I am planning a summer camp, and instead of building a clawbot, which offers very few transferrable building skills, I wanted to design a game and robot with the following constraints:
- Robot has 4-m geared drive of >250RPM.
- Robot has a roller intake for easier game piece grabbing.
- Robot has a 4-bar lift.
Students will be provided with the following:
- To build the robot, students will be given instructions from a CAD model.
- To program, students will be given teacher-prepared “stock” code in V5 text with three distinct autonomous codes to tinker with and further develop.
- Rules.
- Notebook with templates for a game analysis.
The Game: It should be noted that this game is intended to be enjoyed by any level of driver as a chance to practice driving and drive-team-coaching, with a set of supplies that already exists in many robotics programs that don’t toss out old game pieces.
The game is played with the balls from Change Up and the cubes from Tower Takeover. However the cubes have masses added to them to make them much heavier (~1lb or more). Bots are limited to carrying one cube and one ball at a time. Plowing more is legal, as it is not “carrying”.
The field has two TiP platforms with extra polycarb glued in to divide it into three sections. There are 4 TT cups mounted at three corners and in the middle. There is a TuP Platform (single one) in the corner for a parking bonus. There are two diagonal lines (shown in green) to define the autonomous neutral zone (middle) similar to the last few years games.
Prohibited: tipping opponents platform and contacting opponents alliance cups (Red in picture). Other usual grappling and trapping limits apply.
Not prohibited: Removing game pieces from opponents platform.
Scoring: 1pt per game element (maybe 2 per cube if they turn out more interesting) scored on the platform. TT rules for game pieces in the cups. Orange cubes only affect orange cubes. Red Balls only affect red balls. Parking is >10 pts. Teams are given two driver loaded modifiers, a black cube (Negator) and a white ball (doubler). They can place these in one of the three segments of either platform to make everything in that section count for double (doubler) or not count at all (negator). They can be introduced at any time, and can be descored.
Possible experimental rules: Driver loads can be placed directly onto or into the bot. Anything goes on the platform (OG Rules). Cubes are worth two points each. Point modifiers can be placed onto modified cups to double or negate their modification. Moving the platforms closer to the middle or closer to the edge, idk.