Intrepid won the gold medal at Robogames 2008 RoboMagellan competition down in San Francicso - actually tieing for first place with Zippy -- the two bots finding all the cones in the same time to the second. (click on the pix for a bigger one)  Intrepid - our hero - ready to go, just before the contest. The hero cam was a late addition (see the second YouTube video clip below). (click on the pix for a bigger one)  This was a really interesting tracked bot from the University of Waterloo. You can see the powerful twin motors on the front. We expected it to be a formidable opponent, but alas it's lasar range finder went TU just before the contest so they had no sensors for finding the cones. You really have to hand it to these guys from Waterloo - undaunted, engineers to the core, they came up with an ingenious scheme to use their GPS, which can only geolocate within about 6 meters on a good day, and quickly programmed it to raster scan a grid around the cone, so that the bot tracked back and forth, each line advancing a meter or so. See the white pipe across the bot? That's to enhance it's "reach". Pretty clever of those Canadians, eh? (click on the pix for a bigger one)  I didn't get to see this bot run, beats me where I was at the time. I think this might be the one that I heard was chased by a bulldog. I don't know its name (the bot, that is. I don't know the bulldog's name either). (click on the pix for a bigger one)  This is Zippy and it was that. The mast is dual purpose: there is a hand-held GPS unit strapped on up there, and a very clever 2-axis gravity compensation for a compass. Its got a sonar for obstacle avoidance and a CMU-cam for finding cones. These guys managed to shoe-horn all their software into a couple of PIC's, which is amazing. (click on the pix for a bigger one)  This is A3. A3 has been at a number of these contests and usually had difficulties, so this time it emerged as a kind of dark horse which nearly stole the race. Its first two runs were incomplete, but in its final run it finally hit its stride - found the first two cones and made it to the last cone a minute ahead of either of ultimate winners. But then it overshot the cone and wasted its lead finding it again, to finish 11 seconds behind them. Everyone was astonished though. We'll be watching this bot much more closely in the future - it is clearly a bot to be contended with. (Suggestion for A3 team: get a remote switch!) (Another suggestion - the sonar's need Groucho Glasses) (click on the pix for a bigger one)  I don't know the name of this little bot. It was fast and erratic - probably because the grass was half as high as it was and looked like clutter to its sonar. I'll bet it works really good on pavement though. (click on the pix for a bigger one)  Here is the Intrepid team making the final preparations. Its hard to read the laptop screen with all this daylight so Vincent is helping out with the mat (you can't tell but the wind is blowing really hard). I'm reading off the GPS coordinates while Katia smiles. (click on the pix for a bigger one)  Here is a great picture of the contest field while Intrepid is in motion. I believe the view is southwest towards San Francisco. All of the pictures on this page were taken by the talented Kristina. (click on the pix for a bigger one)  This is the final cone, the final run, and Intrepid's final hurrah. Mark is retiring Intrepid from competition to develop a new platform. (click on the pix for a bigger one)  The astonished winners shake hands. Both boys on the left built Zippy, the other first place winner. We tried taking some video this year of Intrepid in action. The first one below are exerpts from the final run taken with a handheld JVC camcorder. Here are some clips taken during the final winning run. The brief halting that occurs is due to the speed of travel which causes it to lurch forward on the rough terrain, temporarily causing the forward sonars to view the grass and think they see an obstacle. It then has to pause a second and convince itself it isn't going to run into anything before going on. This is the view from the hero cam - a camera mounted on the front of Intrepid (not the same one it uses for processing - this one is mounted just above the bumper and streams video to flash memory as an avi) |
