Meet "Cake Boss", our beloved birthday cake on wheels! With name inspired by its three-tiered design and a team member's birthday coinciding with Grading Day, Cake Boss was designed to take on the 218B challenge with flair and flavor. The goal of this challenge was to create an autonomous robot capable of "mining" Mars for the rare element Obtainium. The colored board, shown below, was laid out with 16 possible mining locations, 4 of which would be active at any time. Our task was to move one of our team's Mineral Identification, Nucleation, and Extraction Rigs (MINERs) to one of these specified locations to actively mine the game board, all while competing against a rival team.
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Our strategy optimized for proximity to MINERs, regardless of team. On each decision loop the robot first determined:
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