Playing field
From Maslab 2006
Note: Please do not step on the playing field with shoes! It makes the carpet dirty!
The playing field will have an unknown arrangement, but will be composed of the following known components.
Contents |
Floor
The floor is composed of sheets of light blue indoor/outdoor carpet which may have seams or small gaps. The robot should be able to cope with such imperfections.
- Students should examine the floor of 26-100 as it is notorious for its dips and bumps.
- Small pieces of black electrical tape may appear on the playing field surface. They will be about 1" long and no less than 3" apart. They will be used by the judges to mark scoring areas for the audience. Their presence, shape, etc are not guaranteed. Robots must be able to cope with such electrical tape appearing at any location.
Walls
Walls are 11.75" high, painted white on the bottom with blue tape on the top 2". Walls may be straight or circular, but the minimum heads-on profile will be at least 3". (i.e., a wall will not be shaped such that you could view one from any direction and see less than 3" of material.)
- The blue line will have irregularly spaced tick marks of identical blue tick marks 1.5" wide.
- There may be imperfections where the wall units meet. Organizers will attempt to minimize these.
- The playing field may have island obstacles, in addition to an irregular perimeter. There will be a path at least 18" wide connecting all targets, scoring areas, and the starting location.
Bar codes
On parts of the wall between the blue line and the carpet will be vertical green and black bar codes with five bits. Every bar code will have an odd number of green bits (this can be a check for your code). The bar code will be 10" tall and 2" wide (each bit will be a 2" by 2" square). All barcodes are unique.
There will be a barcode to the left of each goal (in addition to other places). The barcode will be 2 inches from the yellow boundary around the goal (which leaves one barcode width of vertical white-space between the barcode and the yellow line).
There will be a small amount (~1/4 inch) of white tape on the bottom of the barcode (the part nearest the floor) so that it should not appear to touch the floor.
Mouseholes
A mousehole is a 6"-high by 10"-wide hole at the bottom of a wall. The mousehole is trimmed on the both sides and the top by a 2"-wide yellow stripe.
- The porch is the 14" by 14" area on the floor centered in front of each mousehole.
- A white wall will be placed behind the mouse hole so that from the majority of angles on the playing field, nothing other than white wall is visible through the hole. From extreme angles, non-wall may be visible.
- There will be a minimum of 1 mouse hole, and a maximum of 4.
- Goals may be located in islands
Balls
Targets are small wooden balls painted red, 2.25" in diameter.
