Rocks

The placement of the rocks within the randomly selected cells will ultimately be determined by the judges before the beginning of the competition in order to fulfill the intent of the rules. There are several aspects of the rules that will need to be interpreted by the judges for the competition in order to facilitate fairness and implementation.

There have been some questions about the placement of the rocks. There are a number of statistically unlikely yet possible arrangements of the rocks that would be potentially more challenging than others for specific excavation hardware configurations. For instance, all of the rocks could be placed near the ramp entrance.

The rocks will be the approximate size and shape of a ten pin bowling ball. Other details are intentionally not defined. In the scenario of an autonomous excavator on the lunar surface, rocks of widely varying properties will likely be encountered.

Yes, but keep in mind the judges will need to terminate the competition attempt if anything that is or appears to be unsafe is observed.