The
CiberMouse@RTSS2006 competition will be based on the CiberMouse Simulation
Environment. This has been used for a well-known competition in Portugal,
the Ciber-Rato Contest, which is run
annually since 2001 in the University of Aveiro
- DETI / IEETA. In turn, this event
is part of an older and larger event, the
Micro-Rato Contest, in which small real robots compete, with similar
rules. This was created in 1995, vaguely inspired on the IEEE Micro-Mouse
Competitions of the 80s.
Technically speaking, the task of the robots is to go from their starting
position to the target area signaled by an IR light emitting beacon, and
then return to their starting position. The final score depends on the
distance from the starting to the ending point, on the time taken to return
and on possible penalties due mainly to collisions with walls and other
robots. During competition, 3 robots compete at the same time in a
distributed environment where simulator and robots are executed in 4
separate computers connected to an isolated IP LAN. However, the simulator
and all robots may also be executed in a single computer.
A graphical front-end shows the maze, the movement of the robots inside the
maze, their scores and provides a control panel to manage the competition.
The maze is a rectangular area, delimited with walls and populated with
obstacles. Start point, target area, walls and obstacles are unknown to the
robots at the beginning. Moreover, there are obstacles higher and lower than
the target beacon.
The virtual body of the robots has a cylindrical shape and is equipped with
sensors and actuators. The sensory system is composed of obstacle sensors,
target beacon sensor, compass, and a bumper. The main actuators are two
diametrically opposed motors controlling two independent wheels in a
differential drive fashion.
This time, special features were added to the simulation
environment to motivate using real-time design methods. In particular,
selective delays have been added in the access to the sensory information as
well as limitations to the amount of sensory information that can be
obtained with each query. These will require a judicious control of speed
and selection of sensor queries in order to avoid bumping against obstacles
and other robots which cause penalties.
Finally, the current simulator was developed to support multiple IR beacons
in the maze so that the robots must visit all beacons before returning.
However, the CiberMouse@RTSS2006 edition will consider one single beacon, as
in all Ciber-Rato editions prior to 2006.
