Introduction

Stage 1 — PacBot

Welcome, explorers, to the vibrant realm of “PacBot” one of the thrilling themes of eYRC 2026-27! This year we step into a maze where a lone bot must gather every pellet it can and slip past the Ghosts on its way out.

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What This World Is About

The Maze

Imagine a grid of narrow corridors and blind corners, Pellets scattered across it, and a single exit waiting on the other side. The full layout is known from the start but knowing the map and surviving it are two very different things.

The Bot and the Ghosts

Deep inside the maze a lone bot powers up. Somewhere in the same corridors a Ghost bot is already patrolling: pre-programmed, relentless, and closing in. Every corner your bot turns, the Ghost is turning one too.

The Challenge

Your mission is to bring this escape to life in simulation first, then on real hardware:

• Plan a route that collects the maximum points from the pellets scattered across the grid
• Track the Ghosts and reroute in real time as their positions change every second
• Reach the exit before the escape routes are cut off

It’s about the trade-off between greed and survival: every detour for one more pellet is time the Ghost spends getting closer.

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The Abilities You Will Build

Domain	Skills
Maze Solving & Path Planning	Representing the maze as a graph, running search algorithms over it, scoring a route by the points it wins against the time it costs
Strategy Under Pressure	Deciding how greedy to be, tracking where the Ghosts are, replanning the instant a corridor stops being safe
Motion & Control	Driving corridors accurately, clean turns at junctions, reaching the exit inside the time limit
Simulation & Messaging	Working with the MuJoCo model of the maze and bot, and MQTT as the link between your code and the robot

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The Two Stages

Stage 1 — Simulation Challenge

Grow your PacBot solution in a simulated maze: practice localization, pellet-collection strategy, Ghost evasion, and the final run for the exit polishing everything without risking real hardware mishaps.

Stage 2 — Real-World Conquest

Teams that advance receive a hardware kit of their own: build the bot, set up the arena, and run the escape on real hardware where wheels slip, sensors are noisy, and the plan that worked in simulation meets the physical maze.

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Ready to Begin?

This is your starting point. Everything you build across both stages — the planner, the Ghost tracking, the escape run — traces back to the mission laid out here.

Head over to Task 0