This is an excerpt from M. Baker, J. Boettcher, K. Bradley, P. Conley, J. Rucker, and J. Wilson, " SECON," ECE 4522: Design II, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, Spring 2003:

Located in Hartford, Connecticut, Trinity College has been the host of a major robotics competition since 1993. The competition is designed to provide incentive to develop robot technologies, promote robotic solutions to everyday problems, demonstrate to the public that robotic technologies are useful and should be developed, and to encourage participation among young adults. While the goal of the competition has remained the same, the style and technology of the competition has varied over the years. The design goal of the competition is to develop a robot that can successfully navigate a small-scale, floor model of a house, locate a fire (an actual burning candle), and extinguish the flame. As one can easily see, the problem translates very well into the real world. Hopefully, the technology will eventually be commercially implemented. The first real application projected is in the warehouse setting. Small fires detected and extinguished early enough could save millions of dollars in losses. As the technology grows in popularity, home models will become available [1].

Each year, the IEEE Southeast Conference (SECON) hosts an autonomous, robot-based hardware competition. The 2003 competition is a modified version of Trinity College.s firefighting robot competition. The competition has the following specifications:

The specific goal of this contest is to build a computer controlled Robot that can move through a model floor plan structure of a house, find a red Light Emitting Diode (LED) "Candle", that represents a small house fire, and extinguish it by covering the LED "candle". This must be done in the shortest time possible, subject to a few operating factors [2].

In the Trinity College competition, the .flame. was an actual candle. Since some of the teams may have had experience with the Trinity College competition, changing from an actual fire to an LED forces a redesign of the system. The robot will have to navigate through a model house. The robot will start in the .home area. of the house, which has dimensions of 21 cm x 21 cm and is enclosed by 1.9 cm of white tape. The walls of the house will be 23 cm high and 2 cm thick. All hallways and doorways will be 23 cm wide, and the doorways will have a 1.9 cm wide strip of white tape across the threshold. All corridors will have a 1.27 cm wide strip of white tape down the center [2]. Figure 1 in Appendix A shows the complete floor plan of the house.

The simulated fire will consist of an LED candle randomly placed in one of the four rooms. According to the Competition Rules, .The CANDLE will be represented by a cylindrical object (dimensions to be determined) with a red LED illuminated. The LED used will be a Super High Brightness Red, GaAlAsP. While the exact model and power source for the LED will be specified later, the LED will be visible on entrance to the room [2].

The "fire extinguisher" is a plastic cup, which the robot will drop over the LED candle. The dimensions of the cup are shown in Figure 2 in Appendix A.