Day 3 – Fat and Greasy battles…

:-)

Today is the day 3 of the Imagine Cup 2009 world finals. The Big big battle day.

All the competitors had completed their coding. (And by the we learned that Gauna, the fellow competitor who was sick and had been working from his room had to fly back to his country. Anyway his robot will play on behalf of him)

There were battles organized between each player. (So altogether 15 battles) Each battle would consists of 3 matches which each consists of 3 rounds of 60 seconds in length. If you beat the opponent in more number of rounds you win the match. If you beat the opponent in more number of matches you win the battle. A win in a battle give 3 points,  tie is given 1 point for each and loose is 0 points.

Apart from that each participant were given a bonus mark of up to 3 depending on their achievement with the real robots. Byron and Gauna were awarded 3 points each and all the other were given 1 point for this task.

So at the end the leader board was as follows.      

Competitor Name	Country	Battles	Wins	Ties	Defeats	Score
Pablo Gauna (Gauna)	Argentina	5	1	0	4	+6
Byron Knoll (Yokozuna)	Caneda	5	4	0	1	+15
Fuming Lin (ZeroLin)	China	5	3	0	2	+10
Imrich Zivcak (Goldie)	Czech Republic	5	1	0	4	+4
Lukas Perutka (Srotbot)	Czech Republic	5	4	0	1	+13
Pramuditha Aravinda (QUT0268)	Sri Lanka	5	2	0	3	+7

We also had a fun session with the robots after the end of the competition.

Hmm so that’s it. But anyway I was presented with the robot that I was playing with considering my achievements so far. Wow… I like you Robbie…

Competition Update:

Our embedded team and Software design team has been ended up in top 12. Here I have been to 4th place. Now we are keeping our faith regarding the Mash Up team to have a big big prize whose results will be released on world festival on 7th.

[Note: This post will be updated with photos and videos once processed)

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Day 2 – 24 Hours hectic programming…

:-)
Today is the start of the competition day. Hmm 24 hours of continuous time to compete. Had to rush trough competition check in before repeat competitor briefing since it was really late when we arrived yesterday.
We were given a new version of the Sumo challenger to code. And were explained that the competition will be hosted in simulation environment for the fairness for all the competitors and in addition we were given real physical robots to play with and to create a robot that can do a particular action to a vision stimulus. That would be a mandatory challenge that would give few more bonus points.
Real robots ready to play.

I’m coding and playing with the real robots.

Even this is a 24 ours continuous competition, competitors were allowed to have their time. It was even allowed to go out of the competition hall and have a rest at your hotel room or even work from there.

The most apparent change in the new challenge kit is that it mimics the real robots behavior. now robots do rarely go over other.

So Let’s see back on next day. Big Big battle day!

Netflix Challenge enters “last call” for the grand prize.

:-)

As of the submission by team "BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos" on June 26, 2009 18:42:37 UTC, the Netflix Prize competition entered the "last call" period for the Grand Prize. Netflix is a data mining/Collaborative filtering optimization challenge where participants are challenged to device a recommendation system which can beat the Netflix owned world-class movie recommendation system: Cinematch^SM by an accuracy of 10% improvement.

In accord with the Rules, teams have thirty (30) days, until July 26, 2009 18:42:37 UTC, to make submissions that will be considered for this Prize. After this time period the submissions will be considered for the grand prize and the winning team will be awarded a cash prize of 1,000,000 US$.

References:

http://www.netflixprize.com/

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How the things went on Mars…

:-)
Follow up to the Post:Landed on Mars. Chase for the water begins…
You all know that I have being selected as a world finalist in this year Imagine Cup Robotics and Algorithms and probably would be glad to see my Robot’s working at Endurance Crater, Mars.
Well I have being thinking to post this video a long time but had to always postpone due to various reasons. So Enjoy it now!

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Imagine Cup Finalists announced. This time 4 teams from LK

:-)

Well I accept that this news is bit old. But I was on a bit of busy schedule on past few days, had to relocate since our hostel period was over, finalizing and submitting final year project reports etc.

However it’s glad to see that this time we have 4 teams from the island (he he including me-one man team) participating in Imagine cup. The Finalist teams are,

Software Design – Team : Mahee – Project : MISEEFA – Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology

Embedded Development – Team : SAS_EN – University of Moratuwa, Faculty of Information Technology

Robotics & Algorithms – Aravinda DP - University of Moratuwa, Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Mash Up – Team : Sasrutha – Project : Hope for Poor - University of Moratuwa, Faculty of Information Technology.

Hmm sad that we have lost the hold on short film this time.

Good luck for everybody and let’s bring glory to or motherland.

More Info

http://imaginecup.com/Competition/Finalists.aspx

Landed on Mars. Chase for the water begins…

:-)

Today the list of competitors advanced for the Imagine Cup Robotics and algorithms were published. Hmm It seems 237 are on chase for the water on Mars.

Top 20 Countries are as follows…

TW : 39
CN : 31
FR : 23
HU : 19
US : 16
KR : 10
BR : 9
DE : 8
IN : 8
RU : 6
PH : 5
PL : 5
EG : 5
CZ : 4
AU : 4
JP : 3
DZ : 3
CH : 3
LK : 3
AR : 3

So… Now It’s a matter of water or death.

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Imagine Cup Robotics Round 2 mission released… Wild goose chasing at Endurance crater, Mars…

:-)

Follow up to the post In to the Mars – Neck breaking Opportunity.

On last Friday (27th) challenge kit for the Robotics and algorithms round 2 was released. As it was expected this is re-launch of Mars challenge that was held as part of Robochamps league. But this time the simulation environment is more responsive and the task is bit more spiced up with collecting the data from rocks using a spectrometer.

The sensors we have access includes color Navigation camera, Panoramic camera installed on the ‘head’ of the rover and two B&W hazard avoidance cameras on front and rear of the rover. Spectrometer which is in fact physically a touch sensor and a comlink which can be used to obtain the Pan, roll and pitch of the Rover as well as GPS location and some mission details (Positions of navigation areas)

The drives available includes Horizontal and vertical rotation of head, A Six wheel differential drive, articulated arm on which the spectrometer is attached on the end.

The objective is to navigate trough the given 6 points. Analyze a rock from each area and reach the heat shield. The navigation includes descending into the crater as well similar to the real Opportunity mission at Endurance crater.

The navigation points are obtainable from the comlink interface however the position that the heat shield dropped is bit of random and cannot be known for certain. So it ultimately becomes a wild goose chase to find out the heat shield. Even though it is said to be near the last selected point in practice it appeared to be near means almost half across the map.

With few days of experiments and coding I was able to come up with a solution that could navigate all the points successfully and analyze the required data. However I would certainly have to improve this solution with better algorithms and more reliability and or adaptability over the time. But no problem I have plenty of time left even till the challenge officially start on 20th of April.

More details.

http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=22

http://www.robochamps.com/rc/info/Downloads/challenges.aspx

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In to the Mars – Neck breaking Opportunity.

:-)

Since the Imagine Cup Robotics & Algorithm competition Round 1 deadline is extended till April 1st I had decided to go and give a try on the Robochamps previous challenges. So I decided to give a try in the Mars Challenge which seems to be very interesting.

The sample kit is provided only with a VPL solution. However it is not a big deal converting a VPL diagram to C# code I first converted the VPL diagram into a C# solution and started developing an entry.

The environment and the robot recreates a scenario experienced by Opportunity, one of NASA’s real rovers in the Endurance Crater. There are 6 Navigation points that we should visit and finally we must reach the heat shield to complete the mission.

The obstacles are the rocks that are scattered over the terrain and safely maneuvering into the crater. The sensors available are A Navigation camera, Panoramic camera and two hazard avoidance cameras in front and rear. There is also a GPS data from the Communication link. So as an start I designed a solution which uses only the GPS data and travels the navigation points in sequence. The problem with this is the rower may hit a rock or stuck in the crater forever.

Following is the video footage of test run. Well fortunately there wasn’t any rocks on the path and even though the rover rolled into the crater in a neck breaking way finally it landed on correctly.

Hmm I think I should be bit more careful with a multi million dollar scientific robot like this. Well let’s see how we can improve this more later..

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Fat and Bloody (Greasy) – iRobots playing Sumo…

Follow up to the post Coaching iRobots to play Sumo. B-)

:-)

On the 31st Jan the submission SDK of the Imagine Cup Robotics & Algorithms challenge was published. And… this time the opponent – RCChallenger is no more a newbie in the game and really offensive. This causes fast battles between the robots and in most cases one goes other or both topples over. So I had to spend about 2 days testing some new methods to take care of my robot toppling over. Even though almost all the methods that I tried out were incapable of handling the speed the things happenes in a battle, I could turn the odds to my side.

So at the end I decided to go for a submission run hoping that the luck will be on my side. Fortunately during 1st round I could recover from a toppling over situation and push the opponent out. The impact caused a bumper in the opponent to malfunction and on 2nd round it goes out itself. With the 3rd round also going well it was a 3-0 win.

Following is the playback of the match from the recorded file. My robot is the blue colored tagged one.

Any sumo masters to take up the challenge???

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Coaching iRobots to play Sumo. B-)

:-)

Since the Algorithms and Project Hoshimi Invitationals has been removed from Imagine Cup -the world’s premier student technology competition, a new theme, named Robotics & Algorithms which is based on Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio products has been introduced. The task during Round 1 is to program a simulated robot entity simulated based on iRobot Create to successfully defeat an opponent in a Sumo ring.Even though it was not clear at first what to do. A clear step-by step guide has been published on Apps Community for MRDS. After meddling trough the code and changing few parameters and algorithms I was able to successfully modify the sample project provided with challenge kit to compete in a more reliable fashion.

Wow it's a win by 3-0. Well It was just luck in 1st round that my robot win. And during next rounds opponents goes out of the ring by itself :-P Anybody dare for a Sumo round?

Google Code Jam 2008 Online Rounds are over.

Prev: Google Code Jam 2008 Starts

:-)

The online Round 1-3 of this year Google Code Jam, a coding competition hosted by Google continued during 16th June to 9th August. Online Rounds were 2 hours long and consisting 3-4 questions in each round.
There were 2520 advancers from Round 1 (4 from Sri Lanka), 1000 advancers from Round 2 (2 from Sri Lanka), and finally top 500 advancers from Round 3 (1 from Sri Lanka). This top 500 contestants will compete compete against those in their region (Asia Pacific; Europe, Middle East and Africa; and the Americas) on a local Google Office to advance for Onsite finals at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California on Friday, November 14.

Stats:
http://acm.csci.unt.edu/~eleusive/round2Stats.txt
http://groups.google.com/group/google-code/browse_thread/thread/09d1230cd6e68121#