Triangle Amateur Robotics

The goal of the fire-fighting contest is to design a robot that can navigate a four room house (with connecting hallways), find a fire and extinguish it. The robot that can consistently complete their fire-fighting mission in the shortest time is declared the winner. Since we don’t really want to set fire to a full size house, the house is scaled down in size. The complete house is only 8’ by 8’ and the fire is actually a candle.

The official rules of the contest are based on the Trinity College Fire-Fighting Robot Contest that will be held at the college in Hartford, Connecticut on April 21, 2002. For complete rules, check out the official Trinity College Robot
Competition site by clicking on the link above.

The Triangle Amateur Robotics (TAR) club has been recognized as an officially sanctioned regional contest. This means that if your robot places in the top three positions in our contest, you are automatically qualified for the contest in Hartford, Connecticut. The real purpose, though, for attending a regional contest is to see how your robot will perform, and make any last minute tweaks before the final contest in Hartford.

The contest will be held during the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society (RARS) computer and hamfest in Raleigh at the North Carolina State Fair on Sunday, April 14^th. The contest is open to the public as participants, or as spectators, at no charge (however, there is a $6 fee for entering the hamfest, but that money is paid directly to our host, the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society (RARS), not to our club).

Regional rule variations:

The Triangle Amateur Robotics (TAR) club regional fire fighting contest deviate from the official rules in the following manner:

All participants compete in the same class – no junior, senior, or expert divisions.

There will be no qualification round. The contest runs from 10am – 2pm and a participant can have as many practice attempts at running the contest as time will allow. In order for an attempt to be counted as a competition round, the participant must alert one of the contest judges, and wait for them to acknowledge that they are monitoring. Once you have declared a round as a competition round, the score from that round will count – regardless of how the robot performs.

Only three competition rounds per robot are allowed, with the score calculated from the best two rounds.

Participants using sound activation will be required to provide their own sound generator.  For competition rounds, a contest judge must operate the sound generator.

Participants may enter multiple robots, but are only the highest placing robot is eligible for prizes or placement for the national competition.

The contest will be open to the first 15 robots that register.

Additional notes to participants:

There will only be one table available for all participants to pre-load and test their robots. Any participants requiring additional workspace should contact Raleigh Amateur Radio Society (RARS) directly to rent a table ($14 per table if reserved in advance). Request that the table be located near the robot contest area.

If you pre-register, you must be present at the contest area by noon or you forfeit your pre-registration. This is to prevent people from pre-registering and not showing up. If your position is forfeited, you can still compete if there are openings once you arrive.

The food court will be open, so participants may purchase snacks or lunch. Participants may also bring in their own food.

Prizes provided by our sponsors:

Prizes will be listed as they are received from our sponsors

There will be no cash prizes

Our club would also like to offer a special thank you to our host, the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society (RARS), for allowing us to host our contest during their 2002 computer and hamfest.

Update History:

March 26, 2002 – Initial publication.

Contact Information:

If you have any additional questions about the contest, or if you would like to pre-register to reserve a place, please contact:

Ken Boone