Mission On Mars 2016 FAQ 4

For more information concerning the 2016 Mission On Mars Robot Competition, click on the link below: http://www.mathworks.com/academia/student-challenge/mission-on-mars?s_tid=OIT_12940

• May the robot go round during the 3 seconds it’s supposed to be on target? Or, must the robot keep the same orientation when it arrives?

When your robot is on the target it can indeed rotate around itself during 3 seconds. There is no need for it to keep the same orientation as when it arrives on the target.

• If the robot crashes with an obstacle or wall, are we going to be penalized?

As soon as the robot crashes into one of the obstacles or walls, your run will be ended. The time and number of obstacles viewed at that point will be counted for the competition.

• What is the real distance between the wheels?

Concerning the real distance between the wheels it is in fact 16.7cm.

• Are we able to simulate the performance limitations of the hardware using the given code?

The model you are working on runs on the Arduino DUE. It has a lot free memory/CPU available for computation. If your model is selected for the final, we will inform you in advance if your model fit or not in the robot so you have some time to optimize before the D day.

• Is the size/number of the obstacles always the same in the competition? Is the number of targets we need to reach a fixed number? If not, is there a maximum number of possible targets? Is there a minimum distance between two targets, or two obstacles, or a target and an obstacle?

The number of sites to visit on Mars will be between 5 and 10, whereas the number of obstacles to avoid will be between 4 and 10, with a distance of 50cm minimum between each. The obstacles have a constant size of 25x25cm.

• When you pre-screen the solutions, I guess you will only test the performance in the simulation, right? Not on the actual rover.

During the prequalification phase we only look at the simulation model.

• If we make it to the next round, can we work on our code in the meanwhile? (after 24th April, but before the competition.

If you make it to the finals you will be able to continue working on your algorithm even after the 24th April.

[Walter Roberson]

Is that distance between wheels the inside measurement, the outside measurement, or the center-to-center measurement?