Pancake Robot Configuration Space

The game. Two orders build at once: each ticket on the wire has its plate on the counter right below it. For each pancake: take the ladle from the rack, fill it with the bowl fully over the batter, pour anywhere the pancake fits on the griddle, swap back to the flipper, flip a raw pancake, lift a cooked one, and carry it through the splash-guard gap to either open plate that ordered its kind. Some tickets ask for blueberry pancakes (the pancakes drawn on the ticket show the berries); a ticket is all blueberry or all plain. A blueberry pancake is a plain one that got a ladle of berries while its first side was still cooking: scoop from the berry bowl beside the batter, pour over any raw pancake, then flip as usual. A tool that is holding something — batter or berries in the ladle, a pancake on the flipper — can't be swapped at the rack: pour it, deliver it, or put it back first (a loaded ladle tips back into its own bowl; a lifted pancake can be set back down on the griddle). Being there isn't doing it: press ACT (Space/Enter or the on-station button, which names the action it would take) — you choose where each pancake goes, which one to work on, and which order to finish first. When a plate holds its whole order, the ticket is pulled and a new order takes the slot. The robot moves like a real one: each action changes the joints by at most a small step, and a step that would hit something simply doesn't happen — exactly the movement rules the crewmate has in the Among Us assignment. The whole robot is the red dot on the right; you are really playing in configuration space, and the kitchen is just what your play looks like from above.

Why the green comes in patches: the green shows every configuration where ACT would do something — every pancake, either plate, the batter (bowl fully over it), the blueberry bowl, the rack, or for pouring the whole griddle wherever a pancake still fits — and each target is reached by a whole curve of configurations (elbow-left and elbow-right both work). A motion planner is given the same deal: find a collision-free path to any goal configuration. Watch the C-space change when you pick up the other tool at the rack: the room stayed the same, but the robot changed, so its C-space changed. Explore mode (checkbox, game pauses) unlocks free controls: drag the tool tip or the C-space dot anywhere, scrub the joint sliders, switch tools directly, or simplify the station — useful for seeing how each obstacle shapes the C-obstacles. One more thing to notice: the robot's own turret blocks the forearm (which works below the upper arm, near the griddle), and the open-topped batter tank blocks nothing — the arm scoops right over it. What counts as an obstacle depends on the robot's geometry, not just the room's. (Planned: a scored mode with timers — pancakes can burn.)