Time for the new competition for 2011! This year’s game is called LOGO MOTION™. Once again FIRST® doesn’t come up short to impress with a new, and exciting idea for this year’s game. As a basic summary, robots are designed to pick up inflated tubes shaped like the FIRST® logo and have to carry them across the field and place them on the rack of their team’s side. In the autonomous period, robots are to place yellow inflated tubes on to their team’s rack. They are allowed to use cameras that can pick up targets on the racks in order to place them with better accuracy. Once the period is over, the match begins. At the end of the match, robots are allowed to release a minirobot to climb up one of the four towers placed in the center of the field. First one to the top gets 30 extra points and second, third, and fourth place progressively get lesser points.
First of all, the minirobots implementation reminds me immediately of the 2002 game with the use of a minirobot running across the field in order to get back to your team’s side of the field. In the animation, it kind of reminds me of a hex bug – perhaps our coach, Mr. Ostrow, will get to make that bigger version after all? Also, the four towers in the middle of the field remind me of the game in 2008, OVERDRIVE™, where robots were required to drive around the entire field and throw ten pound balls over horizontal beams above them. Now, the entire field and shape may not be completely exactly like 2008, however simply the structure gave me a vision of it.
Overall the game seems like it will be an interesting one, incorporating different things from past years as well as new ideas in to one complete game. Its totally different from last year’s game and will take a lot of brainstorming and different strategies in order to win. Should we focus on making pretty FIRST® logos on our team’s side, or getting that minirobot to the top of the tower in the last 10 seconds? We’ll see how the game plays out after those six weeks.
