Seattle Robotics Fire Fighting Demonstration

On March 16, 2002, Bob Cook and Dave Hylands attended the Seattle Robotics Society meeting at the Renton Technical College, near Seattle. At the end of the meeting, a demonstration of the Fire Fighting competition was given. For full details of the Fire Fighting Competition, see Trinity College Fire Fighting Competition.

Here are some pictures that were taken at the event, along with a few short video clips.

You can click on the images for a bigger version. You can click on those for an even bigger version.

	Assembling the Maze That's Gary Teachout assembling the Maze.
	Assembled Maze 1 The assembled maze (err house), an 8 foot by 8 foot square, with some rooms. You can see the candle on the left that needs to be located and extinguished by the robot.
	Assembled Maze 2 A close-up. That's Dave's BEAM Walker on the floor just outside the ring.
	Assembled Maze 3 A different angle. The white circle (you can see about half of the circle near the top) is the starting location for the robot.
	Dilbert Side Larry Barello's robot Dilbert from the side. Larry's web site has additional information.
	Dilbert Back Dilbert from the back. The little round sensor just below the LCD is a microphone. Apparently, there's extra points for starting the robot using a high-pitched tone like a fire alarm emits.
	Dilbert Front Another shot of Dilbert from the front.
	Dilbert Start Dilbert on the starting circle.
	LC Left Gary Teachout's robot LC (Line Chaser) Gary's web site has some background information.
	LC Front Line Chaser from the front. The reddish purple tube is the chopped off end of a hair dryer used to extinguish the flame.
	LC Right Line Chaser from the right hand side. The white "bumpers" at the top are used as feet to store the robot upside down when not in use (or being photographed). This keeps the robot from rolling away.
	LC Start Line Chaser on the starting circle. LC was the only robot to successfully find and extinguish the candle.
	Student Bot Back Three students brought a robot as well. They were madly typing code right through the demonstration, trying to get in those last few tweaks. AOL CD's finally put to a good use!
	Student Bot Front You can see the GP2D12 sensors mounted in the rotating fire detector.
	Student Bot Back 2 Another shot from the back of the robot.
	Student Bot Side Another shot of the student bot. The clearance on the front of the robot was quite low, and this caused problems with the ramps that were added.
	Spectators Some spectators watching one of the bots. Gary is in the middle.
	House Layout Here we see the whole maze. The black squares you see being placed are ramps which are about 1/4" or so high in the middle of one side. These are basically obstacles which prevent dead reckoning.
	LC First Run Here we see LC quickly locate the candle. Unfortunately, the clip stops just before the flame was extinguished, but trust us, it was extinguished.
	LC Second Run Here's another run by LC, with the candle in the last room that LC looks in.
	Dilbert's First Run Dilbert's first run.
	Dilbert's Second Run (Crash and Burn) Here we see a repeat attempt of the previous run, along with non recoverable failure.
	Student Bot Attempt N The student bot seemed to have difficulty adapting to another maze (it worked at home).
	Student Bot Attempt N+1 Here we see the bot ignore the candle in the room. Oops.