ROAR F100 League Rulebook
1. Organization
Robot Open Autonomous Racing (ROAR™) F100 is an autonomous driving competition (the Competition) founded at UC Berkeley in 2019. The Competition is organized by the FHL Vive Center for Enhanced Reality (the Vive Center). The Competition, including its official rule book, event organization, and public announcements such as competition results, public interviews, and media releases, is governed by its Steering Committee. The current members of the Steering Committee are:
The Competition has an official website hosted by the Vive Center: https://coeroar.wpengine.com/research1/roar/
2. Game Formats
Competing teams (the Teams) can participate in ROAR F100 by bringing their radio-controlled and AI-enabled electrical cars (the Cars) and compete in two different formats.
The Cars will be controlled wirelessly by human drivers. Due to the limited visibility of the full race track, each team shall drive their Car via a remote video feed streamed from an on-board camera on their Car platform.
In the AI-Driver Race, a Team will only have limited control of their Car. Specifically, each Team is only allowed to use a wireless controller to:
- 1. Start the movement of the car at the starting line.
- 2. Stop the movement of the car at the end of the race or during emergency situations.
Other than the above two scenarios, the Car is required to complete the race fully autonomously without any other human control input.
3. Schedule of Competition
The schedule for the Competition will be two days. The race track area will be reserved exclusively for the Competition during the game times in the two days. The first day is the Practice Day, and the second day is the Game Day.
The competition will run over the course of two days. The first day is the Practice Day, while the official Racing Competition will be held on the second day (Game Day). The race track will be reserved exclusively for the Competition for both days.
4. Methods of Competition
For both games, each competing Team will have full access to the race track only during their time to compete on the Game Day. Each team will be also provided a garage space adjacent to the starting line of the race track to performance maintenance before and during the race. Rules for access to the race track on the Practice Day will be announced at the beginning of the Practice Day.
For both games, Teams can compete for two prizes:
(i) FTL: the fastest time to complete a total of 10 laps around a pre-set race track;
(ii) FSL: the fastest single lap time record.
Each participating Team in the race has the following time limitations:
-
Warm-Up Period 5 minutes
Teams can perform dry-runs, training, testing, adjusting, and/or maintenance on the Car without any penalty to their official results.
-
Race Period 10 minutes
After the Warm-Up period, the official Race will commence immediately for a total of 10 minutes, called the Race Period.
-
Total Time 15 minutes
Each Team will have a total of 15 minutes.
In the event that the Car cannot continue the competition due to system failure, hitting road hazards, or driving outside the track without the possibility of recovery by itself, if the event occurs within the 10-minute Race period, the team is allowed to recover the Car manually. However, the team is only allowed to retrieve the Car on the track and then must proceed to take it back to the team garage for any necessary maintenance. Once a manual recovery is performed to the Car, the Car must be launched again at the starting line to continue to complete its current lap. This recovery procedure will also constitute a time penalty for the team.
- Teams will be timed and need to complete the 10 laps in their allotted 10 minutes. If they do not complete the 10 laps, the official result will be Did Not Finish (DNF). Only Teams who are able to complete the 10 laps qualify for the grand prize, namely, the FTL Prize.
Regardless if a team is DNF or not, each of their completed lap times will be registered. There will be a secondary prize for the fastest single lap time, namely, the FSL Prize.
5. System Specifications
- ‣ 1/8 or 1/10th scale electrical cars only.
- ‣ Wheelbase may not exceed 350mm.
- ‣ On board computer must be a single stock Jetson Nano (the Nano) with no out of specification physical modifications, except that the installation of cooling fans are allowed on top of the CPU.
- ‣ The Nano can be set to the high-power mode, but any overclocking is not allowed.
- ‣ The onboard perception sensors may include off-the-shell RGB cameras, Intel RealSense depth cameras, and sonars. No other perception sensors including LIDAR or GPS systems are allowed.
- ‣ Other onboard sensors may include IMUs, wheel encoders, and other RC telemetry sensors such as battery voltage, motor speed, and temperature.
- ‣ The use of micro-controllers for the purpose of sensor management and synchronization is allowed, such as the Arduino series.
- ‣ For the batteries, only a single battery is allowed to provide power to all the electrical components on the car. The maximum voltage allowed is 8.4 volts for LiPo or 9.6 volts for NiMH batteries.
- ‣ On the chassis, only a single motor is allowed.
- ‣ The car chassis must have 4 wheels, but the drive train can be 2WD or 4WD. The car cannot have other propelling mechanism other than through the 4 wheels.
- ‣ Only the Intel 8265 Wifi chip may be used to enable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions on the Nano. The antennas can be of any size.
- ‣ When driven by human, the driver can use either an analog wireless controller (strongly recommended) or digital Bluetooth or Wi-Fi controller. In such cases, one Car can only be controlled by a single controller and a single driver. Note that Bluetooth controllers (in combination with the antenna design) may not have sufficient range to maintain good connection for the full track.
- ‣ When driven by AI, other than local computing resources on the Car, no other remote compute resources (such as cloud-based or local remote compute workstations) are allowed to assist the driving of the Car.
6. Track Specifications
The track will be set up as a looped circuit outdoors. The ground of the track is made of tiled concrete material. The Competition will not take place during bad weather conditions, such as raining. As such, the Cars are not required to be weather-proof.
The track will install solid white lane marks to indicate the center of the track around the circuit. Each lap will have a length about 100 meters. The minimal width of the drivable track is about 1.5 meters.
The track geometry will be provided to the Teams as a digital JSON file. Other than the white lane mark, physical QR code markers will be also installed throughout the track to provide localization information between the digital map and the physical track. Each team based on the approved onboard sensors can further develop their own localization strategies. However, no additional markers are allowed to be installed on the track to aid the accuracy of the localization, nor does the Committee deem necessary.
The track will provide sufficient Wi-Fi coverage compatible with the 802.11.ac standard.