Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Semester Assignment: Ocean's Eleven

Danny Ocean has planned to rob three Las Vegas Casinos with ten accomplices. He has to manage the coup without the owner of the casinos Terry Benedict ever suspecting him or one of his accomplices.

The Plan

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The plan is that Danny seems to be beaten up in a locked room all the while the coup is going on. He sneaks out of the room and meets up with Linus to break into the vault. To bridge the photoelectric barriers in the elevator shaft, they need a pinch device robbed from a research institute nearby. The pinch needs to be charged on time to create an electromagnetic pulse, disabling the complete electrical devices in this quarter of Las-Vegas, including the vault security.

All the while the incredible Yen (a contortionist) will get himself delivered to the vault in a cart. He will plant explosives on the inside of the vault door and hide in the cart, before Danny and Linus trigger the explosives from outside the vault. When that is accomplished, Rusty (Dannys right-hand man) calls Benedict and tells him of the robbery. He instructs Benedict to let his employees carry bags, supposedly holding half of the money, from the elevator to an unmarked van outside of the casino. The other half of the money is left downstairs and rigged with explosives to ensure the safe departure of the van.

Danny and Rusty anticipate that Benedict will call a SWAT team to regain the vault, against Rustys explicit orders. They intercept the call and send a fake SWAT team, consisting of the rest of the accomplices. When the fake SWAT reaches the vault, they put all the money into the equipment bags. They pretend to overpower the robbers downstairs and trigger an explosion. The SWAT team leaves after the job, taking all of the money with them unseen in the equipment bags. Before Benedict realizes, he has not only been robbed, but also staged, the team has left the premises and Danny is back in the room being beaten up.

You can find detailed information about the timing and coordination below.

Your assignment

Build a simulation model of the situation and use it to predict what will happen to Danny Ocean and his accomplices.

  1. What is the probability that...
    1. All goes according to plan?
    2. Danny and Linus are caught, because the Pinch is not fully charged on time?
    3. The Incredible Yen is blown up, because he is not fast enough in planting the explosives?
    4. Terry Benedict's suspicion rises above 80 and he checks on Danny too early?
    5. Danny is too slow in returning to the room, and Terry Benedict does not find him there being beaten up?
  2. How often does a short deplete the charge of the Pinch during loading?
  3. How often is Benedict interrupted by his employees during the coup?
  4. How often does he detect clues that increase his suspicion?

Details of the Plan

The charging of the pinch, Yens period of waiting and Danny crawling the ventilation system all start at the same time, which marks the beginning of the coup.

Danny Ocean

Danny gets himself caught and locked up with a thug to beat him up. However, Danny knows the thug who will pretend to deliver the beating, while Danny joins his accomplices in the job. Danny thus crawls through the ventilation system, which takes a uniformly distributed amount of time between 10 and 20 minutes.
 
At the elevator shaft to the vault Danny meets up with Linus. They will drop down to the vault, undetected because the power is cut off by the Pinch Device. If the Pinch is not charged before Danny and Linus start their descent, they are caught and the coup is busted. After that they stun the guards to actually reach the vault doors. There they immediately trigger the charges, which Yen has planted on the inside of the vault door. From meeting at the elevator until they pull the trigger they will need a uniformly distributed amount of time between 15 and 25 minutes. If Yen is done planting the explosives and has gone back into hiding, all is fine. Otherwise he will be blown up, and the coup is called off.
 
After the explosion, Rusty calls Benedict and explains that bags with money will be sent up with the elevator. Casino personnel should load the bags into an unmarked van parked outside of the casino and let that van leave unchallenged. Half of the money will remain in the vault rigged with explosives. Two minutes into the call, Benedict alerts a SWAT team to regain his vault. The (supposed) SWAT team needs only 5 minutes with a standard deviation of 1 minute to reach the casino.
 
Right when the SWAT team arrives the unmarked van, which is supposed to hold half of the money, starts to the airport.
 
In the following 5 minutes, the SWAT team enters the vault and pretends to overpower the robbers and trigger an explosion. Actually, the whole team packs the money. Afterwards, the SWAT team, including Yen, Linus and Rusty leave the premises unchallenged with all of the money.
 
While the SWAT team leaves, Danny needs to get back to the room, where he is to be beaten up, which again takes between 10 and 20 minutes.
 
The unmarked van needs a normally distributed amount of time (21,2) to get to the airport. When the van arrives at the airport, it is blown up and Benedict finds out there is no money in the van or the bags downstairs.
 
After realizing that he has been set up, Benedict immediately checks on Danny. If Danny is not in the expected room being beaten up, Benedict will know that Danny is involved, and Danny is a dead man. If Danny is back in the room when Benedict arrives, he will have no reason to suspect him personally, and the coup was successful.

The Incredible Yen

After Yen is placed in the cart, he has 30 minutes, before his oxygen supply is depleted. He will wait out that time to make sure, that he is alone and securely locked in the vault. Afterwards he will need only a short amount of time to plant the explosives at the vault door and get back into the cart to be protected from the explosion. He has practiced this workflow over 100 times in the vault replica that the team built up in a garage near the casino. The time he needed in each of these test runs was recorded and can be found on the following data sheet. YenPracticeRunProtocol

The Pinch

The team has robbed a Pinch device to cut the casino power in order to enable Linus and Danny to enter the vault. The Pinch needs to be fully charged (min=0, max=100). The Pinch is constantly charging with a constant rate of 9/minute until the charge is full. However, the charging process is unstable and a short can deplete the charge by an amount of 10. The shorts happen in exponentially distributed intervals every 10 minutes on average. The shorts stop, once the full charge is reached.

Terry Benedict

Terry Benedict is a very suspicious person. His suspicion varies on a scale of 0 to 100. Since he is constantly on the edge, his suspicion gradually increases by a constant rate of 1/minute. When Terry is distracted by one of his employees, his suspicion level immediately decreases by a uniformly distributed amount between 10 and 20. These interruptions happen independently of each other about three times in ten minutes, while the number of issues that his employees annoy him with seems infinite. However, his suspicion can also increase by little clues, such as Linus eyeing his code card. These occurrences (also independent of each other about once every 10 minutes) increase not only his suspicion level by a uniformly distributed amount between 5 and 10, but also his awareness and thus his suspicion increase rate by 0.1. If Benedict's suspicion level reaches 80, he will check on Danny Ocean supposedly being beaten up by a thug. If he does not find Danny where he is supposed to be, he knows something is genuinely wrong, and the coup must be called off

Definitions

The simulation ends when either a team member is caught, a team member is killed or Terry Benedict finds Danny in the room being beaten up.

Letzte Änderung: 18.04.2012 - Ansprechpartner: Webmaster