Rover Rescue

The Rover Rescue Playground is a survival and exploration Playground where you code the VR Rover to gather resources, avoid hazards, manage energy, and grow stronger over time.

Unlike the competition Playgrounds, Rover Rescue is not built around a single scoring run. The rover explores a large alien environment, reacts to enemies, carries minerals, recharges itself, and levels up as your code adapts to changing conditions.

Playground Overview

The Playground occupies a 12,000 mm by 6,000 mm environment divided into five zones. The VR Rover starts at (-6000, -3000) beside the Research Base.

Each square in the grid is spaced 500 mm apart.

From its start position, the VR Rover can:

• Travel through the map to locate minerals and enemies

• Return to the Research Base to deposit minerals for XP

• Use minerals on the ground to fully recharge its battery

• Enter standby mode to conserve energy while time passes

• Level up and improve its ability to survive longer runs

Robot Overview

Rover Rescue uses the VR Rover, a robot designed for movement, collection, and autonomous sensing in the alien environment.

Zones

The alien environment is divided into five zones. Each zone changes the balance of risk and reward by affecting which enemies appear and how often minerals respawn.

Zone	Details
Zone A	Alien Spiders appear here. Minerals do not respawn.
Zone B	Alien Spiders appear here. Minerals do not respawn.
Zone C	Alien Spiders and Orange Alien Serpents appear here. Minerals respawn.
Zone D	Alien Spiders and Blue Alien Serpents appear here. Minerals respawn more frequently.
Zone E	Alien Spiders and Purple Alien Serpents appear here. Minerals respawn with the highest frequency.

As the rover moves farther from the base, it can find more renewable resources, but it also encounters stronger enemies and more dangerous navigation choices.

Minerals and Energy

Minerals are the main resource in Rover Rescue.

• Picking up minerals stores them in the rover’s cargo.

• Dropping minerals at the Research Base awards 5 XP per mineral.

• Using a mineral on the ground awards 2 XP and fully restores the rover’s battery to 100%.

Minerals appear throughout the map, but they respawn indefinitely only in zones C, D, and E.

This creates an important tradeoff: staying near the base is safer, but traveling deeper into the map creates better long-term resource opportunities.

Research Base

The Research Base is the rover’s home location in the southwest corner of the map.

The rover always knows where the base is. It can report the direction and distance to the base even when the base is not inside the rover’s field of view.

Dropping minerals at the base is one of the main ways to earn XP and support longer runs.

Enemies

Enemies become more dangerous as the rover moves deeper into the map. The rover can absorb enemy radiation to neutralize them and earn XP.

Enemy	XP Gained When Neutralized
Alien Spider	5
Orange Alien Serpent	10
Blue Alien Serpent	10
Purple Alien Serpent	15

The rover can also monitor whether it is under attack, read the nearest enemy’s level and radiation, and trigger code when an attack happens.

Obstacles and Hazards

Rover Rescue includes both obstacles and a major terrain hazard.

Obstacles

Obstacles are scattered across the Playground and block the rover’s path, forcing it to navigate around them.

River Hazard

The main hazard in Rover Rescue is the River, an impassable green liquid that splits the environment.

The rover cannot cross the river directly and must use one of the two bridges. This makes route planning an important part of autonomous strategy, especially when moving between safer and higher-value zones.