In the Robot Roundup, the robots were put to the test by going through 3 different mazes. First, the robot started by trying an easy maze and then the mazes continued to get harder.

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First Maze

On W8OW's first attempt at the maze, there was an issue where the wheels would not work to move him and there was also an issue with the code where he thought he was in a different square than he really was. We then let him attempt the first maze again after everything was figured out and he was able to solve the puzzle, retrieve the gold, and return home with no problems.

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Other competitors included Dimples Jr, Sir Robin, and WhompWhomp. Each of these robots were able to reach the gold but Dimples Jr and WhompWhomp encountered a few problems on the way back. Dimples Jr attempted the maze again after some code was adjusted and was able to complete the maze.

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Second Maze

Through the second maze, W8OW was able to find the Wumpus and shoot it, but then got stuck in a loop due to the algorithm. Unfortunately, he did not reach the gold.

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WhompWhomp also was stuck in a loop after shooting the Wumpus while Dimples Jr was able to reach the gold, but got lost on the way home and ran into the Wumpus. Sir Robin was the only one to successfully reach the gold and return home safely.

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Third Maze

On the third maze, W8OW shot the Wumpus successfully but ended up getting stuck in a loop again without reaching the gold and returning home.

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WhompWhomp was able to shoot the Wumpus but it had some manual turning issues. He still reaches the gold and returns back home safely. Dimples Jr did not attempt this maze because he was not coded to know how to shoot the Wumpus and without shooting the Wumpus in this maze, it would've been much harder to solve. Sir Robin was the only one to shoot the Wumpus, reach the gold, and return home with no issues.

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Reflection on Performance/Shortcomings/Possible Improvements

W8OW managed to complete maze one in competition, which shows that he has the basic logic and movements down. However, he failed to complete puzzles two and three, so there are still some things that need to be fixed. There are two known errors in W8OW's logic that would need to be fixed if we were to attempt another competition like the last. One is the error that caused him to fail the second puzzle due to getting stuck in a loop in the top right corner of the maze. Before finding the gold, W8OW attempts to make moves in the order up, right, down, left, which means that he gravitates toward the upper right corner, and if he fails to find the gold before getting there, he gets stuck. The other, which did not come up in the competition but was discovered shortly beforehand, is that he will get stuck in a z-shaped loop four squares long if he encounters a possible hole to the right of him with no other objects nearby to give him more information, such as if there were a hole in position (1,2) and no other objects in the first two columns. There may be more errors that could be uncovered and resolved with further testing, but those are the ones we know of at this point.