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The IGVC, or Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition, is a competition held every year by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). This student competition is one of four the AUVSI holds each year to challenge students to develop unmanned vehicle systems. You can find our source code documentation here.
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[edit] Competition Overview
The IGVC competition is held every spring by the AUVSI. Each year, as many as 50 teams come out from universities across the country, to compete in the four "challenges" that comprise the competition. Each of the four challenges is scored individually, and the combined results are used to determine the overall winner.
[edit] Challenges
[edit] Navigation Challenge
The Navigation challenge tests a robot's ability to navigate to pre-defined waypoints through treacherous terrain. The robot is placed in an obstacle course and given one corner coordinate and the dimensions of the course. The robot must navigate through the course and visit the given GPS waypoints, avoiding obstacles such as barrels, cones, potholes, and trash cans. Teams have a total of 6 minutes to navigate to as many of the 8 given waypoints as possible.
[edit] Autonomous Challenge
The Autonomous challenge tests a robot's ability to navigate around obstacles while staying inside of a pre-defined lane. The course consists of a lane painted on the grass in white or yellow, with obstacles dispersed throughout. The robots must stay within the lane, which weaves and goes up and down ramps, while avoiding the obstacles in it's path. Teams are judged based on how fast the robot is able to make it through the course, and how many rule infractions (exiting the lane, hitting obstacles) they make.
[edit] Design Challenge
The Design challenge is a two-part challenge that documents the development and capabilities of each robot. Each team must submit a 15 page design report, highlighting the design process of the robot, as well as all capabilities and innovations of the robot platform. Then, during the weekend of the competition, each team is required to give a 30 minute presentation to the judges. This presentation is supposed to highlight the robot's capabilities, and provide more detail as to the features and innovations that the robots posses.
[edit] JAUS Challenge
"JAUS," short for Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems, is a standardized communication protocol designed to provide commands to unmanned vehicles. These commands range from desired waypoint goals to requests for a robot's current speed and status. The JAUS challenge is designed to test the teams abilities to implement this unified framework on their own robots. This is the only optional challenge within the IGVC.
[edit] PSU Robotics in the IGVC
The Penn State Robotics club competed for its first time in the 15th annual IGVC in Oakland, MI from May 30 to June 2, 2008. The IGVC team for the Penn State Robotics Club consisted of 12 students, most of whom were undergraduates with the Robotics Club. There were a few Graduate students from different research groups on campus as well.
The team managed to modify the robot and pull the entire software package together in a mere 6 months, most of which was concurrent with classes and coursework. The team placed seventh in the Navigation Challenge of the competition.
In the 2009 IGVC Competition, the Penn State Robotics club had a team made up entirely of club members. The club borrowed a Segway RMP400 Platform from the Networked Robotics and Systems Laboratory at Penn State, and wrote almost all of the code necessary to enter the robot into competition.
The team qualified for competition and made several attempts at the Autonomous Challenge, eventually placing towards the bottom of the field.