Larc2012

11º IEEE Students Latin American Robotics Competition Rules of the OPEN category
Version 1.1 – February 7th, 2012

Beach Cleaner Robot
1. Introduction
This year the IEEE Students Latin American Robotics Competition focuses again in significant problems that society needs to deal with and at the same time challenging problems to the young Latino American roboticists. The goal of the competition is three-fold: (1) Investigate and propose solutions to the problem of accumulation of garbage on the beaches of Latin America, (2) Raise public awareness about the significance of environment pollution, and (3) Invite people to participate actively in solutions to prevent pollution and protect the environment. Beach pollution is caused by natural phenomena, such as red tide and hurricanes, and also by the effect of human activity, such as garbage accumulation, drainage discharges and oil spills. Beach pollution causes serious damages to marine ecosystems, poses health risks to swimmers, damages fishing industry, and affects tourism on the beach. We call young Latino American people to image and build an autonomous robot able to collect solid garbage in a scenario simulating a beach in a tiny touristic island, illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Scenario of the Open category – Beach Cleaner Robot

It is worth to remark that the Beach Cleaner Robot competition is about service robotics in natural environments. For that, it is unfeasible to foresee detailed features of the elements in the scenario, such as the beach furniture, and the mannequin. The robots that participate in this category are expected to deal with these elements in spite of the lack of details.

2. The goals
The ultimate goal is to have an autonomous robot looking for garbage around the environment, collect it, and dispose the garbage in a depot. The robot just can move, push or take just the garbage distributed around the environment. If the mannequin is touched by the robot, it will have a