| Okay,
here's the arena before the start of a match. The rules are
kinda complex, but I'll make it as simple as I can. Every
team gets the same materials, motors, controllers, wheels,
etc to use for their robot and can order up to $450 worth
of parts from the Small Parts catalog. There are NO exceptions,
so it really makes you think of how to use materials that
came with it to their highest degree! Everybody gets the rules
at the same time a couple months before the event. These rules
also change each year, so you never know what to expect until
the last minute and everybody gets the same disadvantage and
has to use the same parts for their robots. I LOVE this idea,
by the way!
The carpeted
arena is set up for four robots in a match, two on each team.
The controllers are in a booth in the middle of each side
and their robots start on the opposite sides. You also have
a human player just outside the arena in each corner that
can interact somewhat with the robots. There are 12 elimination
matches for each robot team, and the finals are best 2 out
of 3 matches. There are several goals for the matches, all
of which end up that the team with the most points at the
end of a 2 minute match is declared the winner. You can get
points several ways:
1. Picking
up 'floppies'. These are the red or blue colored styrofoam
filled cloth bags in the arena, of which there are 10 of each
color. You get 3 floppies automatically in the human player's
corner, and they can throw these floppies into your robot
for scoring. There are also 4 other floppies of your color
in the arena that you can scoop, push or whatever to get into
or onto your robot. Most robots could hold a few floppies,
some (like ours) could hold 8 or 9 at once. Floppies are worth
1 point each if they are not touching the ground at the end
of your match. One technique used by some players is to actually
throw your floppies into the enemiy robot's basket!
2. The
'puck' in the middle of the arena is that octogon-shaped thing
about 6 feet across with two metal poles sticking up on each
side. It is carpeted and is on caster wheels, so your robot
can push it around- if you can push the puck into the enemy
side of the arena by the end of the match, you get a 2x multiplier
for each of your floppies! Gets pretty crazy when 4 robots
are all trying to push this thing around!
3. Raising
the floppies above 8 feet. If you can (and most robots there
could), use some kind of mechanical device to lift your floppies
at least 8 feet above the floor, you get another 2x multiplier
for each floppy! This was a really cool thing to watch, most
robots incorporated a scissor-jack style lifter for the basket,
some even had covers that opened and closed on top of the
basket, and there was at least 3 cool 'cherry-picker' style
lifting mechanisms I saw too.
4. Climbing
onto the puck. If your robot was capable of driving, clawing,
jumping, whatever onto the puck at the end of the match, it
was worth a whopping 3x multiplier for each floppy your team
has! And, if BOTH robots in your team could get up, its ANOTHER
3x multiplier! Some robots (like ours) simply used a climbing
system in the front to pull the whole robot up onto the 6
inch high puck, but some used other techniques, such as grabbing
the pole on the side of the puck and raising itself up from
there (2 inches off the ground was the minimum requirement).
These were some really cool designs that could do this, we
always were hoping to team up with a 'pole grabber' in our
matches so we didn't have to cramp the puck with too many
robots. During one match in the first day, our robot launched
its way onto the platform, knocking the two enemy robots off
within the last 5 seconds of the match, this strategy earned
our team the "Best play of the Day" award!
5. If
your team is declared the winner by points of the match, your
entire team got ANOTHER multiplier (2x or 3x, I cannot remember)
Like I mentioned earlier we won most of our matches, so our
score was extremely high.
In all,
it was possible to get a perfect score of 540 points in a
match, which we understand was done only twice the whole weekend.
Our team came SO close to getting a perfect score with a robot
named 'Crusher', but at the end of the match it was found
that Crushers raised basket had swayed slightly out of the
bounds of the arena... rats! |
