Robot Takeoff Threshold

A robot runs down a track from 0 towards a takeoff line at 1. Each advance draws a real number uniformly from [0,1][0,1] and adds it to the robot's position.

  • If an advance takes the robot to 1 or beyond, the attempt scores 0.
  • Otherwise the robot may jump: it draws one final uniform number from [0,1][0,1], adds it to its current position, and that sum is the score. Or it may advance again.

The robot uses a threshold rule: jump as soon as its position is at least tt. Simulating 400,000 attempts per threshold gives

threshold tt 0.15 0.30 0.45 0.60
mean score 1.062 1.087 1.058 0.949

Compute the exact threshold that maximises the expected score.

Answer format: round to 3 decimal places.