The University of Michigan's CARMEL and SRI International's FLAKEY were the first- and second-place finishers, respectively, at the 1992 Robot Competition sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. The two teams used vastly different approaches in the design of their robots. Many of these differences were for technical reasons, although time constraints, financial resources, and long-term research objectives also played a part. This article gives a technical comparison of CARMEL and FLAKEY, focusing on design issues that were not directly reflected in the scoring criteria.

The camera is mounted on a rotating table that allows it to turn 360 degrees independently of robot motion. Interestingly, the two teams processor (Z80) controls the robot's used vastly different approaches in the design wheel speed and direction. 's software design is hierarchical in The final scores for the robots, based solely structure. At the top level is a supervising on competition-day performance, constitute planning system that decides when to call only a rough evaluation of the merits of the subordinate modules for movement, vision, various systems. This article provides a technical or the recalibration of the robot's position.