Traversal

Description

The solar storm is interfering with communications from Environmental Monitoring Stations, preventing normal data collection operations. Your rover must brave the storm and visit all the stations to record the valuable information. The storm is expected to briefly spike sometime in the next hour, therefore rovers should be ready to move to a Certified Rover Storm Shelter until the worst of the storm has passed. Some of the Environmental Monitoring Stations have partially working GPS transponders, and others have a trail of lights leading to them. Missing digits in the GPS coordinates will need to be filled in with information gathered from other Environmental Monitoring Stations.

Requirements

  1. This task takes place during nighttime when it is dark.
  2. Rovers must travel to different locations and identify the number on the Environmental Monitoring Station.
    1. Environmental Monitoring Stations will be marked with an Aruco marker and a human-readable marker.
      1. More points will be awarded for correctly identifying the Aruco marker.
      2. The markers will be on the top surface of the Environmental Monitoring Station.
      3. The markers are not illuminated.
    2. The Environmental Monitoring Stations may come in different sizes and shapes. They will all be on the ground.
    3. Your rover does not need to pick-up or interact with the Environmental Monitoring Stations other than reading the markers.
  3. There are 6 Environmental Monitoring Stations.
  4. 3 locations will have GPS coordinates.
  5. 3 locations have a trail of lights leading to the Environmental Monitoring Stations.
    1. 1 trail of lights be in the visible spectrum and will be red in colour.
    2. 1 trail of lights be in the visible spectrum and will be blue in colour.
    3. 1 trail of lights will be in the infrared spectrum (940nm).
    4. The start location of the light trails is not provided.
    5. The length of the light trail is not known.
    6. The lights in the trail will be a maximum of 6m apart.
    7. The Environmental Monitoring Station will be within 2m of the final light in the trail.
    8. The lights will be on the ground.
  6. When task time starts the rover operators will be given a timer which indicates the time until the spike in the solar storm activity. The rover must be positioned in the Certified Rover Storm Shelter when the timer reaches zero.
    1. The rover must remain in the Certified Rover Storm Shelter for 1 minute to earn full points.
    2. The length of the timer is not provided in advance
    3. The Certified Rover Storm Shelter shares a location with one of the Environmental Monitoring Stations with GPS coordinates.
    4. Failing to safely protect your rover in the Certified Rover Storm Shelter does not prevent you from continuing the task, but points associated with this action will be lost.
    5. Physical dimensions of the Certified Rover Storm Shelter will be provided by April 2025 or earlier.
  7. Some locations will be difficult to reach and may involve obstacle avoidance and may not be within line of sight of the antenna location.
  8. The GPS coordinates and variable definitions will be provided during setup time. The start location is not a GPS coordinate.
    1. Some GPS coordinates will not be fully defined and will contain variables.
    2. Example: 51.4707A, -112.7527B where A is the value of the Aruco marker at the end of the trail of red lights and B is the value of the Aruco marker at the end of the trail of blue lights.
      1. If the value of scanned Aruco marker for A is 23 then substitute 23 for the A to get 51.470723.
    3. Teams that have successfully navigated to an Environmental Monitoring Station, but failed to scan the Aruco marker may request the value from the judge by forfeiting the points associated with scanning.
  9. To get full points for finding the Environmental Monitoring Station at a location, the human-readable marker or the Aruco marker must be visible on a rover camera or sensor. This should be visible to the judge at the base station to be awarded full points.
  10. Full points will be awarded if the Aruco scanning and detection software is running in the background and automatically displays the correct result when the Aruco marker comes within range and frame of the camera.
  11. Extra points will be awarded to teams who can reach a location autonomously.
  12. This task has some exemptions to the intervention rules regarding the placement of the rover.
    1. For the purposes of attempting autonomous navigation only, the rover may be freely placed at the start line or within 1m of a waypoint that has already been reached autonomously. The judge should be informed if you wish to attempt this. There will be no intervention penalty for this action.