In 2011, gathering inspiration from Carnegie Mellon’s yearly outdoor sidewalk line following contest for freshman engineers, DPRG decided to create a challenging line following course for indoor use. The result was a course that included both black on white and white on black elements, segmented S curves, three different line widths, intersections, 90 degree and oblique curves, lines through color puddles of different contrasts, gaps, and more. The course even had one gate similar to those used in the Carnegie Mellon competition. The course layout was introduced at the Roborama 2011b competition (see course layout ).
Several members have attempted to complete the course since its introduction, without successful. One of the attempts was witnessed by Carl Ott. Carl became a DPRG member and set out to solve the course by creating a RoboRealm and Node.js based vision system.
At the Robot Builders Night Out held at the Dallas Maker Space on November 7th, Carl successfully ran to completion a RoboRealm vision system simulation of the DPRG Challenge line following course cheered on by attending members. Carl plans to mount the vision system on a DPRG club robot base and complete the physical course at an upcoming DPRG event.