WHy have a random placement of the candle which results in some robots having an “easier” task then others?
In a real world situation, the location of the fire would be unknown and somewhat “random”. A real fire-fighting Robot would have to prove its ability to search for the fire, rather then just go to it. If the location of the candle were known to the Robot before it started, it would be a rather easy task just to go directly to the correct room and flood it with CO2. The goal of this contest is not to make a Robot that can go to a specific place, but to make a Robot that can find and extinguish a candle. That is quite a different matter and a much harder one at that. But once you do it you have a really valuable device. Yes, there is a bit of unfairness in that some Robots may accidentally get “harder” rooms than others, but we try to even things out somewhat by taking the 2 best of the 3 trials.
