Kickoff Weekend

Well after a bright and early kickoff, Team 250 is now ready to start the long and seemingly never-ending 6 week build season. And I think everyone can easily say, we're going to have our work cut out for us this year! Once the giant structure in the middle of the playing field was unveiled, a large group groan could be heard from wonder about what FIRST could possibly want us to do with this. We then learned about our game this year: Rack n Roll.

The ten foot structure we soon discovered was called the rack and our robot's function would revolve around trying to get innertubes on the spider legs, trying to form the most rows possible. Within the rack are three spiders, with eight legs each, totaling for 24 spider legs. The first spider is 24 inches off of the ground, the second being 58inches, and the tallest towering 92 inches high. Propped on top are four vision system targets, which help robots locate and line itself up with the target. So far, it seems somewhat simple. But of course, FIRST couldn't make the game easy, so to add a little difficulty, the targets have the ability to move! Each spider is suspended on chains connected from the top of the rack, allowing the targets to move horizontally. At the beginning of each match, the referee will shake the rack, so trying to play the game without the spiders moving will be impossible.

This year's game pieces consist of three different types of inflatable tubes: ringers, keepers, and spoilers. The keepers come in two colors, red and blue, corresponding to each alliance, and are distinguished from the ringers with the FIRST logo on them. Keepers are only used during the autonomous mode. The ringers are also red and blue, and are the main game pieces used in scoring. The match starts with 18 ringers, 9 in each alliance zone. As the game progresses, human players are allowed to pass extra ringers through a chute to their robot. The human players are also allowed to pass spoilers through the chute. Spoilers are black and are relatively the same size as the keepers and ringers. They cancel out, or "spoil" whatever ringer was there, and also eliminates the row that may have been created. They cannot cancel out keepers however, but may be moved and taken off the spider legs.

For each match, six teams are divided evenly into two alliances. At the beginning of the match is the 15 second autonomous mode, where the robots run on preprogrammed instructions. Then for the next two minutes, the robots are controlled by their drivers. This is the teleoperated period, where each alliance tries to make the most rows going either horizontally or vertically. During the last 15 seconds of the period, the game switches into the period called end game. Opposing alliances are not allowed to be in the other's home zone during this time. Each alliance may earn bonus points by having one or more robots completely elevated off the floor, with no part of it touching the carpet or any other part of the playing field. Points are awarded for the number of inches it is off the floor, with the minimum being 4 inches; 15 points are awarded for each robot elevated between 4 and 11.9 inches off the ground and 30 points for any robot raised 12 inches or more.

Although the game has just been released, our team is diligently working on different outlines of our potential robot and game strategy. Six weeks may seem like plenty of time, but as seen in previous years, it will fly by. Time does seem to be of the essence at this point, and with a game like this, FIRST has not disappointed with a challenging problem. Wish us luck this season, where in a few months, we will proudly display the fruit of our labor at RIT's Finger Lake Regional competition.

The kickoff video and the competition can be seen at: http://robotics.arc.nasa.gov/events/2007_kickoff.php