RoC-eX: Robotic Cave Explorer

RoC-eX: Robotic Cave Explorer

Dive into the experience of piloting a robotic scout through what appears to be an ancient cave system leading down to the centre of the Earth. With the help of advanced sensors, guide your robot explorer along dark tunnels and caverns, avoiding obstacles, collecting relics of aeons past and, hopefully, discover what happened to its predecessor.

We hope playing the game will teach you about how sensors work, how they are used in reality and perhaps give a glimpse into the mind of the robot. With luck, this can show how exciting it can be to work in robotics!

Mickey Li, Julian Hird, G. Miles, Valentina Lo Gatto, Alex Smith and WeiJie Wong (most from the FARSCOPE CDT programme of the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England) have created this educational game as part of the UKRAS festival of Robotics 2021. The game has been designed to teach you about how sensors work, how they are used in reality and perhaps give a glimpse into the mind of the robot. With luck, this game can show how exciting it can be to work in robotics.

As the authors suggest, you can check out the DARPA Subterranean Challenge (video) (website) (not affiliated) for an example of the real life version of this game.

The game is hosted on this website. The site is secured and no data is collected when playing the game (apart from if you decide to fill in the anonymous feedback form). The source code for the game is available open source here on Github. Enjoy!

A talk from Professor Jonathtan Rossitor and Dr Mickey Li with some background to the game and a game walkthrough as part of UKRAS 2021 is available here: 

Extending the game

This game is build using the Godot Engine. Simply clone or download the zip of the project and open up using the godot editor.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See License for further details. We just ask that you link back to the original game!

Credits

Producers

• Mickey Li
• Julian Hird
• Gabriella Miles

Game Development

• Julian Hird
• Mickey Li
• Wong Weijie
• Arturs Elksnis
• Kirsty Aquilina
• Peter Wharton
• Hendrik Eichhorn
• Zhun Chen Yek
• Mihai Anca

Game Design

• Gabriella Miles
• Valentina Lo Gatto
• Alex Smith
• Vimbai Gore-Strachan

Story

• Gabriella Miles
• Valentina Lo Gatto
• Alex Smith
• Julian Hird

Modellers

• Gabriella Miles
• Alex Smith
• Wong Weijie

Testing

• Liam Fletcher

Thanks to

• Paul Harper
• Michael Secker
• Aneta Taylor
• Prof Jonathan Rossiter
• Claire Asher
• UKRAS Robotics Festival 2021, ESPRC, FARSCOPE, University of Bristol, University of West England, Bristol Robotics Laboratory
• Made with Godot - godotengine.org/license