The game for the 2009 FRC seasonLunacy, is played on a 27ft by 54ft field (the ‘crater’), which will be covered in a slick polymer material called ‘regolith’. Special wheels will produce low pressure interactions with the regolith, which will imitate the 1/6 gravity environment on the moon. Teams should take into account the control limitations placed on their robot, considering the low friction of the regolith. Bumpers are suggested.

 

 

Each robot will also have a trailer attached to it; the goal of the game being to score game pieces into the opposing team’s trailers. At the beginning of the round, each robot will be loaded with 7 ‘moon rocks’, the primary game piece, and placed on a launch pad at the edge of the field.

 

During the autonomous period, the robots will move around while human players attempt to throw moon rocks into their appointed, moving trailers. Since the robots will be started in front of the opposing alliance, (in optimal point scoring area), a good strategy is to block the robot so it becomes stationary and an easier target for the (scoring) human player.

 

After 15 seconds, the round will progress into the teleoperated period, where halo specialists sitting at outposts on the edge of the field will try to score into the trailers. Additional alliance players will guide the robots to make them harder targets to score in. Pieces can be recycled when a robot pushes a piece to a halo specialist.

 

In the last 20 seconds, bonus points will be made available. Robots will pick up ‘empty cells’ from halo specialists and deliver them to ‘fueling stations’, where a human will pick up the empty cell, walk to a referee, and trade it for a super cell. A normal moon rock (and an empty cell) is worth 2 points, but the scoring of a super cell is worth 15 points to reward the difficult and time-constrained process involved in scoring.