Robot Game Missions

Biomedical engineering is the use of various engineering disciplines to help doctors and hospitals help patients. The fields of chemical, mechanical, electrical, and other forms of engineering are mixed with traditional biological and medical sciences to advance healthcare.

COMMON BONE REPAIR – The “cast”… This material softly conforms to you, then hardens like a rock. When it comes off, the process doesn’t crush, cut, burn, or dissolve your body! What types of engineering do you think are involved?
MISSION – Set (align) the arm bone, then apply the blue cast. The cast needs to be all the way down, and it needs to completely cover the break.
CAST APPLIED = 25 Points

SPECIAL BONE REPAIR
- Some severe fractures, including some cases where bone is missing, can’t be fixed with a cast. But now, biomedical engineers are developing a way to bridge voids of missing bone by introducing special bone growing cells to the area on a material called “scaffolding.” These cells are able to grow new bone in ways our normal healing processes can’t.
MISSION – Insert the bone bridge in the leg. Then test the repair by moving the leg so the foot kicks the ball, to score a goal.
BONE BRIDGE INSERTED = 15 Points
—There are two ways to get bone bridge points:
1 – The referee can inspect the insertion at the end of the match and see that the bone bridge is inserted all the way down.
—OR—
2 – The referee automatically scores the bone bridge if a goal is scored.
GOAL SCORED = 25 Points
—Only the leg and bone bridge can move the foot (the robot must pivot the leg only).
—Only the foot can move/propel the ball.
—The bone bridge must not touch the mat.
—The ball must be touching the green area in the goal when the match ends.

RAPID BLOOD SCREENING
- Since white blood cells are the army that helps a body fight infection, doctors are always interested in taking them from blood samples. But only about 1 in 700 blood cells is a white, and faster and faster methods are always needed for screening out the whites.
MISSION – Get the syringe to Base. Then separate the white blood cells from the red ones (this part can be done by hand). Finally, get ONLY the whites blood cells into the patient’s area (anywhere in the non-orange region at the east of the mat). The syringe and any blood cells in it may be handled/separated by hand as soon as any part of the syringe reaches Base.
SYRINGE IN BASE = 25 Points
ALL THREE WHITE BLOOD CELLS IN PATIENT’S AREA = 15 Points

TOUCH PENALTY OBJECTS – Red blood cells are this game’s “touch penalty objects” as described in the Rules. They’re each worth automatic/free points anywhere on the field. But touching the active robot outside Base causes the referee to take one red blood cell from the field, each time, until they’re gone.
RED BLOOD CELLS NOT TAKEN BY THE REFEREE = 5 Points each

BAD CELL DESTRUCTION – Deadly disease can result from cells themselves turning bad yet continuing to reproduce. Unfortunately, most of the methods for eliminating those bad cells don’t work very well, and they hurt lots of other cells in your body, causing new severe problems. The solution to this problem will be a historic breakthrough and it will likely require a biomedical engineering approach.
MISSION – Some bad cells (black panels) are set randomly to face South, and the rest to face North. This randomization happens whenever the robot is outside Base, unless the robot is currently interacting with the cells, or has already gotten them into scoring position…
—Show bad-cell identification by clicking cells such that some blacks face up, and the rest face North.
IDENTIFICATION = 20 Points
—OR—
—Show bad-cell destruction by clicking cells such that 5 blacks face North.
DESTRUCTION = 25 Points
Positions must be fully clicked in either case.

MECHANICAL ARM PATENT – Your hand can reach into your pocket, pull out a set of keys, identify the right one, put it into the lock, and unlock a door, all in the dark. No other mechanism in the world can do that. But for people who have lost limbs, biomedical engineers are developing better and better artificial ones all the time. Who will be the first to think of the next new idea?
MISSION – Get the mechanical hand to hold the patent. If two hands are holding the patent, both teams get full points.
PATENT IS GRABBED BY YOUR SIDE’S HAND = 25 Points

CARDIAC PATCH – Having a hole in your heart is considered a rare condition by some, but if you’re one of the few hundred thousand people with this condition, you’re glad that biomedical engineers are hard at work developing modern solutions for it. One solution is to place special cardiac cells onto a mesh to form new heart tissue which can seal the hole. Presently this patch doesn’t grow as a child’s heart grows, so repeat operations are needed… There’s a challenge for tomorrow’s biomedical engineer!
MISSION – Get the cardiac patch into the heart.
PATCH APPLIED = 20 Points

READ OTHER IMPORTANT PAGES TOO – You are currently reading the “Missions” document, which is only about half of what you need to know in order to do your best at a tournament. There are three other documents your team needs to become experts on: The Field Setup, the Rules, and the posted/updated Rulings. Invest a meeting to go over them, even if you’re a veteran team. Ask about anything that’s not clear.
MISSION: Read all four robot game docs, and go over them often. They’ll mean more to you each time.
DOCUMENT EXPERTS ON YOUR TEAM = CRITICAL

PACE MAKER – One of the earliest examples of modern biomedical engineering – Can you list all the different engineering and medical disciplines required in the manufacture and installation of a pace maker?
MISSION – Install the pace maker in the heart so the free end of the black tube is in the heart, but the gray body of the pace maker is not.
PACE MAKER TUBE END IN HEART, BODY OUT = 25 Points

NERVE MAPPING – When you see a person using an electromechanical prosthetic hand, have you ever wondered how the person’s brain tells that device what to do? At some point, nerves from the brain have to signal the new hand’s wires, but how does the surgeon know what nerves and what wires to connect? When you think “move small finger outward,” exactly what area of what nerve gets that signal?
MISSION – Move the brain’s West input nerve to see which nerve shows an East output signal. The red of one of the output nerves needs to be obviously moved outward from the brain, but it doesn’t matter how far.
NERVE INPUT / OUTPUT REVEALED =15 Points

OBJECT CONTROL THROUGH THOUGHT - We know that nerve mapping and physical therapy (practice) can enable a person’s brain to activate a prosthetic hand, so would it be possible for a person’s brain to activate a remote control, which could operate other devices around the living space a person with a disability?
MISSION – Open the door at least half way by only moving the brain’s South input nerve.
DOOR OPEN AT LEAST HALF WAY = 20 Points

MEDICINE AUTO-DISPENSING – If you’re unorganized, forgetful, or have no one helping you, you probably forget to take your vitamins sometimes, and that’s okay. But what if you had many different medicines to take, all at different times, in different doses? And what if missing them or taking the wrong amount could cause serious problems? For many people, this means they can’t live on their own any more, and have to go live where nurses can take care of them. Can you think of a device that would solve this problem?
MISSION – Dispense all of the blue and white, but no pink medicine from the dispenser. Also, get the container with blue and white medicine (at least one of each) into the patient’s area.
BLUE AND WHITES OFF, PINKS ON = 25 Points
BLUE AND WHITE IN CONTAINER IN PATIENT’S AREA = 5 Points

ROBOTIC SENSITIVITY – It takes a lot of sophistication and therapy for an artificial hand and its user to find the correct angles for the many pivots and extensions of movement, but what about the forces? It takes a lot less force to grip a sandwich than a rock… What about handling eggs – or kittens? How is the correct force found?
MISSION – Get the weight to the up position by pushing the blue panel only.
WEIGHT ALL THE WAY UP = 25 Points

PROFESSIONAL TEAMWORK – Biomedical engineering applications need to be exactly right, sometimes for a wide variety of patients, and sometimes for a particular patient. In either case, it’s extremely important for biomedical engineers to maintain very good communication with doctors as well as patients as solutions are developed.
MISSION – Move both the doctor and the biomedical engineer to meet with the patient, anywhere in the patient’s area.
PEOPLE ALL TOGETHER IN THE PATIENT’S AREA = 25 Points

BIONIC EYES – Visual prosthetics in their current stage of development allow perception of light and patterns, holding promise to increase a blind person’s mobility and independence. How far will they go to help people in the future?
MISSION – Move at least one bionic eye so it’s touching the upper body (solid or outline) of the person at the center of the field.
AT LEAST ONE EYE TOUCHING UPPER BODY = 20 Points

STENT – There are several reasons why a vessel carrying fluid through your body can become constricted, and none of them are good! Luckily biomedical engineers invented stents. A stent is a small section of tube that can be inserted into a constricted vessel to widen and reinforce it. This simple, brilliant idea has saved many, many lives.
MISSION – Widen the constricted artery by inserting the stent. Opposing artery walls must be obviously parallel to each other.
STENT INSTALLED / ARTERY EXPANDED = 25 Points

Don’t forget to check:

Robot Game Rules

Field Setup