Games

2007 - Rack 'N' Roll

The Field

The Rack 'n Roll field is dominated by 'The Rack', a large metal contraption with three levels of hanging metal bars, with each level having 8 arms evenly spaced in an octagonal manner. Each arm (known as a 'spider arm') has space for two game pieces. Any more pieces placed on a spider arm beyond the first two are ignored for scoring purposes. At the beginning of the match, the rack is arbitrarily translated or rotated within three feet of the centre of the field in order to give some randomness and to encourage autonomous modes that do not depend on dead-reckoning. At the top of the Rack are four green-colored lights above the 1, 3, 5, and 7 legs to aid in autonomous-mode tracking.

Game Pieces

The game pieces in Rack 'n Roll are inflateable toroidal pool toys. There are 3 styles: Keepers, Ringers, and Spoilers. Keepers are tubes with lettering that are placed only during autonomous mode and, once placed, override any pieces placed later for scoring purposes. Ringers are undecorated tubes that are delivered onto the field either by human players via chutes, or are picked from the floor. Nine ringers of each color start on the field in the opposing team's start area (so the 9 blue ringers are in the red alliance's end zone). The other nine start behind the end wall, to be given out by human players. Spoilers are colored black, and cause the spider arm holding them to not be counted for scoring purposes. Spoilers can be removed or placed from or to the rack by robots multiple times. Each alliance starts with two spoilers, accessible by their human players.

Game Play

Each match of Rack 'n Roll is 2m 15s long, divided into three segments. The first segment is a 15 second autonomous period, where robots may attempt to place keepers onto the rack without human input. Once autonomous mode is complete, any keepers not already on the rack are no longer valid for scoring. The second segment, the teleoperated mode, is 1m 45s, during which robots are operated by the drivers and may roam anywhere on the field. In the final 15 seconds, the end game, robots may not enter their opponent's end zone, but all other rules remain the same from the teleoperated period. Though the head referee may pause the game between the autonomous period and the teleoperated period, the end game follows directly after the teleoperated period.

2006 - Aim High

Aim High is played by two alliances, red and blue, each consisting of three robots. During a 10 second autonomous mode, robots will be programmed to score into any of the three goals: one raised center goal marked by a green vision target and two corner goals at floor level. At the end of the autonomous period, the alliance with the most points will gain a 10 point bonus and will be placed on defense for round two. Rounds two, three, and four, which are each 40 seconds long, are human-controlled rounds. Between rounds two and three, the alliances will switch from offense to defense, or from defense to offense accordingly. At the start of round 4, any alliance can score into their corresponding goals. At the end of the match, an alliance can receive bonus points by placing its three robots on a platform below the center goal. The alliance with the most points wins. Scoring will be as follows: 3 points for any ball scored in the center goal, 1 point for any ball scored in the corner goals; 10 bonus points for scoring the highest in the autonomous round; and 25 points for placing all 3 robots on the platform at the end (10 points for 2 robots and 5 points for 1 robot).

2005 - Triple Play

Triple Play was the FIRST Robotics game released on January 8th, 2005. This is the first time the game rules PDF files were made available to teams prior to the official release. The files (which went up on the FIRST Website [1] sometime in late December) were encrypted with an alpha numeric password featuring the game's name. (The password was 2005tr1pl3pl4y)

This game was the first to feature three robots per alliance. The primary game piece were called "Tetras" which are Tetrahedron made from 1.25-inch PVC pipe 30-inches long. The game was played on a field set up like a tic-tac-toe board, with nine larger goals, also shaped as tetras in three rows of three. The object of the game was to place the scoring tetras on the larger goals, creating rows of three by having a tetra of your alliance’s color at the highest point on the goal. Triple Play was a very strategy intensive game, requiring quick thinking on the part of the drivers and operators to optimise the field for their alliance.

2004 - FIRST Frenzy: Raising The Bar

FIRST Frenzy was a sort of culmination of the previous few years of FIRST competitions. There were elements from several previous games included, such as mobile goals, 'capping' goals with large inflateable balls, and others. In Raising the Bar, teams could score by having their human player score purple balls in any of the goals, capping the goals with a multiplier ball, or hanging their robot suspended from the 10 foot high 'chin up bar'. Teams competed in 2-member randomly generated alliances during qualifying matches, and as 3-member alliances with one team sitting out each match.