RoboMagellan Competition Goals:

Robomagellan is a mini- Darpa grand challenge style competition held at RoboGames. It places each contestant in an outside environment with the goal of getting between a starting point and end point with the lowest possible timescore. At the start of the competition you are given the Latitude and longitude coordinates of the start and end points plus the locations of 3 bonus cones. Each cone has a bonus multiplier. If the robot touches the bonus cone while it navigates to the finish location, its total time is multiplied by that bonus cone's bonus multiplier.

RoboMagellan is a great competition because it provides a smattering of many of the most interesting problems in robotics in an easy to tackle format. As the robot navigates the outside arena to reach its targets, it must : avoid obstacles, recognize objects, track is position, and plan its movements.

Thus a successful entry must:

• design a the mechanics of the vehicle (chassis..)
• Machine all the components
• design and deploy a sensor suite for obstacle avoidance
• Use Machine Vision to recognize bonus cones
• Master Localization by keeping track of the robots position using odometry, a compass, GPS, etc...
• Implement all the electronics and hardware in a robust way that does not fail in the field

Rutgers will have a team for RoboGames 2009. If are intersted come to a IEEE Robotics meeting, and join our mailing list.

One robot at RoboGames about to touch one of the cones