2010 FIRST Robotics Challenge: Breakaway
Soccer, the world’s most international sport, just brings a sense of exhilaration in the audience that has been completely unmatched, until this year. Breakaway, this year’s challenge for FIRST® Robotics, now has the potential to bring the same excitement initially found only in what the world knows as futbal. Using conventional soccer balls, it is not difficult to see how this game might relate to the actual game of soccer. There is an aggressor scoring goals, a forward member kicking the ball up to be scored, and a defender protecting the goal from other aggressors. Of course, with FIRST® Robotics, there are guaranteed to be some twists. For example, the competition was made more interesting by adding another goal to defend, making the task even more difficult for the defender if another aggressor comes to score. To keep the competition interesting and relatively high-scoring, defenders are limited, where even the effort to incorporate another defender would result in a penalty. Another twist found in this game could potentially be high-scoring, allowing robots to hang off an alliance tower located in the middle of a bump dividing the field into sections. The field this year is also considerably different from fields of the past, offering one major addition. Two bumps spread across the width of the 27’ by 54’ field, splitting the field into three, even 27’ by 16’ sections, known as the Blue Zone, Midfield, and Red Zone. Centered on these bumps is a platform with an alliance tower extending upwards, and underneath these platforms is a tunnel that robots may pass through to enter other sections. If a robot is too large to fit in the tunnel, it may still pass over the bumps to either defend or score. As said before, this game may potentially be high-scoring, though the scoring is simple: every ball that is scored counts as one point, every robot hanging off its alliance tower at the end is worth two points, and every robot hanging off other alliance robots is three points. During the first 115 seconds of the game, the only points that can be scored are soccer goals. This is made more difficult by the fact that balls are continuously recycled by human players. In the final 20 seconds, the game turns into the finale mode, giving robots the ability to expand into finale configuration. During this mode, robots may hang to score points, which could, potentially, offer more points than scoring goals. These multiple methods of scoring offer great potential for different robot designs: offensive bots, defensive bots, ball-transfer bots (the ones that stay in the center and relay balls to the offensive zone), hanging bots, support bots, with the list continuing on. With our focus on simplicity this year, we have spent our time perfecting the kicker, offering the potential to be an extraordinary ball-transfer bot. As our robot design advances, check out our website, www.ravonics.net, for our updates on our robot’s design.
