2004 Cooper Union Robot Tank Battle Rules

The objective of the game is to have your autonomous robot score as many points as it can by shooting ping pong balls at the opponent’s home base and/or robot. In order to accomplish this, your robot has to navigate the arena to get within range of the opponent’s robot or the opponent’s home base, fire a shot, and return to its own home dock for human reloading. Obstacles will be present in the arena at random locations for each round. There will be 5 rounds of 3 minutes each with a 5-minute rest period between rounds.

Arena Specifications

The battlefield will be a 6 feet x 10 feet rectangle enclosed by wooden walls approximately 1 foot high. The wall will be recessed slightly (0.25” to 1” deep) for lengths of 1 foot at the locations of the bases. The floor will be the floor of the Prototyping Laboratory in room 543 of the Engineering Building.

Home Base Specifications

Each home base will be a recessed 1 foot wall (as described above). There will be a hole cut out in center of the 1 foot by 1 foot home base wall where a Luxeon^TM Star green Lambertian LED will shine through. There may be a plastic shield over this hole if a robot can shoot a ping pong ball at a velocity that may break the LED.

Obstacle Specifications

Obstacles will be placed at random areas in the arena. Each obstacle will be a white object with a height of approximately 1 foot. Each obstacle will be a solid shaped approximately like a vertical projection of an oval or a rectangle (it can be circular or square). There will be no direct line-of-fire from one base to the other without an obstacle in the way.

Dock Specifications

Each robot team will have a home dock. This will be a black 1 foot radius semicircle on the ground surrounding its home base.

Robot IR Heat Signature

A small ring (approximately 1 inch diameter) of IR LED’s (peak emission = 940 nm) will be mounted on top of each robot. Each robot will require a small “platform” or “pole” to hold the simulated IR heat signature.

Robot Rules

A robot must fit into a box 1 foot long by 1 foot wide by 10 inches high in all modes of operation. There may be no extension of robot parts beyond this space. If a team wishes to place a decorative item that has no effect on the game, then that item will not be counted as part of the robot for size purposes, but will be counted as part of the robot for scoring (described below) purposes.

A robot may not intentionally separate into multiple parts or leave any parts in the arena other than its ping pong ball.

A robot may not have any parts or devices that are designed to intentionally damage the arena, another robot, or humans

Game Rules

A robot can carry one ball maximum at any give time.

A robot is considered “docked” when any part of the robot covers part of its home dock from a vertical perspective.

A robot may be re-loaded by the human team only when it is docked as described in “Robot Docking and Reloading” below.

A ball released by a robot is considered “dead”:

after it touches an object other than the ground
after it touches the releaser itself (e.g. the robot may not “guide” the ball with its own body)
after it comes to a complete stop.
after it has reached a height of 1 foot from the ground (no shooting over obstacles!)

All other times, the released ball is considered “live”.

There may be ping pong balls strewn around the arena during the game. These are counted as part of the game. Consider this “debris”. A team may remove debris from its home dock if they wish (e.g. to clear the area for their robot to be placed), but they cannot place it back somewhere else. Once dock debris is “disturbed” by the team’s human actions it must be removed for good.

Ping Pong Ball Scoring

Opponent Base Target Hit (10 pts): When a robot releases a ball that touches its opponent’s base while the ball is live, this is considered an opponent base target hit.

Docked Robot Target Hit (10 pts): When a robot releases a ball that touches the docked opponent robot while the ball is live, this is considered a docked robot target hit.

Fielded Robot Target Hit (20 pts): When a non-docked robot releases a ball that touches the non-docked opponent robot while the ball is live, this is considered a fielded robot target hit. However, if the robot releasing the ball is docked, the team will only receive (10 pts).

Robot self hit (0 pts): If the live ball touches the robot where the ball came from, that ball is considered “dead” (no penalty will be given to a robot hit by its own ball by catching up to it, but the robot may not “guide” the ball with its own body, either).

Penalties

Home Base Target Hit (-10 pts): When a robot releases a ball that touches its own home base while the ball is live, this is considered a home base target hit. Be careful not to shoot your own base!

Collision (-10 pts. / round): When a robot comes into contact with anything other than a ball or the opponent robot, it is considered a collision. The penalty will only be assessed once per round.

Emergency Teleport (-10 pts.): If desired, a team may recover their non-docked robot as if it has docked (as in Robot Docking and Reloading below).

Robot Docking and Reloading

The human team may pick up its own robot when any part of the robot covers part of its home dock (from a vertical perspective). After the robot is “docked”, the human team may perform any form of maintenance and reloading of the robot. The robot may then be placed anywhere entirely within the boundaries of its home dock and restarted for its next attack as long as the round has not expired. In the case where the opponent robot is stalled or roaming around the home dock such that the robot cannot be placed entirely within the dock area, it is allowed that the robot be placed in a location closest to the home base possible (even if part of it may protrude outside the dock boundary) and restarted for its next attack.