FAQ 0.General Questions: 0.1. How do you give us a starting signal for all the competitions tasks? 0.1. For most of the tasks, the starting of an attempt should be decided by the team leader in accordance with a judge. For the tasks involving several robots, only a judge should decide of the starting time and we have not yet decided how we will give the starting signal. Keep in mind that each robot should be closely followed by a chase boat ready to start/stop/take control over the robot for safety reasons. 0.2. Is it ok, if we communicate with our boat per own WiFi-network? We were thinking that if other teams do the same, everybody might have connectivity problems and we were wondering if you eventually provide a WRSC-WLAN network we will have to use? 0.2. Yes, you can use your own network. In case some teams complains about wireless perturbations, we can ask each team to use a specific wireless channel (most of the time wireless devices can choose a channel either automatically or manually), but I think this will not be necessary unless everyone use very powerful WiFi devices. We will provide also a WiFi network for Internet access, so maybe it could be a good choice also for your own communications if it works well. It will be also possible for you to use the long-range WiFi access points (Ubiquiti Bullet2HP with a good antenna) installed on some of our chase boats (they will have also 230V power supply for your laptops or other devices) and we expect to have 3G on the water (except maybe for the long distance task). 0.3. Do we have access to the GPS positions of other boats and how do we get them? 0.3. For some tasks (e.g. mobile obstacle avoidance, battle), yes you will need the GPS positions of other boats. As indicated in the rules, each robot will have a waterproof Android smartphone on it for real-time tracking purpose and everyone can access their positions with Internet HTTP requests (using 3G or WiFi) as described in http://www.ensta-bretagne.eu/wrsc13/index.php/tracking-en. We are currently finalizing that system and will provide code samples soon. However, you can also provide your own tracking device or Android application if needed, it should be easy to install it on the mobile obstacle (boat driven by humans) and possible on your opponent for the battle if it is not too musch bigger than our tracking smartphone. 1. Station Keeping: 1.1. We understood the task as follows: When we enter the square, the GPS Tracker will start a timer, which will stop when we exit the square again. during this period of time he will measure the avg_distance and max_distance and the time spent in the square. if 15 min after beginning of the attempt we are not out of the square, we get 0 points. 5 min after the attempt the GPS-Tracker will start counting anyway.... Is that correct? because what confuses me, is that 1.1.1. in the text you said, the GPS-Tracker will evaluate the distance only between the 5th and 10th minute. This means if we enter the square early, we have to stay longer in the square? 1.1.2. in your points formula.. shouldn't it be min(30,6*nb_min_inside_square) instead of just 6*nb_min_inside_square 1.1. I think it is not exactly that : we start counting the total time of the attempt just after the official start of the attempt. At t=0 the robot needs to be outside the square. When t in ]0;5[ min we do not care about the robot position. You can get points only when t in [5;10] min. When t in ]10;15[ min we do not care about the robot position. At t=15 min the robot needs to be outside the square. 1.1.1. Yes. 1.1.2. Yes, for me it is equivalent if we take into account the sentence "log file will be used to compute [...] the time spent inside the square [...] between the 5th and 10th minute". 2. Accuracy Task: 2.1. Will the triangle be chosen such that we have to consider beating/sailing upwind along one of the sides of the triangle? 2.1. We will probably not move the triangle during all the competition, so for me you should consider that wind conditions can change and therefore everything is possible. Note that for this task (and most of the other), you are allowed to choose when you make an attempt and you can do several attempts, the best will be taken into account. 2.2. In your points formula for MS boats: shouldn't it say min(50,500/max_deviation) instead of min(50,500/deviation) 2.2. Yes, copy-paste mistake! 3. Downwind/Upwind/Sidewind Speed Task 3.1. points formula: shouldn't it say devision by sqrt(overall hull length) instead of multiplication? 3.1. Yes, it will be better... 3.2. Do we have to consider necessarily collision avoidance with other boats during this task, or does every boat get its own 100*100 square to fulfill the task, so they don't collide? 3.2. In fact, boats should be started by groups, e.g. first all the S, then all the MS, then all M... I think we will not have more than 4 boats for each category so for MS it should be possible to have a 100*100 square for each one. For other boats, they would have a 100 m wide row (4 boats in 400 m) so collisions should be unlikely (even upwind, it should be possible to always stay in a row of 100 m) and anyway, there will be always a chase boat for each robot to stop the robot if really necessary. 4. Swarm Behaviour Task: 4.1. How do we get a synchronized start of all vehicles, since the trajectory is time critical? Do we get from you a start and end_time in UTC together with the start and end_position? 4.1. Yes. 4.2. All boats start at the same time, so do we have to incorporate necessarily collision avoidance? (we don't have that capability yet) or if not, how is being guaranteed we don't collide? 4.2. It should be the same type of organization as the Down/Up/Sidewind tasks so all you have to do to be sure to avoid collisions is stay in your row of 100 m. 5. Mill Task: 5.1. How small are we allowed to make our loops? Is there a minimum of radius we have to take into account or does it just count to rotate around your axis as much as possible? 5.1. No limit, you can rotate around your axis as much as possible. 5.2. So we are allowed to spin with no restriction on the radius, which means that taking it to the extreme, we could rotate at the same position (just hypothetically) around our axis and that already counts as a loop? 5.2. Yes, the only condition on the position is to stay inside the square, the loops should be counted only using your robot heading. You can even go backwards! Rotating without translating would be an ideal objective for this task. 6. Endurance Task: 6.1. How long will the race approximately be for the MS class (timewise and distance wise). Can we choose the route between start and end point completely on our own or do we have to follow a given trajectory of yours? 6.1. The long route is less than 10 nm (18 km) and the short is less than 4 nm (7 km). If you prefer to do another route, it will have to be negociated with judges, the idea is to do the best you can, and I think you should decide this at the last time depending on the wind and sea conditions and maybe also what the other MS robots plan to do... It could be for example covering intelligently a restricted area in front of the beach... I would say the only upper limit is the long route proposed (as it is this one that has been declared to maritime authorities) and a max time of 8 h. There will be no automatic computation of points for this task, you will only have to do a convincing experiment for the judges. 6.2. How should we provide the measurement results to the judges? is a csv-file/text-file sufficient or do you they want a graphical demonstration of the data? What do you mean by covering quality? How do you specify measurements quality? quality of the sensors or quality of graphical representation, etc? 6.2. As the points will be subjective, you have to do the best you can to convince the judges that you made an interesting experiment... For example, if you save data as CSV, it should be very easy to show a graphical evolution of your data over time after the end of the task. I did not publish the list of judges yet, but there will be people from industry and defence that are curious of what can be done with these types of robots. For me, covering quality means : did the robot take measurements in the area planned? did the robot cover all the area or only always the same subset? The measurement quality is related to that : depending of the type of data you gathered, is it meaningful to take data every minute while the physical phenomenon you measure change significantly every 10 s? Same for the spacial period of measurements... For me the quality of the sensors should not be too much taken into account as it is often proportional to their cost/size/weight, but you have to show that you take measurements that have a meaning or that could obviously be better if you had a more expensive sensor. The purpose of this task is to show that we make robots that can have a payload and be used as a new type of tool/instrument for several purposes. Except for the endurance task where points are decided by judges, we are currently working on the automatic validation scripts for all tasks, we plan to put them online soon to clarify the rules.