16-778 / 18-578 / 24-778 Mechatronic Design

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16-778 / 18-578 / 24-778 Mechatronic Design
Project DetailsJan. 16, 2008
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This Years Project 1 Checkers Player

• Machine capable of playing checkers
• Preliminary minimum metrics (from first lecture)
• Play checkers against another teams machine
• Standard checkerboard board and checkers may not
  be altered
• Pick up single checker or king from any legal
  (black) position and move it to any other legal
  position
• Make a single move in no more than 20 seconds
• Avoid interference and collision with other
  machine at all times
• Exchange game state information with other
  machine via TBD protocol
• Compete with other teams at Meeting of the Minds

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Checkers Player More/Refined Requirements

• Follow checkers rules
• Only legal standard checkers moves (diagonal move
  or jump)
• Forced capture applies multiple capture allowed
• Checkers must be positioned entirely within a
  black square
• Remove jumped checkers from board
• Deposit in certain areas (see workspace specs on
  next two slides)
• Each checker removed is another move for time
  purposes (i.e., youre allowed 20 sec. per
  removed checker)
• The initial game state set-up and kings-stacking
  may be done manually system should pause for
  manual king-stacking
• Deductions for dropped checkers are TBD
• User input start, pause, continue, and end game
• Game state input handle both incremental (for
  start-of-game set-up) and total (for
  middle-of-game set-up)
• Game state output send your just-completed move
  via TBD protocol
• Incomplete game scoring 1 point per checker, 2
  points per king ties broken by considering
  overall board position

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Checkers Player Workspace requirements

• Refer to the next slide in reading these
• The L-shaped areas designated Team A and Team B
  are "team areas". The square around the
  checkerboard and all other space is "neutral
  space". Each depicted area extends to a vertical
  height of 2 ft. (61cm).
• Your machine may never enter the other team's
  area
• Your machine must remain in its own team area
  during the other team's turn
• You may only enter neutral space on your turn
• Captured checkers can be placed any humanly
  accessible place in your team area or in the
  neutral squares at the upper-right and lower-left
  corners of the large square
• We will provide reliable means of machine
  registration
• We will provide a square base as shown
  (1056x1056mm)

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Checkers Player Workspace
Team A
neutral
720mm
neutral
Team A start rows
1056mm
neutral
neutral
Team B start rows
336mm
neutral
304mm
40mm
neutral
Team B
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Checkers Player Checker Board
Team A start rows
20mm edge
Each square is 33x33mm
Team B start rows
264mm
304mm
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Checkers Player some possible coolness factors

• Play with a human being
• Sense game state
• Automatically set up initial game state
• Play checkers variants (Huffing, German Kings,
  Flying Kings, Suicide Checkers, etc.)
• Output game statistics
• ?

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RCX Checkers Robot

• http//www.smittysbricks.com/
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v4w8nBPGrye0

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CheckersBot

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vKrxvKatjUig

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Industrial Robots playing checkers

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v1Q4dDY8Hz3o

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Checkers Player Related info

• Checkers applet with link to algorithm info
  http//www.cs.caltech.edu/vhuang/cs20/c/applet/mo
  re.html
• Recent progress in automatic checkers players
  http//www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/checkers.html
• The Min-Max algorithm, useful for two-player
  logic games http//www.progtools.org/games/tutori
  als/ai_contest/minmax_contest.pdf
• Homepage of Martin Fierz, checkers aficionado
  http//www.fierz.ch/checkers.htm