[frank.pendzich]

Noticeably absent in this year’s competition is the lack of overt scoring opportunities for cooper-tition. I thought this was strange considering FIRST’s ever-present focus on gracious professionalism and collaboration. After three days of mulling over any solution for robo-soloing the tower completely above the first rung, it dawned on me that the design of the tower requires a collaborative approach and that’s why the number of points that can be achieved or so high in comparison to tossing a Frisbee. Team efforts receive more points than those of individuals. Really – They always have.

Although Frisbees are certainly involved in play, they play a minor role in scoring and are probably (forgive me) a red herring. I believe this contest is really a test of team’s abilities to work together to scale that structure. That may be the reason why an individual robot can’t make contact with more than two rungs at a time and can only skip the first rung. It seems that we’re being setup to work together and it’s that feature that may in fact be designed into the game as the desired outcome by the game’s designers.

I think that this must be the rationale behind the game hint we received from the GDC in the form of a still-shot of Rick Ashley music video, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Here’s the refrain.

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you

The good news… This makes climbing the pyramid much easier if teams work together. Now – How do you capture a Frisbee off the floor.