[Jaine Perotti]

I think plywood is definitely a good idea...its cheap and almost anyone can get their hands on it. How about sheetrock?? Also, what if you had a playing field that used materials differing from eachother radically, for example, alternating bands of rubber and lexan. That would make it really challenging to design your drive train to handle radically different conditions. I could just see robots with good traction on rubber slide out of control once they hit a slippery surface...this would create a need for good driving skills.