Game On for Students in FIRST Robotics
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The suspense was thick this morning at the Polytechnic Institute of NYC in Brooklyn, where representatives of 37 local high schools packed into a standing room-only auditorium to learn how they’d be spending the next six weeks. One thing they knew for sure: The end result would be a robot. But would it have to fling balls? Climb obstacles? Pull trailers? The possibilities seemed endless. “We don’t really know what to expect,” said Matt Wong, a member of a rookie team from the city’s Hunter College High School.
The 1531 veteran teams returning to the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) know anything goes when it comes to the rules for the annual game, which change every year. And that’s what makes it fun. “I like the challenge so it doesn’t matter what game it is,” said Michael Rodriguez, a senior at Queens Vocational Technical High School, the defending regional champions. Last year’s FRC game, Lunacy, involved robots with slippery wheels playing on a slick surface, and Rodriguez’s job was to fix and maintain his team’s robot. “All of the collisions gave me a lot of work to do,” he said.
Well, Michael, it looks as though your job won’t be getting any easier with Breakaway. The 2010 game, announced over a live broadcast from the kickoff event in New Hampshire, promises to be a high-impact game of robot soccer, with a few exciting twists. One of them, which met with loud whooping applause from the NYC audience, was an assurance from founder Dean Kamen, more for the families and friends of the students than the participants themselves: “You’ll see that this year humans will actually be able to understand the scoring.” Watch the animation and read on, because we’ve talked to the game designers to bring you the inside scoop on this new spectator sport. Then go see a competition near you.
As a fitting prelude to the World Cup, Breakaway is basically a game of high-tech soccer, played by two alliances of three robots. The object is to get a regulation soccer ball into one of two goals in each corner of the alliance’s side of the court; each goal is worth one point. To ensure that the offenders have a fighting chance, only one robot can play defense at a time, leaving a second goal open.
“It’s very easy to create a defensive game, but we try desperately to create games in which the task can be defended but not totally stopped,” says Vince Wilczynski, a captain and dean of engineering at the US Coast Guard Academy. “If we just had one goal to shoot from you could build the best offensive robot that could do amazing things but a box on wheels could shut you down.”
The 27- x 54-foot playing field is divided into three zones by two “bumps”—essentially giant speed bumps, with a 35-degree incline and decline. The bumps serve two purposes: One is to make it more exciting—when the balls hit the bumps they’re going to be airborne. The second is to provide the robot with the mechanism challenge of going over the obstacle. If the robot is too top heavy there’s a good chance it will flip over.
Like in soccer, the robots can’t carry the ball. They also can’t ingest the ball and spit it out as in past years, because the rules dictate that the ball can only go 3 inches into a robot’s frame. That means in order to get the balls in midfield over the bumps they’ll have to kick it, a first for FIRST. That will also be a rather sophisticated design challenge, points out Wilczynski. “When you think about soccer, you’re getting your foot under it but you’re also lifting up at the correct time,” he says.
Each of the bumps is bisected by a tower with a platform raised 20 inches above the playing surface. Balls can roll through this “slot” from midfield into the end zones. “Hopefully we’ll see slot bots develop,” Wilczynski says. Robots compact enough to pass under the platform won’t have to go over the bump. “We have to balance trying to make sure the game is complex enough to entice the teams that have been around a long time, and at the same time make the game playable and easy enough for rookie teams,” FRC director Bill Miller says. The slot is one way to make sure less sophisticated robots still have the opportunity to push balls around and score.
The second purpose for the tower and platform is to give the robot something to climb or hang on in the final 20 seconds of the 2-minute teleoperated period of the match. (This is the period in which human drivers control the robot with a joystick; there’s also a 15-second autonomous period at the beginning.) If a robot can pull itself off the playing field during the finale it scores two points. If it can then lift another robot completely off the playing field—another brand new element—it scores three points.
“We want the potential for the hail Mary pass, so any team can have a chance to win big points at the end of the match,” Wilczynski says. In other words, it should keep things suspenseful. It will also differentiate tasks for the veterans and the rookies. “We anticipate the more sophisticated teams will be able to hang easily,” Miller says. “They’ll probably be able to assist the rookies by picking them up or helping them to hang.”
From a spectator standpoint, the game should be pretty easy to follow. It should also be fairly high-impact. Robots usually collide bumper-to-bumper, but because they will be ascending and descending the bumps at angles, the area in which they could be struck is a variable this year. (They can also be hit by flying balls.) The students will have to design their robots to be extra rugged with that in mind.
“Last year we intentionally kept it simple because there was a new control system,” Wilczynski says. “Now they’ve got that part down so we can throw it at ‘em.” Breakaway rewards robots that can kick the ball, go over a bump, pass through a slot, lift itself off the field or lift its neighbor. Because no robot will be able to do everything, Wilczynski recommends that teams pick a skill and optimize their choice. And keep in mind the object is not to humiliate or defeat the opponent, Miller says, “it’s to show off your robot and all its attributes and really work with other teams to be successful.”
As the students poured out of Polytechnic Institute today, their minds were already racing with possibilities. “We’re going to have to think about automatics,” one Queens student told another. “You know how cars can have suspension systems?” Huddled over a laptop reading the just-released rules in a hallway, a Bronx High School of Science student observed that a short robot, able to go through the slot, would be faster. A student from Saunders Trades Technical High School, thinking about the kit of parts FIRST issues each team, said: “I can’t wait to see what’s in there.” The students from Brooklyn's George Westinghouse High School, which sits just 50 yards away, were already headed over with their kit to find out.
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