CiberMouse@RTSS2007

The CiberMouse@RTSS2007 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.

In this year's competition the beacon IR signal is viewed as a radio beacon emitted by the lost cars and the robots are viewed as rescue agents that will localize and bring the car occupants to the medical bases. The desert contains natural obstacles, such as rocks, cliffs, etc. that must be detected and avoided using the obstacle sensors.