FRC 2009 Challenge

    This year’s FIRST Robotics 2009 competition is called Lunacy. The game is played on a 54’ x 27’ low friction playing field. Robots are equipped with slippery wheels and a trailer the robot will pull along behind it. The game pieces are called “Orbit Balls”, there are Empty Cells, Moon Rocks and Super Cells. There are going to be two three-team robot alliances. The goal is to collect Orbit Balls and get them into the trailers of the opposing teams’ robot. Human players are also going to be around the perimeter of the playing field and can score from their stations by tossing the Orbit Balls over a six foot wall into the opposing teams’ trailers.

    For the first fifteen seconds of play, the robots are autonomous, and then tele-operated for the remaining two minutes. At the beginning of each match, all the trailers are empty. The robots may be loaded with up to seven Moon Rocks by their team before the start of the match. Human players are equipped with twenty Moon Rocks. The quantity of Super Cells and Empty Cells they get are determined on how many they got in their previous match. If they haven’t played a match yet, the human player gets four Empty Cells and two Super Cells.

    All Moon Rocks and Empty Cells scored into the opponent’s trailer is worth two points. Any Super Cells scored in an opponent’s trailer are worth fifteen points. Super Cells must be “activated” before they can be played. To activate a Super Cell an Empty Cell is delivered from their Outpost to their Fueling Station. Empty Cells can be delivered throughout the match. Super Cells may only be used during the last twenty second of a match.

Watch our video of the test run