The Story Behind the Game:
After recent successful missions dealing with medical sciences and satellite repair, BEST Robotics, Inc (BRI) is returning to earth to launch a new Domestic Division (D²). The D² is in a prime market position to take advantage of the recent growth in home automation technology. The competitive nature of the fast growing automation market requires the D² to be extremely responsive and turn out its first product in only six weeks.


Several potential automation products were studied including new products for the existing robot vacuum and robot lawn mower markets. After countless late-night brainstorming sessions and a careful review of potential market penetration, it was determined that a domestic laundry-handling robot would be readily accepted in households around the world.

The initial product offering is intended to simplify laundry handling, while saving energy and providing a fresh outdoor scent to the fabric. The robot to be developed must be able to transport, hang, and retrieve laundry to allow drying on an outdoor clothesline.

Shipping and storage requirements dictate that the robot must be within certain size and weight constraints. Consumers dislike having to put together purchased items; therefore, the robot must require no assembly by the end-user and be ready to use as delivered. Because of business partnerships with existing suppliers, the materials that can be used to construct the robot are severely limited.

The time, material, and performance requirements have left the BRI D² product development team short-handed on the resources needed to complete the project, so BRI needs external robot development teams to help solve the Laundry Quandary.

The Rules - a summary
The objective is to design and build a remotely controlled device to retrieve "dry" laundry from clotheslines and place "wet" laundry on clotheslines within the 3-minute time limit.

The field consists of the central gazebo structure that is surrounded by four backyards each containing four clotheslines of varying height. Along the outer border there are four back porches that are isolated from the yard areas with doors that swing out into the yard and close automatically.

At the start of the match, machines are positioned on each back porch. The spotter is responsible for loading up to 12 pieces of the wet laundry (red, blue, green or yellow colored bandanas) onto the machine. All loading must be completed prior to the machine entering the yard area through the saloon-style back doors. Switches on the back doors determine the order in which teams entered the yard and are used as a tie-breaker. Once the machine enters the yard, it cannot return to the porch and cannot receive any more wet laundry.

Once in the yard, teams can score points by removing dry laundry (black, black paisley and red paisley bandanas) from the clothesline and placing it in their basket and by placing their wet laundry on the clotheslines. The position of the wet laundry at the end of the match is used to determine the point value of the laundry; so, pieces that fall from the line prior to the end of the match do not score. Multiple pieces of wet laundry in contact with each other only count as a single piece; there must be some separation between the wet laundry pieces. Contact between wet and dry laundry only matters in the basket, and only at the end of the match. At that time, any dry laundry in contact with wet laundry does not score. Points for dry laundry placed in the basket are based on the following table:

Color	Initial Location	Number of Pieces	Points per Piece
Black	Backyard Line	12	5
Black Paisley	Gazebo Line	4	15
Red Paisley	Center of Gazebo	1	25

Points for wet laundry placed on the clothesline are based on the following table:

Scoring Location	Points per Piece
Lower Backyard Line	10
Upper Backyard Line	15
Gazebo Line	30

Teams that score at least one piece of wet laundry and one piece of dry laundry receive a 50-point bonus. In addition, teams can receive another bonus score by placing their wet laundry in multiple back yard areas as detailed by the following table:

Number of Yard Areas with Wet Laundry	Bonus Score
1-2	0
3	50
4	100

Teams are not allowed to steal laundry from other teams (since that's just not neighborly). Laundry that touches the ground during the match becomes dirty and does not score.

There will be three phases to the contest: a partial round robin preliminary competition, a six game round robin semi-final between the top eight teams, and a three game round robin final between the top four teams. During the preliminary competition, each team will play the same number of games against randomly selected opponents. The team's average score over the preliminary competition will be used to rank the team and to determine seven of the eight teams that will advance to the semi-final round robin playoff. When computing a team's average score for the preliminary competition, the team's lowest score will be dropped. The tie-breaker values also enter into this computation.

The eighth team for the semi-finals will be the winner of a single "wildcard" game. The participants for the wildcard game are selected on the score of their engineering notebook. All teams are required to turn in an engineering notebook documenting the development and design of their robot. This notebook is a significant portion of the BEST Award; however, not all teams fully participate in the BEST Award. The wildcard game gives teams incentive to turn in quality notebooks and rewards them for their effort.

For the semi-final round robin playoff, the top eight teams will each play three matches. The total of each team's scores for these three matches will determine which of four teams advance to the finals. The top four teams will play three additional matches to determine the final ranking order. Ties will be resolved in the same manner as for the seeding competition.