{"id":583,"date":"2024-12-10T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/control-advent.com\/?p=583"},"modified":"2025-11-28T19:04:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T18:04:54","slug":"10-walters-winter-wonders-gift-delivery-at-lightning-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/control-advent.com\/?p=583","title":{"rendered":"10 – Walter\u2019s Winter Wonders: Gift Delivery at Lightning Speed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Authors of this question:<\/strong> Franco Angelini & Alberto Landi, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, <\/em>Universit\u00e0 di Pisa, Italy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Santa Claus is running late this year because there are so many good kids to deliver presents to. Thankfully, Santa has a lot of elfish helpers that can reduce the workload and ensure all kids will happily receive their gift before morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walter is one of Santa’s newest little helpers. He’s still learning because he just joined Santa\u2019s team, but Walter makes up for it with his bright and ingenious mind. Additionally, Walter knows that the warehouse is full of leftover gifts from previous years, like drones, remote controllers, launchers, sensors, and so on. Combining this technology with his creativity, Walter came up with several ways to automatize and speed up the transfer of gifts from Santa\u2019s sleigh to each kid\u2019s chimney.\n\n Now, he just has one last question: which of his ideas is the best option? Can you help him decide? Keep in mind that it’s important that each gift makes it to the right chimney, the weather can change unexpectedly, and there’s not much time left, so Walter can’t choose anything that takes too long. Given all these requirements, he needs to choose the fastest and most reliable solution!<\/p>\n\n\n

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a. \ud83e\udd8c\ud83c\udf81\ud83e\udea2 One at a time, strap each gift to Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, and ask him to deliver them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. \ud83c\udfaf\u2696\ufe0f\ud83d\udca8 Put a launcher on top of Santa\u2019s sleigh. Then, estimate the weight and other important details for each gift. Finally, use this information to calculate the force needed to launch each gift from Santa’s sleigh to the right chimney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. \ud83d\ude81\ud83d\udce1\ud83d\udccd Strap each gift to a different drone and put a GPS sensor on each drone to track its position in real-time. Then, for each drone+gift, use the difference between the position of the chimney and the measured position of the drone to drive the motors of the drones and ensure they reach the right spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

d. \ud83d\ude81\ud83c\udfae\u270b Strap each gift to a different drone and manually drive each drone using a remote controller.<\/p>\n\n\n