetooth, and a camera for under $200? Plus for those of you who still prefer using a remote control, a bluetooth phone to a $20 serial bluetooth adapter to a $30 arduino chip? you got yourself a very cheap and very powerful robot there.
It seems that as far as hobby autonomous robots go, sumo is the competition of choice so I might run with that.
I like the idea of going with a beginners pack. Perhaps even a standard robot to encourage competition on the software side rather than the hardware side which everyone here seems to be into. Dont get me wrong here, I'm not saying that focusing on hardware is bad, its just that not everyone is interested in that side.
What are peoples thoughts on a autonomous league using a standard cheap robot (under $70) plus a phone (android or nokia N series will do)?
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Fri May 07, 2010 2:08 pm |
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