Dead Reckoning Competition Your first competition is one where the robot does not use feedback to navigate a maze. In the old days, when ships sailed across the ocean with only a compass and knot board, sailors had to depend on deduced reckoning, or ded reckoning to navigate across the ocean. In dead reckoning, sailors combined their speed and their heading to cross the ocean. In this competition, your robot will do something similar.

Goal Program a robot to drive through an obstacle course without crashing into an obstacle This competition begins with a course or simple maze. You must program your robot to drive this course, starting at the entrance to the course and driving to the exit of the course. The obstacle are walls, but the walls have openings.

About the Course An arrangement of plastic bowling pins Pins create a single course with right angle turns Ends of the course marked with wide openings between pins You will be able to measure the course prior to the competition Robot programming takes place at the competition The course is laid out in plastic bowling pins. If your robot hits one too hard, the bowling pin will tip over. If the pin does not tip over, then either your robot did not hit it or the impact was too light. The pins are arranged to form walls that your robot cannot cross. There are openings in the walls such that there is only a single course through the maze, or course. All turns through the maze are right angles turns. The wide gaps at the walls indicate the entrance and exit points of the course. You cannot see what the course looks like until the competition begins. You are encouraged to measure the course. You will need to know how far to drive your robot and which direction to turn. Armed with your measurements concerning the course, you will have ten minutes to program your robot. To be effective, you should have completed the navigation exercise with your robot. The navigation exercise will make you familiar with the behavior of your robot. It also lets you create the table of pause lengths and drive distances for your robot.

Scoring Greatest distance traveled without leaving the course or hitting a bowling pin Ties judged on shortest time required to complete course A robot receives a score based on the number of pins it passes without knocking them over. If two or more robots have the same score, then the tie will be broken by taking into account the shortest travel time. A robot earning a high score is one that passes many pins without knocking them over and does so in the shortest possible time.