Autonomous Vehicle Competition 2015: Rules and Regulations!
The time swiftly approaches - let's talk about AVC 2015!
AVC 2015 is June 20th, 2015 at our HQ in Niwot, CO!
The Autonomous Vehicle Competition, or AVC as it is lovingly referred to, has, over the years, become SparkFun's signature event. The first AVC took place way back in 2009 at our old building, with a few teams of autonomous bots racing around our parking lot.
Over time, the event has changed in a number of ways - new rules, new venues, the addition of hackathons and other events and more. This year is no exception and there are a few notable changes.
First off, the most important change. There is no aerial category for this year's competition. We know, this is a disappointment to many people, but hear us out. Last year, we had a few too-close-for-comfort calls involving aerial bots and the crowd. We literally have nightmares about someone getting hurt by a quadcopter. One incident in particular (that left a large dent in a chainlink fence), gave us serious hesitation about the safety we could provide our guests.
Furthermore, with the booming popularity of quads and other drones, there are more and more regulations in place. This year's location (our new building - more on that below!) is quite close to Highway 119 and we are not legally allowed to have aerial vehicles -- particularly unmanned ones -- zipping around. Also, frankly, there just isn't the space for it -- we want AVC to be the best it can be, and that wouldn't be possible in the space we have available.
With that out of the way, we do have a number of exciting changes that will hopefully pique your interest!
The ground category rules will largely be the same as in the past. You can see the full rundown of rules over on our AVC site. Of note is that we are adding an incentive to folks that do not use GPS in their bots. There will also be a special shortcut to be revealed at a later date.
Also, as I said above, this year's AVC will be at our new building! We are pretty proud of our new digs and are excited to show it off. If you haven't seen the new place, this will be your chance!
And finally -- and maybe the addition we are most excited about -- is that there will be a 1 lb Combat Robot competition! If you haven't ever seen combat robots in action, it is pretty darn exciting. We are expecting a great turnout and hope to see some awesome destruction.
In addition to the robotics portions of the event, we are planning another hackathon (details to be announced at a later date), as well as project demos, booths from folks in the maker community, food trucks and more!
AVC is always a great time and we are very excited about this year's event. If you want to learn more about the rules of the day and enter as a competitor, head over to our AVC Site.
If you're interested in attending as a spectator, tickets are available here for $6 bucks, or you can grab them using the form above. We think it's a pretty decent price for a full-day of robotics mayhem!
As always, if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below and we'll do our best to answer them. Thank you for your understanding about the aerial portion of our competition and we hope we'll see you at AVC 2015!
