The CADIARover provides a flat 3D world in which lives a robot rover. Your goal is to code the rover's program. The goal of the rover is to pick up as many rocks as possible and deliver them to bins, in a limited time. Your program's score will be computed from various parameters (see details).

The rover consumes energy, and energy consumption works against the score. Moving consumes more energy than standing still.

Rocks are spread randomly and come in two colors: yellow and green. Both add to the score when picked up and can be delivered to the bins (adds to the score too), but picking a green one consumes more energy.

The world is randomly populated by white objects - danger zones - that consume energy when crossed.

The world also feature four teleportation pods, very roughly arranged in a squarish form. When you enter one from the west or east you'll reappear on the teleporter located roughly at the same latitude. If you enter from the north or south, you will reappear in the teleporter located on the same longitude.

There are two (blue) bins in the world.

The rover moves like a tank. You can control the speed on the left and / or the right side. It is equipped with a basic autopilot: given an angle relatively to the rover's current heading and a distance, it will slow down then stop, rotate and eventually reach its destination in a straight line at a given speed. Autopilot can be canceled and resumed without losing its target.

The rover has two sensors, directed towards the front: a low resolution cone that gives you the relative angle and distance of an object (low accuracy), and a high resolution cone, narrower and shorter, that gives the type and color of an object. In addition, the rover can detect collisions with its hull, giving the same information as the high resolution sensor, on 360 degrees, but at distance 0.

The rover also reports periodically its current status: heading (low accuracy), wheel speed and ground speed. It will notify you when it reaches its destination in autopilot mode (more precisely, when the destination lies under a certain distance threshold). Finally, you will be notified when teleportation occurs.

The rover has a limited carrying capacity.

For the details see PsySpec.xml in the RobotSim directory.

You will code C++ Psyclone cranks, i.e. dll code to be executed as threads by the Psyclone middleware. The 3DWorld is one of them.

Pysclone modules send messages and receive some, depending on their subscriptions (see Psyclone documentation in psyclone1.1.7.CADIA.win32\html) defined in the PsySpec file.

You can use the Test function defined in cranks.cpp in the RobotSim project as a template for creating a module. You can define as many cranks as you want.

Create a new visual studio solution getting most of the settings from the RobotSim.sln. By most, we mean everything but the settings relevant to Ogre. You can also duplicate the RobotSim.sln and 3DWorld.vcproj files - maybe requiring minor manual tweaking in a text editor.

Shall you start from scratch, you will have to include files from psyclone sdk \ Core Library \ include, and link against CoreLibrary.lib, Psapi.lib and IPHlpApix.lib, located in psyclone sdk \ Core Library. These are release builds; shall you run in debug mode, use the version of CoreLibrary under the debug directory.

In any case copy the files dll.* and cranks.* in your source directory, load them in your project, remove the Runtime crank, rename Test and code your own crank. Shall you need more cranks, define more functions on the same template. Copy also the PsySpec.xml with no change. Then add the specification of your own crank(s).

Note: a Psyclone module is a set of cranks. You can define more than one module, with more than one crank.

As for RobotSim.sln, setup the execution in the project properties, debugging section: that's how you'll start the application.

To stop: in debug mode, use the debugger stop button; in release mode, 3 times CTRL-C in the Psyclone shell window.

You can navigate manually in the 3D world using the mouse (yaw, pitch) the arrow keys (left right forward backward) and the page up / down keys (up down). The S key will display stats (basically the FPS), the V key displays the two sensor cones.