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RE: APEC Rules
I have been away from my computer for a couple of days too long form the
looks of all of this.
I am hosting the Region 6 MicroMouse contests, now out to all five Areas of
Region 6 and one for the whole Region. We have had as many as 22 teams with
75 students involved at one of our meetings, sometimes as few as 1. Two of
our teams had their clocks cleaned at the last APEC conference :-( .
I have worked with Dave to coordinate our rules, allowing for some
differences. We still use manual scoring, older wooden mazes and a 30
second penalty for touching the rodents. Other than that, I think Dave and
I are in sync on our rules? Our level of competition would not be
detrimentally impacted by a 3 second touch penalty, although we are getting
much better. I am pushing the students to get up to 100+ cells in less than
20 seconds, but we are not there yet, but very close.
As for holding the mouse in the start cell for 1 second prior to relaunch, I
would be more in favor of 5 seconds, but something needs to be there to
allow for the timers to adjust, whether they are manual or automatic. I
think the rules need to assume it will be manual timers, until we all have
access to mazes with the hall-effect sensors built in ;-).
John Wright
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-micromouse@cs.rhul.ac.uk
[mailto:owner-micromouse@cs.rhul.ac.uk]On Behalf Of David Otten
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 5:02 AM
To: micromouse@cs.rhul.ac.uk
Subject: APEC Rules
As the keeper of the APEC rules I would say that they work well.
Scoring rules in general are more difficult to administer than rules that
just seek to measure the fastest of several runs. We use a program John
Billingsly wrote in BASIC to manually score the contest and calculate the
results. Making sure that the first touch of the mouse is properly
recorded has proven a problem in the past. I don't think it is a big
problem. Our contest this year was perhaps a little too close for manual
scoring so I hope I have time to address that issue for next year.
We do have a rule requesting mice to stay at least 1 second in the start
square before starting a new run. This is to allow the scoring system
(manual or automatic) time to get ready to time the next run. (Not
everyone does this but we reserved the right to make a scoring mistake if
they don't.) The work around this year at the UK contest was to move the
timing start about 5 squares out.
The rules do not say anything about the wide slot that is in the post of
most mazes today. Probably they should give the designer a heads up. The
mazes in Japan do not have this, using only a narrow slot for a metal
strip. I like the Japanese system but I think mouse designers should
understand that both types exist and be prepared to deal with it.
>I would tend to favour the adoption of the APEC form of the rules if only
>to allow more consistency.
>
>There are American readers on the list. How well do you feel the APEC
>rules work?
>
>Pete Harrison
>http://micromouse.cannock.ac.uk/
>